CHARACTER She has the straight-ahead force of those dumb opinionated yet doomed protagonists behind the agonistic plots of Flannery O'Connor. Hubristic beyond belief she follows that straight-ahead line off the cliff's edge into the burning house to test the pain and glow in the apocope: a smouldering red end of ash.
EDITH WHARTON Outside the cozy circle of choice under tradition's garments a woman sits feeding bits of fish from a tin to a fixed cat. Still as the moon, it makes a tableau to feed society: no one truly sees the plain geometry that taste makes obvious. Outside of choice is madness or the sudden suicide. The rest is a lifetime: slow surrender.
TRUISMS Memory in sleep is dream. Survival and sex are in a war which neither can afford to win. Sex is the breathing of the creative mind. A closed mind fears everything. Numbers are unimportant. Numbers are the most important thing. Oil is the root of all evil. Just because it's typed in red doesn't mean Christ said it. Violence is victims coping. Confusionism is disorganized religion. There is no such thing as an original idea. Ideas are weapons and solutions. Dead men don't win wars. Style is a form of repetition. Goodness is the soft side of subjectivity. Pleasure becomes shame in a guilty mind. Artifice is human nature. Capitalism is religion to the greedy. Democracy is the alienation of the minority. Economics is an abstraction of justice. Poverty is not spiritual. Murder can be spontaneous but is never a surprise. Suicide is an act of war, but not against the self. Bought sex is free love. Love saves the soul from death.
GREEN The only global politics grows from the earth, emerging needy green from soil. Green is the honest, rambling speech of life, so of death, at last. Honesty is a deep forest, teeming with life, yet quiet from a distance, everywhere life lives in streaks of green, telling truth, simple as salad, vulnerable as health. I want to paint my bedroom walls cool olive, air and food and water and shelter, recipe for living on the right side of the ledger, green paper on green paper.
INSIDE KOSTABI The committee has overruled you. Can I sign this? Why do you like this? Very DeKooning, Jackson Pollacky... Very Raushenberg--we like Raushenberg, don't we? Can I sign this one? Is this any good? Why? The committee has overruled you. It's very amateurish, not perfect enough to be signed, to be a Kostabi. So, I should sign this one? Right? What do you think...Naomi...David Nicholson? Is this upside-down? Horizontal? No, definitely vertical... The committee has overruled you. But you need a reason, is this one any good? Sign it? So this one's "really cool." Really cool is better than really good, right? You know what I mean? Too East Village...amateurish...Naomi? David Nicholson? Tell me why this is good. Can I sign this? This is too red? The committee has overruled you. This needs a gray background to be good... Then I can sign it? Yes, this one's perfect enough. The committee has overruled you. This one's not perfect enough.
MESSAGE FROM AN ELECTRIC WHEELCHAIR Alone outside of power I shiver. If I could disconnect my head, I would. Noises get loud, fear disarranges the composed house when I'm left alone. Reaching for something, I fall down. I sit on the cold floor clutching it and panic. It's a relief when the sun crawls away into darkness. But it will return. Think about my terrors: the trap of coma, waiting on line, dehydration, armageddon. Imagine what you can't change.
MOUSE My computer connects me to an empty world, emotions evaded, distilled out in a click. I search for myself while I pile products then I get on line and buy. All the ugly people become as beautiful in thin cyberair if I want them to. This is a self-celebrated age, but it's not just narcissism because it's only pretty in the monitor and an aching hollowness in my heart.
THE CLOSET TRAP You plunged your arm into my tender part and pulled back out my neglected adolescence: core of the man I've become. I'm not hurt; I'm resolute. There's nothing to fear from my own will when it's directed and aimed toward the future. There's a lonely boy who missed-out on touches. He's confused at the center of desire, and he's trapped in my wrecked body.