Picking Up Items and Putting Them Back. Lena, Mark, an Unnamable Lover, and an Unknown Listener.

>>>>>2005.

Lena asks her roommate if he can stay the night somewhere else.

"I have plans here tonight," she says.

Lena's roommate is sad but obedient. He secretly records the sounds that drift from Lena's bedroom walls and sells them to a stranger on the internet. The stranger pays two-hundred dollars for each hour of audio. Sometimes the roommate gets excited by the audio but he is a man of god goddammit and he must save himself for a moral whore. Ten percent of each two-hundred dollar hour goes to the poor, he tells himself goddammit. 

Tonight is a six-hundred dollar night. Tonight will surely be symphonic. Lena has already tossed the lingerie she plans to wear over the armchair in the hallway. It is close to the color of her skin, which makes it very light and almost transparent. The roommate does not mind Lena's obvious promiscuity but wishes she would wear red sometimes. She would look goddamn better in red, he thought. 

The roommate enters Lena's room while Lena is  showering. He walks to her nightstand and places something underneath it. It is a tiny device that can record three hours of audio before having to be recharged in a wall outlet. The roommate sets the device to begin recording at 10 PM. It is 8:40 now.

The roommate is distracted by a piece of jewelry Lena has left on her nightstand, a single bone-shaped earring. It doesn't look like anything she would wear. The roommate picks up the earring and finds it quite heavy. 

"It's not for your ear."

Lena's roommate turns around. Lena has been watching him but there is no way to know for how long unless he asks her.

"How long have you been watching?"

"Nine seconds," she says. "Are you looking for something?"

Lena walks over to her roommate and he notices that she has managed to get into the skin-colored lingerie between the bathroom and her bedroom. She smells like her own cum because she always masturbates in the shower, but the roommate thinks Lena smells like shampoo.

"Just checking if you have any dishes in here before I run the washer. I saw the earring on your table."

Lena smiles. "It's for your tongue."

The roommate blushes in revulsion. He sets the ring back on Lena's nightstand. "I thought it looked weird," he says. 

"That's because - " Lena takes the ring off the nightstand "- you are used to seeing pairs." She opens her mouth and pushes the ring through an invisible hole in the center of her tongue. "Now get out of here Mark. I am barely dressed."

Mark leaves the room and doesn't run the dishwasher and leaves the house and doesn't lock the front door. He will stay at his girlfriend's tonight, even though he still hasn't been able to explain to her why he lives with such a crude woman. But his girlfriend loves the one-hundred-and-eighty dollar shoes he buys her so she asks few questions except "how ever did you afford these?" She will then give him a bad handjob. While she does it, Mark closes his eyes and pictures his girlfriend in red lingerie. Unfortunately she only wears white underwear. It reminds Mark too much of Lena.

Lena is polished when her lover arrives. It is 9:31.

Her lover motions to cup her breast after they have had a glass of wine. He squeezes it and likes how it is the perfect size for his hand.

"You're filthy," she tells him, but thrusts her chest forward and deeper into his grip. Her lover gets on his knees and lifts up her slip to kiss her stomach. The position puts him eye-level with Lena's desk a few feet away. It distracts him.

Her lover picks up several pieces of red-stained paper from the desk. "Your writing is covered in blood."

"It's only wine. I spilled it accidentally."

The lover holds the paper close to his face. The blue inky words bleed into the stained paper. A string of them he can make out: "the satisfied cunt will suffer my trials."

"You're going to kill one of your characters," he says. "A girl."

Lena takes the paper from her lover and replaces it on her desk. "No. She just needed to get dirty. But she'll be alright. You, on the other hand, have the opposite problem. You are filthy."

Lena walks to her bathroom and turns on the shower. "Come here and take off all of your clothes," she instructs. "I am going to watch you clean yourself." 

The shower is clear glass with sliding doors. Lena's lover slides one of them aside and steps in. He begins washing his hair and the shape his arms make when they are above his head does something strange to Lena. She sits on the sink that faces the shower. She draws one leg up to rest her foot on the sink and lets the other dangle. 

Lena begins to touch herself and when her lover notices what she is doing he also reaches for himself. For several minutes they refuse to meet the other's eyes, suspending the illusion for as long as possible that neither knows the other is watching. 

"Get over here," he says finally.

Lena obeys, not bothering to remove her slip. When wet it clings to her body like another skin, so when her lover puts his hand underneath it he feels like he is penetrating her already.

He attempts to pin her back against the narrow wall of the shower. He wants to fuck her standing. but the wall is wet and she slides down a little when her feet lift from the ground. As he pushes harder she slides further down. With her left hand Lena grabs the top of the sliding glass door and distributes her body unequally. She positions her right foot on the soap ledge and her symmetry is recovered. Now her lover is able to fuck her harder.

He does and when she is about to come, Lena's foot becomes dislodged from the soap ledge. A tremendous pressure is suddenly applied to the glass door Lena clings to. Her lover thrusts forward to deliver the concluding orgiastic movement. Lena screams, the glass door shatters, and the two lovers fall out of the shower onto the bathroom floor, still connected to each other and now also connected to several hundred shards of glass that beat them to the ground. 

Lena and her lover quickly survey their new surroundings. Then their eyes meet, both pairs still raw with desire from orgasm. The lover's body, covered in blood and glass, starts to shake with laughter. Lena, equally bloody, equally glass-covered, is equally amused. Lena and her lover cling to one another, closer than any two humans have ever been before, two laughing humans fucking on a pile of broken glass while their blood clots and skin breaks.

"I think about you all the time Lena," he says. 

Lena stands up and brushes bits of glass away from her body. Her slip is torn but nothing is punctured. 

"We're lucky to be alive," she says. Lena pulls off her slips and leaves it in the sink. A combination of water and blood coats her skin. Her lover has never seen anything so arousing. 

"Let's go to bed," he suggests. 

Lena nods and helps her lover off the ground. The pair enter Lena's bedroom and Lena begins to pull tiny pieces of glass out of her lover's skin. They take turns digging out little pieces from flesh and placing them in a coffee mug. With every freed shard comes a gasp of relief. When they are emptied of glass, Lena's lover puts two fingers inside her and she moans at the unexpected sensation of being filled. 

Lena's lover is happy and surprised with how vocal Lena is tonight. She tells him she masturbates to him all the time and orders him to come on different parts of her body. She is louder than usual and he responds proportionately. When he becomes too exhausted to continue, Lena waits for her lover to fall asleep and then cleans his wounds with alcohol. She reaches under her nightstand and takes out the audio-recording device. 

"I miss you," she says into it. 

Lena shuts the device off and leaves it under the nightstand for her roommate to retrieve in the morning. It is 12:57 AM.

>>>>>

The Next Chapter of Lena: Confession

aren't you getting tired of seeing no updates? yet you return, day after day.


depression feels like desperation, and I refuse to submit a dishonest post.


Lena: Return.






Lena walks back to a place she has been before. A scaled-down Babel pierced the sky. A sound came out of the rip - bells. A woman in an ugly hat walked out. The church.


Entering the confessional, Lena walks back again to a place she has been before. 


"When was the date of your last confession?" the virgin asks her.


"Age fourteen. A requirement before Confirmation."


"And how many years do you have now?"


"Twenty-Four. So ten. Ten years since my last confession."


The virgin says nothing. Lena decides this silence is the least offensive prompt of all possible prompts which are directed as instigating one's admission of vulnerabilities.


"My first sin is that, when I was younger and forced to participate in this sacrament, I made up sins," Lena says. "I never felt as if I had done anything wrong."


"And now, you feel you have done wrong?"


"No, not really."


The virgin says nothing, and then says, "Why don't we continue anyway?"


"Why not I suppose. My second sin is not believing in God."


The virgin automatically responds, "Mother Theresa was plagued with doubt until the day she died. She wrote of it every night in her journals."


"I guess I don't see what that has to do with me, because I don't give a fuck if God exists or not. I write about interesting things in my journal."


The virgin clears his virginal throat. He reswallows the virginal mucus he has just worked so hard to dislodge, virginally. "Perhaps confession is not the right step for you at this moment."


"Jesus man. I'm getting there. I'm just fucking around right now."


"So you do have something to confess which burdens your soul?"


"No, but one of my characters does. Do you mind if I read a part of her confession to you?"


"I'm not sure I understand." Virgin clears his dumb virgin throat again. 


Lena clears her own de-virginized throat. "Her name is Aletea. She is conflicted right now because she is having an affair with her cousin. They played the 'show me' game when they were young, and now, their paths have mysteriously intersected again many years later. Their attraction is magnetic and natural and mutual. Yet of course it is wrong."


"Is this you? Are you talking about you?"


"No, Father. This is Aletea. She is one of my characters. From my journals."


"Ah - I think - "


"Anyway Father, may I please read you her confession? She is quite a devoted Catholic and I need to know what penance you would give her. For contextual accuracy."


"Er, alright then."


Lena opens her purse and removes a small red notebook from one of its compartments. She turns to page 17 and begins reading. Slowly.


"When he finally touched me it was how I remembered touch felt. It was bare sex, elementary sex. Everything else has since him, a footnote. Like I tapped into the center of a system. Its maxims. Its gears. At one point I said, as he was cautiously reacquainting himself with me, I said, in a last attempt to salvage my ethical self, to squander his carnal appetite, I said, 'Don't do this to yourself.' He said, 'But I'm doing it to you.' And god. I just fucking let him."


"Is that it?" the virgin asks after a few moments of dead air.


"Yes. What are the damages?"


The virgin merely swallows. "15 each Lord's Prayer and Hail Mary."


"Is that really it?"


"And a tremendous effort to change."


Lena frowns. "But if she changes the plot will be ruined. I have many more pages after 17."


"Well, then I guess she's not really sorry."


Lena ponders this a moment. 


"I guess you're right."

stench. hits.

>>>>>

Your

your strange devotions –

Your strange devotions accelerate

Your strange devotions accelerate, then regulate

my prose,

Aware of your presence, your eyes lessen how I

demonstrate.

A portrait of Lena, she embodies your once-lover,

Who loves another, we love each other. We live

Together, we inhabit an interesting intersection

That compromises in order:

1.)    to mimic

2.)    to play

3.)    too forward

4.)    “touché”

5.)    to help-see, to add-a-layer

6.)    of her, to us

I won’t say anything, but I must.

But I will say this one thing, until I learn to trust:

>>>>

fantasticwhore

>>>


or, "The Opposite is Equally True: Lena the 5th"



Lena is not invited to the wedding of her old friend, the virgin bride.

"Why not?" she wonders. She telephones a mutual friend.

"The bride considers your presence a moral detriment, given your past of prostitution and whoredom."

"That answers that," Lena says. She hangs up and takes out a piece of paper. She begins to write the virgin bride a letter. Lena finishes the letter and reads over it before sealing it in an envelope the same pink shade as her cunt.


My lovers and I wait seven hours to sleep together and two years to say "I love you." 


Will you still love him, virgin bride, even after you've had two years to satisfy your deepest perversions of hedonism? The "love" you felt in reality is your bubbling repression of carnal desire. My retroactive advice to you, careless tosser of sacrosanct words, is to not inhibit your desire. Do not let a ubiquitous appetite determine the rarest phenomena of human existence. In popular culture the two are often confused, so I do not blame your for your common misunderstanding of Love.   


Do not practice abstitence. At all costs, do not practice abstinence. 


Lena is satisfied with the letter. She licks the edges of the envelope and presses its folds together. She walks to the mailbox and fills it with her letter. She returns inside to an empty bed.

>>>

Three Verse Love Poem / Three Choruses

>>>
this entry doubles as a love poem and a review of a Flying Lotus track. You'll figure it out.

0:01 - 1:00     the sound of the inside of my body when I think about you,
1:00 - 1:48     is the best thing you will hear this week,
1:49 - 2:40     unless of course, you can listen to your own childhood.

Love Letters

An Ode: to my favorite composition form (rare bird): the Gut Runneth Over

The Love Letter


A father's son becomes her mother's daughter. When
that happens, so does love. So does an earring. So
does a ringing. So does she expel lists, so stops being
"therefore" and is just just. She could be less honest.
She could tell less but who ever falls out of love. She
could jest, she could bless her past and anoint the future
with hope for the rest. But she is her father's son and
a mother's song. She explains things with longer toes
and lovelier bows. An aesthete, she mourns for her
past and the past of present lovers. And anoint? With
hope no, with lovelier bows, with longer toes. The
woman is a rose is a rose is a rose.

To the love a witness both to your sorrowful tears and tremendous orgasm:



To the love far away, in the arms of another, alone, with pitiful company, dead or alive:



To the love abandoned by the misfortunes of mental health, misunderstanding, and money:



To the love who plays your body like a violin, but your mind is just like a drum machine:



To the eternal platonic love of longing and semi-consequential loss: 



To the love that looked better on screen than in writing:



To All of your lovers: a word.

gentleLena pt.II: the autobiography

gentleLena pt. I

* * *

Have I ever loved one? Lena thought once. She counted her lovers on  fingers and toes (a few times over.)

Her first lover she most certainly had loved. He was from down the street, not across the ocean.

Yes, I must have loved him I thought. Lena thought this too. I prefer dark hair and he had dark hair. This must be because of his inital influence on my sexual appetite. Such a realization inspired Lena to graph a multi-variable analysis of her lovers.

I must include all of the most important characteristics, I thought. Lena thought this also. She could deduce her true love from statistical pattern. This all made perfect sense to Lena and to me as well.

Lena wrote all of the most important and favorite features of her lovers. Here is her list.

1. agreeable fetishes

(some of Lena's fetishes narcissism and voyerism. She could only feel pleasure by witnessing pleasure. This is why she would do anything to catch a man touching himself.)

2. ability to make her cum

(Lena only came for a partner when it was deserved. Many men do not deserve to see a woman in such an ecstatic state; many women are fools for revealing themselves too soon. By principle Lena had never fabricated an orgasm.)

3. the width of their cock 

(Lena had realized long ago that length mattered little in comparison with this vital feature of the male sex organ. Coincidentally, she learned from a Chilean lover that a woman could, with startling accuracy, estimate the abilities of this organ by the shape of its owners' nose.)

4. a favorite flower

(Her mother had been a florist. A man with an eye for beautiful things could never be faithful but always be trusted.)

5. time spent thinking about them after, during, and before.

(This was difficult, but because Lena lived in her mind as well as her body she had to think about it. Some lovers, she hardly recalled how they felt but she enjoyed to fantasize about them, imposing her own version of the reality that occurred. Others were fantastic but at once forgettable. Lena was looking for a holistic mind-dweller.)

Documentation took much longer than Lena anticipated. She delayed the final result by composing many silly schoolgirl side-competitions, such as softest-to-hardest and fattest-to-thinnest. Finally she tallied the results.

By god, this cannot be, Lena thought. I am in love with Umberto Eco.

another gentleLena

There once was a woman who traveled the world.

However, her adventures abroad afforded her neither sightsee nor souvineer; the mementos of her journeys were all in her mind and her skin.

As a child the woman traveled in books. Away from the sometimes seasons of her rural surroundings she escaped to and from the Occident. She was alone, the omniscient puppeteer to her self-built planet.

Thus, in spite of her solitude, or perhaps because of it, her life was exceedingly full.

As the child grew (her name was Lena), she grew tall and also away from books and into sound. She had read the world and now wanted to hear it. She knew what all of the cities sounded like. She knew what music the people who lived in them made love to.

Lena wanted to make love to the world now. She longed to experience the musical cities but was afraid to leave her own. She felt alone.

Thus, in spite of her solitude, or perhaps because of it, her life was exceedingly dull.

Lena decided to make love to the world then. She made herself beautiful. She looked exotic even though she wasn't. Finding lovers was easy for her. She knew them all already.

Her lovers were from all different places but always artists. She did not want to be an artist. She wanted to love an artist. She took a job at a gallery where she could always be displayed, a living work of art in striped dresses and heeled boots.

One lover was from Italy. He sent her a bouquet of roses every month. She let them die but let him come to her. He liked knee socks. Lena let him put them on her only to take them off.

"Lena," he said. "I want you to marry me."

But Lena hadn't traveled enough.

Another lover was from Russia. Lena pined for him like she had pined for no other. Thinking of his blue eyes made her wet. She got the chills. They followed him from Moscow, he said. The cold called. She never saw him again.

Lena took her Swede lover for a swim in a lake. He dared her to take off her underwear. She held them in her hand above the water and he grabbed them from her. He lost them and she was lost to him and she had to walk back to her house with no panties on under her skirt. He teased her about that. He put his hand under her skirt as they walked and they had to stop walking.

Lena loved each new lover differently. They were all special to her. She became a woman well-traveled. By her mid-20s she had gotten to all of the continents except one, and most continents more than once. She had a frenchman with beautiful hands and an Egyptian who offered to do her taxes. She invited a German to her bed and a Greek into the bathroom at a bar.

Lena's friends learned about the world from airplanes and eating. Lena learned only with her sex. Because she experienced the world so intimately she took the most intimate secrets of the world into her body. Her body showed that. Every day a new man asked her where she was from.

"Are you French?" the cashier said.

"Are you Polish?" the friend-of-a-friend said.

"Where are you from?" they all asked.

Nowhere she replied.

After seven years of this Lena started to confuse Beijing and Budapest. The scents of her lovers became one odiferous mess. She longed to belong to one place for she was Nowhere. Where is my home? she thought. I will make one of these lovers my home. I will settle into one of them.

Lena tried to settle into one but she could never stay in place. Some glacier or the ocean in floated on always called her away. She tried to ignore their calls but that only made everyone more passionate for the gentle Lena.

She stopped sleeping and only ate things that grew on trees. She disappeared into headphones and masturbated indefinitely to a perfect body composed of all her lovers.

She longed to stay even though she had really always stayed. Like a stray dog Lena wandered the globe underneath her bedsheets, which when touched revealed the perpetual wet of the world.

nondeterministic algorithm

i'm waiting for the day

patience ascended.
"you'll need it" she said
"to mend aheart asunder."

"mend" i said. "not him.
wounds aren't covered in
fatuation and months."

"you wish him to pine?
you leave him to dogs?
you will expose him to wind

and subject him to cold?"
"no patience i still need you
around. but for mending no

he knows to heal he helps
himself. to feel, i wish
us to be by ourselves."

"darling" she mused "you
are honest and sad. some
things aren't easy. why

add an obstacle?" "i am
serious" i said "when i
said, when i sent him."

Al, Free of Re-: a Sponse

(Considering that pre contains mostly re, it does Work to Create a linear fantasy.)

***

oh, if films were as Plays,
the spectator would never
Tire of film's fixed Position.
the stage Petitions for Vision
afresh; film Treats a
Lapse between Presentations
as non-existent!

i Place this thought in space
not Marked with Wire
or Cord; space Stored in hearts
hardened to obtain:

again, lover.
once more, Volver.
as in the past we
Possess each other
but now we Mind our
Cycles, they hover
like Births Pressed
back for Cover.

you're my Ally, brother.
Construct your fantasy
of Verb and Fuel
your Quest, your Mission
with my contrast, with my 
Cognition.

Eadweard Muybridge
Movement of the hand, drawing a circle
1887

"crossing several forbidden boundaries"

either

n oon between a plethor a
i end in a to arrive at b
h ind bowie john p lurk s
i nstictive trespass to o
l ate for turning o wel l
i guess i misunderstood u
s milling there overlos t
 m onastery debris my love.

or?

constellations

note: what if truth is a mosaic, not a linear progression? some serious labels for this one.

consulting constellations:

imposed lattice of lights.

immobile monoliths, pin

points of ancient shine.

our telescopic origins. 

unescorted, a singular

dot.

invisible plots between

stars affixed with what.

directed bloodjets, one

way tickets. a rocket to

heaven. pocketing mars

in venusgreen socket.

trace aquarius. chart out

gemini. erect pretend

bridges to signify lines.

separate stars and their

imagined connection. a

rocket up to heaven. we

demand one dimension

and are given eleven.

the heart nebula

theophany

this poem is about the boy who broke my heart.








watching the yard from my backdoor
i noticed my gardenia had
yellowed. flicking my cigarette
to a pile nearby i stepped
closer for a better look. looking
at the base i saw a weed in
the pot. touching the withered
petals i became sad. feeling
desperate i yanked the weed from
the soil.

unfortunately the roots of both had gotten tangled underground.
due to my neglect and preoccupation with theophany.
i held the weed in my hand and the gardenia dangled from its roots.
some dirt got on my shoe.

reacting intuitively i ripped the
plants apart. gasping with surprise
i heard some organs crunch. holding
back tears i realized my gardenia
had died. dropping the plants on the
ground i wiped my hands of debris. seeing
her damaged i went back inside. wanting
to simplify my life i decided to
leave her out there.

unfortunately her death robbed me of my only ally.
i didn't realize it at the time.
i will join her again someday in dust and mud.
my gardenia.
and i. 

pure and white petals like

windmills on warm

june nights

bugs are biting my skin but

i remember you still felt nice.

Jealousy Barn

primal or maternal?
Interrogation devices thickly-buttered with laughs
fat and oozing laughs.
processed laughs.

The milking of Truth:
-a demanding turn here-
-a regretting turn there-
Churning until the mixture reaches desired viscosity.

Too clarified. Not like breasts dripping desire,
primal, maternal, off-yellow.
Like the thirsting shiver in a barn.
Like nursing courage soft and warm.

Prose on Logic/A Love Letter

Academic trending of formal logic classes offered in 2008 reference William of Ockham in theoretical execution:

“the simplest solution
is the best solution”

Formal logic parallels geometry in structure and chemistry in method; the former supplies a blueprint of verification while the latter insists success by memorization. Thus, a complete mastery of formal logic is achieved not only by practicing certain rules, but through an elegant navigation and appreciation of their workable environment.

Arguments verified “reductio ad absurdum” (reduction to the absurd) challenge the aforementioned tenets by reducing formal logic to a game of elimination. In lieu of proof by axiom manipulation, reductio ad absurdum proofs seek not to justify a particular solution but to dismantle and negate every other possible solution. An assumption is made, and the logician presents absolutely no evidence of this assumption’s logical coherency except that all alternative solutions are ridiculous.

Proof by reductio ad absurdum is relatively simple to learn. In contrast to classic logical methodology, an adherent to this devastatingly existential strategy needs not even understand why or how their proof works.

The pleasantries of such a streamlined approach sour rapidly. At their ripest, Kelley receives an “A” in logic class, albeit with a residual sentiment of anger; somehow, her philosophical sharpness has been dulled by overreliance on efficiency and underestimation of a 21 year-old woman’s intellectual gauge.

Yet the most disastrous outcome of engaging formal logic reductio ad absurdum begins when pen-and-paper critical thinking forges a transposition into worlds outside textbook exercise. A variety of factors may or may not contribute mechanically or willfully to its mental embroidery – a notoriously pragmatic heritage, an utter absence of celestial declaration, a self-destructive neurosis, my lovers and the death of my loves.

I am in the process of eliminating each philosophical system, every theory of existence, all ethical frameworks and, most tragically, the concept of beauty in its entirety. The longer I live the more negated life becomes. Inconsistencies, fallacies, mistakes and regrets, they atonally nuance my assertion

“x is true”

and they do this in such a manner as to invade and permeate every aspect of thought – people and positions, to me the difference is inconsequential if it exists at all.

I don’t need to answer why this destructive proclivity guides my life or how I even initiated the aggressive quest for complete and total emptiness. My nihilism necessitates no further validation beyond capability.




Anomalies in systems, their presence, it warrants continuing existence.





(my sole relief is poetry.

my sole reliever is the poet.

He’d be
the boy who listens to my fingers speak.)

Non-Poem 2

Devil, my deal with you gave me everything I want and nothing I deserve. But externalities have infiltrated our relationship and I remember why celibacy at one point seemed so appealing. How to navigate this. Think girl think. Your rationality has never succumbed to your emotions. Make your misogynist philosophy idols proud. Your moves logically sound but humanity might have a problem. Logic flying in the face of lotus.

Move away in a couple a months. The southern sun will dry up my wet suggestions.

Poems to My Lovers/Here Are Four I Fuck A Lot

"The Word Love/Tender Button's Revelation"

I don't <3>

"The Word It"

Not what you said but how you said
Paul said: why don't we do
Did you do
What is
Who is
How is
that the only word left unqualified,
extendable, adaptable, and versatile
possesses nothing
that says anything
about It.

"The Word Like"

So I was similar to, sad, because he was all in the vein of, "we need time apart." Reminiscent of, can you believe it? It's akin to getting slapped in, something comparable to, the face. Plus, nearly identically, he isn't even, you know, parallel with cute.

"The Word Fuck"

Fuck you.
Fuck you sincerely. I don't need any
enigmatic
esoteric
cryptic
pedantic prose to make you understand
how fucking
perfect
the word fuck
says everything.