Excerpts from “Enervation”


I can’t remember the last time I felt this good. 

I feel almost great.

Just, unbelievable.

Was it this morning? 

It was yesterday. 

My memory’s shot.

But that’s part of it.

I was thirteen. 

It took me twenty minutes.

Fifty minutes. 

Eighty minutes is key. 

It takes four hours to be content.

Thirteen years to feel this good.

And I’m twenty-five.

I’m seventeen.

I’m twice that.

My own double.

Nearly outside myself.

A mirror image.

Thirty-seven, thirty-eight.

I could keep going. 

Easy.

It’s daylight.

Wait, no.

It’s evening. 

Time's really passed.

Since I moved my hand.

To open the curtain.

And see the light of dawn.

Sharp, dappling cascades of it.

Crawl up the side of my window. 

And hit me in the face. 

Before returning my attention.

To this aching dilemma. 

To draft this new version of myself.

You could say.

Churn myself out.

One stroke at a time.

By adding things. 

Like description. 

Or deleting things.

Making it all. 

Empty either way.

Haha.

With every huff. 


* * *


The trick is knowing.

It doesn’t have to end.

To anticipate the slip.

Inevitably made.

Into the pit.

Of this ongoing sentence.

Well in advance. 

Of ever lying down.

To get it out. 

Long before this video. 

Which tells me. 

So sweetly. 

“The only thing to do is simply continue.”

Starts to make the possibility.

Of ending. 

An open question.

Ever begins.

Before it counts. 

You down.

With bitter insults.

Five.

“Can you do it?”

Four.

“Do you see?”

Three. 

“Or are you going to cum?” 

Two.

“Once again.”

As if it knew. 

What was wanted.

Was for pleasure.

To gather enough.

For time to crumble.

Between my fingers. 

And turn life to dust.

So gone that one feels

More or less.

The way one is told

That they ought to.

Which I do.


* * *


I’m as open to failure. 

as Bresson says a film is. 

If you just change its place.

A thing that has failed.

Can become anything else. 

It is the flattest of gestures.

The dullest ones you make.

That have the most life. 

The heart of the heart.

Of the matter.

Has nothing to do with bodies. 

You see.

But the movement keeping them.

From becoming part of the background. 

They are arranged against.

And the thousands.

Of unforeseeable sensations.

That follow. 

Even in the most minor movement.

He finds “things underlying.”

As when my wrists coil inward. 

To face my forearms.

Because blood has started to course. 

Between my temples. 

Or the tips of my toes start to flex.

Into the worn ends of my tube socks.

As a response to hearing it. 

Pound.

Or drool peters out my mouth. 

Down either side.

Because the sloshing has muted my mind. 

Quite fully.

Or a smile starts to brim.

The way it comes on.

The face of a baby. 

If someone presses its nose. 

Like the surface of like a button.

When my room starts to spin.

Or hardens into a prism.

My cluster having sucked in my peripheries.

Into its beaten-with-use center.

Such that I am reminded.

To move it once again.

Backwards and forwards. 

Careful not to break it off.

Not entirely. 

“Nothing too much,” Bresson says.

“Nothing deficient.”

And become one with everything. 

I am feeling. 

For ten minutes.

Maybe one hour.

Ideally eight.

However briefly I can.

Become subsumed enough.

Into the sweet secret of the universe.

To write this down.