hagiography

i got this picture on my wall; if you look at it one way it's guevera, another way marti and yet another way castro.  do you ever do that?  on your own in the bathroom?  you see your face in the mirror and it don't look like you?  no matter how hard you stare into your own eyes you can't see your/self?

yeah, yeah.

there was this one time i thought i was someone else, maybe it was a wish of sorts.

yeah, yeah.

you ever look at your hands and think that they can't have done what you've done?  right in front of you they are and yet they don't belong to you.  nothing belongs to us.

i couldn't sleep the other night.  lyin' in bed i had to keep crossing and uncrossing my own legs, couldn't stand the feel of my own knees and ankles.  and i had to tuck the sheet thing up between my tits, cos they was squashed together and even me on my own skin felt weird.  i tried to dream of a fresh forest, with dripping leaves and a mud smell path, but out of all my holes black insects came, little ones, beans on legs, scuttling.

yeah, yeah.

did you ever read that book 'how to become a schizophrenic'?

no, no.

this guy, he knew how.  what you have to do is get born into the american military, then you have to live on bases your whole life through, then you have to have parents that never believe a word you say, then you have to grow so you don't believe a word you say, or even a word you think, or a word anyone else says, until all the words are just hanging there, in mid air, not looking or sounding like words, but just growing and breathing and flapping, hyperventilating reality.

yeah, yeah.

reality.

you ever loved someone so much that you had to hide them away?

yeah, yeah.

someone you've loved outside of your/self?  you see them and they're not you, cos they're someone else, so you think maybe you can protect them, save them, not let it happen to them ever again.  

yeah, yeah.

i'm labouring the point like a woman trying to force a fat fucked feotus.  and here's the language of anger.  you've heard it all before.  i shouldn't bother you no more.

you ever built a sandcastle on a beach.  when you're a kid you don't know, or you don't think, that the tide's gonna come in and wash it away.  it's like you'll finish it and then walk away and it'll stop existing.  it won't matter to you, cos you'll be at home with mom and dad or mom and uncle bill or mom on her own.  they'll be fish and chips or a blanket your gran crocheted out of old socks or something.  you won't watch it all slide into the sea.  it won't even be on your radar.

yeah, yeah.

something.  nothing.

you ever watched someone die right in front of your face and known that someone is you?

we had this dart board.  it used to hang in the garage.  in the summer we'd go outside and throw the sharp points at it.  we counted backwards from three hundred and one.  you had to finish on a double.  i never did.  in our family everyone played to win.

oh shut up.  yeah, yeah.

i can't get hold of it and say 'this is this'.  christopher walken isn't wandering about inside my head.  underneath the picture of che/jose/fidel is a shelf, a printer's drawer on its side, wrong way up, lots and lots individual squares.  once they would've held letters to make words and sentences, now they're full of 'trinkets', the little things that don't fit anywhere else in my life.  there's a sheriff's star, a fir cone, a spinning top, an ANC badge, a small metal submarine.  all this means something, i just don't know what.  some days i look at this shit and i know, i KNOW.  other days i stare into the compartments and it doesn't make sense.

threaded 'round the outside is a string of fairy light, red ones.  they ran out of battery a while back.  they don't shine no more.  to the left is a carbon monoxide monitor, to make sure i don't get poisoned when the fire's burning.  it's a real fire, open, with a hearth and a grate and a chimney and everything.  if the dot in the middle of the detector goes black then i'm dead, or nearly dead, or could be dead if i don't do something about it.

i got a black dot right in the middle of me.  this is what people don't understand … the marble … it's hard and dense and totally fucking impenetrable.  it's got to be this way cos otherwise, when i look at that picture in the mirror, i don't know who's staring back.  it's important to know that shit, to recognise the face,

yeah, yeah.