And I’m wondering why I haven’t got a rum and coke in my hand and why Thelonious Monk isn’t on the turntable, then I remember, I hate jazz and I don’t drink rum, even if it sounds sexy, Cuba Libre, but Castro and Guevara had to catch a cab to Havana, gaps in planning; they came ashore forgetting it’s not just about landing, more what you do after, how you get to the place you need to be.

Whiskey, yeah, we could go to a bar and drink whiskey, straight up, no ice, and afterwards I’d steal the shot glasses, put one in each coat pocket, and we’d walk home, weaving a path somewhere between your place and mine, a hundred thousand mile walk, not running out of conversation, because it’s rare that we do, except when we say something we shouldn’t, at which point we simply run out.

But there’s this thing I’ve been meaning to tell you; I elected to have open heart surgery, to replace my old heart with a complex device, made of titanium, the usual four chambers: two on the left, which fill up with grey blood, sending it out to the lungs, and then two on the right, receiving red blood back, before pumping it round my body. Sixteen hours battery life, my waking day, it’s meant to recharge when I sleep. But there’s the problem, I don’t sleep.

There are wires coming out of my chest, earth, live and neutral. Where my skin meets the copper, there are already signs of infection. It feels sore. It hurts. And I don’t know what to do. Without sufficient charge my new heart won’t work, but I can’t plug it into the mains, because all that electricity, well, it burns, right across my chest, scalds my skin off, leaving my bones on show.

I never knew I was this skeletal.

I didn’t understand that the functionality of survivability was so brutal.

And I can still hear you, talking to me about brains and accidental evolution. I was mistaken to think the heart, with its simple pump mechanism, could provide anything other than a tic-toc flow. If I wanted precision I should’ve bought an expensive watch.

So, here’s the thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, can I have my old heart back? The one you keep in your pocket? I know you’ve still got it, wrapped up in black tissue paper, because sometimes I see you unwrap it, when you think I’m not looking, while I’m half hitching empty shot glasses and you’re tut-tutting at my ridiculous thievery. Can you put it back in me and then can we steal away, to that log cabin, in Brighton, Vermont? We could go by boat and catch a cab from the dockside. I finally think I know where I’m heading. One day I might even learn to like jazz.

It was late. She and a new he sat in the lounge, watching television, rolling spliffs. On the coffee table there was an unremarkable paperback, it’s spine broken. Around them the detritus of a lazy day, scattered across the floor and crumbled into the carpet. She was slouched in her pyjamas, eyes on stalks, hair all over the place, smiling, laughing, at new him, as he sat shoeless, legs stretched out on the sofa, right hand tucked into the waistband of his jeans. Outside it was raining. Inside the cat was curled on their unmade bed.

A knock at the back door called their attention. She stopped, mid three-skinner. He rose, long legs, big feet, a loping gait, and she watched his skinny backside disappear into the kitchen; she heard the door rattle against its frame, some mumbling, and then he came back into the lounge, his hand no longer in his waistband, instead it was passing through his hair and she could see his forehead and his frown.

‘It’s for you,’ he said.

‘Who is it?’

He didn’t look her in the face.

It was her turn to rise. She was barefoot. Her pyjama bottoms hung around her as if they were too tired to make the effort to cling. In the kitchen, right next to the door, stood the man who was still inside her. He held out a small package, something lumpy contained within a brown, manilla envelope. She took it.

‘What is it?’

He was crying.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ was all he could say.

But she had heard it all before. The first time she thought it was an aberration. She didn’t understand. He explained. It didn’t help. The second time his father told her off and she felt like it was all her fault. The third time it frightened her, because he was so high, so massively high, and vital, full of adrenaline; he scared her.

She fought to remain impassive, the lumpy brown envelope in her hand.

He hunched his shoulders and turned away, opening the door into a flurry of rain, and she realised those hadn’t been tears on his face.

‘Goodbye.’

She stared after him, immobilised, trying to find focus, her gaze shifting from the wet footprints on the linoleum to the round handle of the back door. It was a strange maroon colour, too dark to be red, too light to be nearly black. She had bled once. With concrete feet she walked into the lounge. ‘They used to make plastic like that,’ she said, ‘brittle.’

New he was bent over the coffee table, licking another cigarette loose. ‘Yeah, out of formaldehyde, same stuff they pickle body parts in.’ He dislodged the tobacco from its paper case.

‘Why would anyone want to keep part of their body in a pickle jar?’ she said.

He looked up just as he twiddled the end into a perfect cone, ‘Because some things you can’t throw away’.

A knock at the door called their attention, their back door, their kitchen door. No one came through the front door, not ever, because the front door actually opened into a bedroom, a student bedroom, because this was a student house, deep in the depths of student house land, where all the walls were decorated with posters and all the gardens were a mess

She stopped, mid three-skinner. He rose, long legs, big feet, a loping gait, and she watched his skinny backside disappear into the kitchen; she heard the back door rattle against its frame, some mumbling, and then he came back into the lounge, his hand no longer in his waistband, instead it was passing through his hair and she could see his forehead and his frown and …

‘It’s for you,’ he said.

‘Who is it?’

He didn’t look her in the eye.

It was her turn to rise. She was barefoot. Her pyjama bottoms hung around her as if they were too tired to make the effort to cling. In the kitchen, right next to the door, stood a man she recognised but had given up trying to know. He held out a small package, something lumpy contained within a brown, manilla envelope. She took it.

‘What is it?’

He was crying.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ was all he could say.

But she had heard it all before. The first time she thought it was an aberration. She didn’t understand. He explained. She still didn’t understand. The second time his father told her off and she felt like it was all her fault. The third time it frightened her, because he was so high, so massively high, and vital, full of adrenaline; he scared her. The fourth, fifth, sixth and sixtieth times, ‘Well, it’s amazing what you can get used to,’ she told her friend over a coffee one day.

She remained impassive, the lumpy brown envelope in her hand.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ he asked.

And she realised those weren’t tears on his face. It was still raining outside. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘It’s a present.’

‘I don’t think so. I think it’s just something else you want me to have,’ she said.

‘Open it, you’ll understand.’

‘I don’t need to any more.’ She handed the package back to him. ‘I’d like you to leave.’

He left. For a long time afterwards she stared at the round handle on the back door. It was a strange maroon colour, too dark to be red, too light to be nearly black. She went into the lounge. ‘They used to make plastic like that,’ she said, ‘brittle.’

‘Yeah, out of formaldehyde, same stuff they pickle body parts in.’

‘Why would anyone want to keep part of their body in a pickle jar?’ she said.

‘Because it’s difficult to know how to throw some things away.’

An other man,
awake in the supermarket,
cruising the sardine aisle,
asks ‘How old do you think I am?’
and I hazard a guess -
dangerous business this talking
to strangers.

He whips his hat off his head
to show me a blizzard of white hair.
‘Seventy seven!’
Yes, there is a victory in that.
‘They put me in an x-ray tube
and my lungs lit up like Christmas trees.
Asbestosis they said.’

We talk for a while
about the relative merits of
ketchup verses lemon and black pepper,
where he can find the bread rolls,
how he can still score a triple top.
He tells me his first wife died,
but not what of.

The homeless man is still
sleeping in the park,
his boots set neatly under a tree,
his dog snuggled in for safety,
and my husband’s walking towards me.
We stop.
Kiss.
Hello, goodbye and everything in between.

“Huh?” he says.

“Kammerer, Lucien Carr stabbed him and threw his body into the Hudson River.”

“So?”

“It was a big story. They wrote little stories and then they were involved in a big story. Carr got two years, Kerouac did some time, Burroughs went on to shoot his wife in the head.”

There’s a brief pause.

“And Valerie Solanis,” she says.

“Solanas,” he corrects.

“Was the Scum Manifesto published before or after she shot Warhol?”

“Dunno.”

She looks it up. She can’t tell. She thinks perhaps she should learn the first line by heart: ‘Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.’ What does that mean? Does it matter what it means? The most important thing, the defining thing, is that Solanas shot Warhol. This is what she’s remembered for. If she hadn’t shot Warhol, chances are the ‘Society for Cutting Up Men’ would’ve have remained, by and large, in total obscurity.

Obscure is good. Obscurity maybe not so good.

“So I have to kill someone, or at least try and kill someone,” she says.

He glances at her, the imprint of last night’s pillow still visible on his face.

“It has to be someone famous.”

He gets up and heads off towards the shower.

Or someone infamous, she thinks, or someone completely irrelevant. A cause célèbre. Perversity works. I could crucify someone, leave them on a hill outside of town, wait for the full horror of the situation to sink into the public consciousness. They like horror. They like things they can’t understand. They like to think it’s a complete aberration. Not children, though, no blonde haired, blue eyed little girls.

And then, when it comes to court, I’ll represent myself. They’ll ask me questions and I’ll give them answers, wild answers. I’ll ask even wilder questions. Oh yes. And they’ll want to believe me mad, seriously, because they need to have a big gap between what’s normal and what’s abnormal. They’ll love it, me in my box, the ultimate freak show, a zoological justice. Afterwards, once the judge has done the whole guilty bit and sentenced by ass off, it’ll take some time for the fascination to fade. They’ll have their own questions. Words such as ‘monstrous’ and ‘brutal’ will get bandied about. And they’ll want to KNOW, because people always want to know, it makes them feel safe if they think they know, so they’ll read my stuff, they’ll try to digest it, voluntarily choking on some aspects. They’ll have to choke. Things’ll have to stick in their throats. Insanity has to be swallowed like whiskey. And they’ll come across this, stupid little this, and they’ll wonder how a woman, sitting at her breakfast table, gulping down coffee, could ever come up with this.

‘The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.’

all those who have points of reference in their minds, i mean on a certain side of their heads, in well-localised areas of their brains, all those who are masters of language, all those for whom words have meanings, all those for whom words have meanings, all those for whom there exist higher levels of the soul and currents of thought, those who represent the spirit of the times, and who have named these currents of thoughts, i am thinking of their meticulous industry and of that mechanical creaking which their minds give off in all directions,
- are pigs.

those for whom certain words have meaning, and certain modes of being, those who are so precise, those for whom emotions can be classified and who quibble over some point of their hilarious classifications, those who still believe in ‘terms’, those who discuss the ranking ideologies of the age, those whom women discuss so intelligently and the women themselves who speak so well and discuss the currents of the age, those who still believe in an orientation of the mind, those who follow paths, who drop names, who recommend books,
- these are the worst pigs of all.

you are quite unnecessary!

i am thinking of bearded critics.

and i have already told you: no works, no language, no words, no mind, nothing.
nothing but a fine nerve meter.

a kind of incomprehensible stopping place in the mind, right in the middle of everything.

and do not expect me to name this everything, to tell you how many parts it is divided into, don’t expect me to tell you its weight, don’t think that you can get me to discuss it, and that while discussing i will forget myself and that i will thus being, without realising it, to THINK - and that it will be illuminated, that it will live, that it will deck itself in a multitude of words, all with well-polished meanings, all different, and able to express all the attitudes and nuances of a very sensitive and penetrating thought.

ah, these states that are never named, these eminent positions of the soul, ah, these intermissions of the mind, ah, these minuscule failures which are the nourishment of my hours, ah, this population teaming with facts - i always use the same words and really i don’t seem to advance very much in my thinking, but actually i am advancing more than you, bearded asses, pertinent pigs, masters of the false word, wrappers of portraits, serial writers, groundlings, cattle raiders, entomologists, plague of my speech.

i told you that i have lost my speech, but that is no reason for you to persist in speaking.

enough, i shall be understood in ten years by people who will be doing what you do today. then my geysers will be known, my ice floes will be seen, then secret of adulterating my poisons will have been learned, the games of my soul will be revealed.

then all my hairs, all my mental veins will be buried in lime, then my bestiary will be perceived and my mystique will have become a hat. then they will see the joints of the stones steam and arborescent bouquets of mental eyes will be crystallised in glossaries, then they will see stone meteors fall, then they will see ropes, then they will understand a geometry without space, they will learn what is meant by the configuration of the mind, and they will understand how i lost my mind.
then they will understand why my mind is not here, then they will see all language drift away, all minds run dry, all tongues shrivel up, human faces will flatten and deflate as if sucked in by hot-air vents, and this lubricating membrane will continue to float in the air, this lubricating caustic membrane, this double-thick, many-leveled membrane of infinite crevices, this melancholy and vitreous membrane, but so sensitive, so pertinent itself, so capable of multiplying, dividing turning with a flash of crevices, sense, drugs, penetrating and noxious irrigations,

then all this will be accepted.

and i shall have no further need to speak

antonin artaud from the nerve meter (1925)

###

i rather like the passage for its passion and pathos … and because it reminds me of why a wild heart. purely viewed as an insult tho, well it’s right fucking creative, anger can be a beautiful thing in the hands of a genius and, crucially, the destructive tendency can be artistically productive.

i love artaud. somewhere in him and his writing is an element of truth and profanity. maybe it’s because his madness, at times, left him completely unmediated. and i was thinking ‘to just speak, all bald like, without posturing’, well, there is something to be ad/mired about that, to refuse the audience, to say exactly what one believes to be true and hang the consequences, there’s a peculiar honour in such a stance, because art, real art, isn’t a corruption, it’s not the art of writing or the art of entertainment, it’s not a manipulation for the sake of an audience or to garner popularity, you can’t go put a bridle on it and break its back so you can ride the damn thing, art is fucking wild and untamed, it’s a shit stream of chaotices built from twigs and mud, who the hell cares about the right and wrong of it, it’s not there for judgment, it doesn’t exist for approval, and that’s my relief, how come i can breathe, the profanity of the whole thing, that’s what’s sacred about it.

there was this one time, way back, when i went on a demonstration calling for the shutdown of the bnp headquarters in london (the bnp are a far right fascist organisation). of course, the cops wouldn’t let us go towards the actual building, so ten thousand demonstrators were stuck in a dead end road. i was in class war then, an anarchist federation, and we had this thing, supposedly, about direct action (blow it up, burn it down, kick it til it breaks). i say supposedly, because that day i learned what a bunch of gobshites my fucking ‘comrades’ were. the cops attacked, full mounted charge, peeling back to reveal several phalanxes of riot cops, and they meant business … now, right behind me was the southall black sisters collective, hundreds of them, some of them with their kids. what did my comrades do? they jumped the wall and fucking ran. you can’t jump a wall with a pram. you’re fucking stuffed. you’re stood there like a target. and snaking down the side of the other wall was combat 18, the military wing of the bnp. i’ve never been so scared in all my life. i was actually crying. i couldn’t run. how do you run away and leave women and kids? but there was this guy, skinny dude, and he said we all had to link arms, that the horses wouldn’t charge if we linked arms, only problem was he was a commie, full red flag regalia, and anarchists don’t like commies. he was right tho, the horses don’t charge, they just push up against you. the feeling of a horse’s flanks, so much more weight and power behind their movement, and they stink, and they froth at the mouth, and they’re fucking huge. when the cops couldn’t break through with that tactic they changed their strategy and sent the riot boys in to crack a few skulls. the line held tho, we just kept passing the casualties back to the black sisters. there was blood everywhere. and noise, the noise was phenomenal. the stand off went on for about a couple of hours. despite the full weight of the state brought down to bear on us they couldn’t break through, linked arms you see, something so simple and so nakedly human, you stand with the man next to you, shoulder to shoulder. that’s what i learned that day. bollocks to the semantics, the apparent philosophy, fuck the mob, that beast without a brain, fuck the cops, they can’t do anything, fuck it all, it’s just about where you choose to stand, and you’ve always gotta make that choice, either positively or through an act of omission, and i’m always gonna stand next to the man with honour, the one who sticks his chin out, cos without that fucking insane bastard we’re all gonna get mashed. he don’t care what the odds are, all he’s gonna do is stand up for what he thinks, what he believes, and he’s never gonna be any different, because he knows it, right down in the heart of himself he knows who he is and why he is and no one’s gonna convince him of anything else.

like a hot tomato, ripe with embarrassment

(and lust),

head branch bent, too fragile, too guilty,

(smelling of chlorophyll),

constantly praying her skin would keep her in

until she could peel it off.

‘You reap what you sow,’ her mother said,

‘the fruits of your labour’.

Oh yes, the woman’s knees were grass stained.

And what knees! God made them for kneeling.

She never stood up straight,

broken backs and pip pip pip,

‘Please leave a message after the tone’.

Weight curved

(the fundus umbilicus),

heads hung like parliament;

eyes to the left and nose to the right

(Picasso would have been proud),

while she was tied to the middle ground,

a stake (in her future) for a spine.

‘The fruit never falls far,’ her mother said.

‘But I wanted to be a flower, a white rose

with wedding dress petals,’ she replied.

Her belly swelled. Her skin stretched.

Inside small seeds of desire waited for harvest rape

(to split, to tear, to rip).

If only she’d read Latin instead of romance.

If only the fullness of time wasn’t so empty.

Pout, bend, dab. Is that the faint trace of a moustache Miranda? Perhaps you should get it waxed or bleached or electrified. There. See? Some of your powder is not entirely in contact with your skin. Moving swiftly on to lavender scented hand lotion while ignoring what looks like an age spot. You really should wear rubber gloves, Miranda, especially when doing the washing up.

But this is not part of the illusion, because once on stage, under the lights, Miranda shines brighter than any star, and domesticity has no place in fantasy, at least not at the Catfish Club. The audience love her. They know her. They own her. She has been treading these boards every night for the past six years. Six years! Day in, day out, through thick and thin. She has become quite an institution, brick built and municipal.

Of course they applaud, some insist on standing and whistling – even Winona Ryder has to deal with such coarse behaviour; but no one ever brings flowers to Miranda’s dressing room, Miranda’s small, drab dressing room, where she sits, on a chair borrowed from the main floor, swabbing the make-up off her face after yet another show, with man sized tissues in her man sized hands.