Sleep

Sleep, sleep, sleep, because there is no waking up. Sleep to the end of death land and let the cats squirm on your shoulders. With the picture of your grandfathers hanging above your head. Like a sword in a tale. Like a cloud in your dream.

image: Roger Ballen

Seeking

Nora was looking at the mirror,

Her two daughters sewing in the porch.

When the wind shook the house

and the roots of the apricot trees,

Bringing wild smells of the black silence

that used to exist under that roof,

Long before any man set his foot in,

Nora saw her animal eyes in the glass.

                                        

The sound of the dry leaves rushed her breath

like the lost god  of her deep darkness

in the room of  solid memories

“Lock the windows’’ she shouted

And her daughters ran, ran like jumping little spiders.

image: From the film La Petite (Louis Malle)

The crazy Ivan

A cold morning I saw the tree of life  hanging from my ceiling

With all the holes of  its black darkness

 ‘’I am Ivan, the Dancing Monk of the Pearl rooms’’ I thought.

My wise blood  sails  the seven seas  and  carries  the seven worlds.

Maybe I am a cat with seven souls’’

I must not reveal that I left the tree where I found it

But that’s what I did. Because I am Ivan the Dancing Monk.

image: Anthony Goicolea

I am a tunnel ( The clockwork boxes 12 and last one)

I had the tormenting and freaking awareness of this incessant trip under the ground. Someone was running after me all the time trying to scare me with his warm, eternal song, inside the  depths of the tunnels. I wanted to force myself to stay awake and search for the security of a loud babbling voice, a voice that would be able by itself, like a strong spear, to keep away from me all my hunters and much more, my own desire to surrender myself to them.

That’s why I have always been afraid of the sound of subway trains and at the same time I have been so much attracted by their underground moaning that I am trembling with anticipation every time a train is approaching the boarding platform. The doors which close and open like the petals of a carnivore plant, waiting for their victims , the soft humming noises of people walking  and running, the feeling of certainty that the earth surface is a floating island above my head, the faces of the engine drivers who are changing shifts…Faces without any expression, with a gaze of superiority as if they have just returned from a palace ball on a royal ship..And those huge window panes that are like transparent mirrors of my multiple idols…But yes I am  certain. The net of the big sleep, of the eternal lethargy, is becoming larger and larger behind my feet and if it manages to grab me, it will keep me wandering in its tunnels for ever.. A possibility,  that I haven’t decided yet if it’s attractive or repulsive. What if I decided to make the tunnels net, the junctions of its webs, be my real home? I should search carefully for its most secret corners and learn how the webs are construced. Then I would be able to construct  my own webs. What a strange thing it would be to proceed without knowing anything but having  the eternal knowledge of all the worlds inside my chest. This kind of knowledge had led me safe and sound in front of the door I had found underground. That day I had come across the spot of the black dust.

I am still in the network. I have been bought by thousands of people and I have bought thousands of  them too. I cannot remember their faces  at all and I am sure that no one remembers mine. The sound of the huge machine which operated like a strap of living exhibits,  has faded into a distant past. After all it was not a special sound, just a sound that I can forget very easily even if it tormented my ears for long. As they all used to say, I was a rather indifferent exhibit, too much ordinary for most of them, slightly necessary for some others, completely indifferent to others. But I can also say, after all this time, that everyone was indifferent to me. Yes, there were some human exhibits who attracted my attention for some seconds but that was all. Now I can buy and sell anyone I want. I don’t even have to enter the auction room. I have become a specialist. However, the most exciting thing is that I can be sold to anyone who wants to buy me, without having to make any bargain.You know, the truth is that I am a secret tunnel. If you approach me you will listen to my underground voices and the creaking wood of my columns.

image: Andreas Feininger 

The melancholy of the voice (The clockwork boxes 11)

There will always be someone in the train that will be talking loudly without any stop. He will be narrating events that marked his life, he may be  narrating what happened during  his  present busy day, he may also be stating outright and straightly how he hates deeply certain racial groups or how much he gets irritated by a mosquito drowning in his cup of coffee. His face will be colored by the matchful, each time, expressions, he will also be coloring his voice tone with the right percentage of detest or with the right amount of enthusiasm.  He will be interrupting the other person talking with him and he will make sure that  his voice can be heard even into the next compartment.

Every time that I was travelling with such a co-passenger, I used to become indignant, to grimace secretly and look at his face profile, over my glasses. I observed  how he was sitting and crossing his legs and I used  to wish the sudden and sweeping opening of a huge hole on the train roof, a hole over his head that would literally suck him out. Him and only him, selectively, like a giant vacuum cleaner. But I was too naïve. And as a naïve, I couldn’t realise the fact of his necessary presence in my compartment..Ah..yes..right now, a man dressed in beige clothes entered the compartment just now, having a handbag across his chest. He is standing next to me, in the aisle, among the rows of seats, indecisive to where he should sit, which seat is more comfortable for him, which window can blow the air more affectionately on his face. I never trusted people in beige clothes. I know that this is completely irrational and that this irrational detest cannot be based on any logic. It’s just a stupid detest, but I cannot resist to this inner impulse which, every time a person dressed totally in beige comes into my sight, yells in my ear : “look, a stupid, a stupid, a stupid!”

But I am getting too far from what I want to say. So..I was saying that being a naïve person made me turn a blind eye on the importance of such a passenger. Or it might have never crossed my mind. How indispensable he was, how comforting his babbling was, how melodic his rudely loud voice used to be, as we, the other passengers, were sitting inside the tummy of the giant serpent, half-sleeping, in a state of flight between the borders of  normal breathing rhythm and the rhythm of a long sleep. Our head was touching the window glass hesitantly every time the train was entering the tunnels whistling, we were getting blind from the multiple reflections of ourselves on the glass panes, listening to the deep dull singing of the engine drive, but without daring to speak about this singing. Each one of us was sure that he was the only one who could hear that singing and that no one else could hear it. It’s a thought that makes the skin shiver wildly. I was clutching my bag tightly onto my stomach, pretending that I hadn’t understood anything, I was looking at my watch, the same watch that I had  looked at, five minutes ago, or I was observing insistently the distant faces of the passengers sitting opposite to me, trying to detect on them the same silent agony I was feeling.. For that song…A song tangled with the rails, coming from the scratching metal sound, mixed with the timid sounds of a resonant male voice which seemed to have been dwelling inside those tunnels since ever.

 A voice that through its melancholy was twisting around my neck like a spider web, knitting slowly and elegantly its nets and squeezing me softly as if it was the lullaby of an imminent death, a death trying to meet me in every shaking bent of the rails, in every loud whistle of the engine, but it kept staying behind, like a delayed passenger who runs breathless on the platform with his validated ticket, buried in his pocket. 

image: International Surrealist Exhibition in London, attended by Miro (11 June 1936). In image: Diana Brinton-Lee, Salvador Dalí (in diving suit), Rupert Lee, Paul Éluard, Nusch Éluard, ELT Mesens 

The masturbation (The clockwork boxes 10)

Hieronymus Bosch

My rave was so big that I didn’t care for anything. I could thrust me penis even in the ear of my stupid owner who was looking at it with his eyes bulging with surprise, trying to understand why I was waving it left and right, moaning and groaning. And for one thing he wasn’t able to understand what I was asking him to do. He seemed completely shocked.

«Sell me! Sell me the fucking hell!»

I pulled his lapels violently and I was almost about to choke him. His face turned blue and he started coughing in an attempt to inhale some air again. Oh my God..What an idiot! How stupid! My body was sweating so much that I couldn’t stand it, I had to get rid of some of my clothes and I did it immediately, leaving myself naked from the waist above. My penis was still erected, driving me crazy. And these three women kept on laughing more and more lustfully. It seemed that the sight of my hard as iron penis had turned them on for good. Their tongues had already blown up like mine. Genuine, chubby, calf tongues. How could I grab one of them without paying anything? Could I do such a thing? I did my last desperate move. I left my owner and dashed myself onto them, trying to pull them towards me by force. Immediately a kind of plastic transparent pane was activated between me and all the human merchandises, or it had already been there without me having noticed it. No, it was impossible..I couldn’t grab any of them. My desperation grew bigger and my penis harder. How could I calm it down? I started stroking it, in the way I would stroke an angry friend to appease his anger, but it couldn’t calm, on the contrary on every stroking it became tenser and tenser full of its juices.

My body was convulsing violently from the erotic spasms I was giving to myself. My nipples were hard and I couldn’t hold myself from not caressing them too. I was caressing every point of my body. I lay on the floor, being in a blissful trance that had overwhelmed every inch of my flesh, so I started masturbating. I was more stimulated by my own moaning that was like a wild animal’s moaning, along with my pre-spermatic drops which had begun to drop slow and thick over my hand.

“Bb..b..bb..but..bb..but…”

My not so brilliant owner had come close to me again. He was trembling. He was trying to say something but he kept stuttering and a very annoying nerve ticklish made the right side of his face shaking. He had his eyes shut close as he was talking to me and then opened them wide again.

“Bu ububut..but what are you doing there?”

I paid no attention to him and kept masturbating wishing for a quick ejaculation. I wasn’t interested in anything, only in my pleasure and satisfaction. I just wanted to relax my body tension. And if I couldn’t do this I don’t know what I could do. What I was capable of doing. For the first time of my life I felt like a beasty animal.

“Shut up at last!” I only told him.

‘Bb..but it’sss ..iitt’s..it’s un..un..unconcei…unconcei..concei..conceivable!”

What a pig! Not even under the earth, to the most unbelievable place that a human mind could imagine, I could find my peace and quiet. Everywhere idiot people! I could have killed him at that time. I suddenly grabbed his hair and lowered his head near my blown penis which was sliding back and forth in my warm palm..I almost touched his head with my penis.

«If you continue talking you  will regret it, so I am saying to you, just shut up! Shut up!»

I freed his head but he didn’t seem eager to move away. The cretin!

I didn’t care if he liked what I was doing. I was listening to the women’s laughters and their little moans of their stimulation. I couldn’t think of anything else..Oh..god..oh god....anything else..I just continued and continued and continued, visualising my sperm flowing all around and drowning everyone in its warm liquidity…

The shameless laughter (The clockwork boxes 9)

from the movie ''That lady'', princess Eboli

I had to move fast. The exchanges were taking place in front of my eyes as fast as a hurricane. Everyone was buying someone else and everyone was for sale. Having already been bought, I ought to buy someone, otherewise I would be an unmatchful element and moreover I would be a burden for my buyer as long as my price would stay the same. I could increase my price only if I became a buyer as well. I started screaming like crazy, bidding for some of the people who were rolling on the ribbon. I didn’t care at all who I was going to buy. My buyer had already forgotten about me. What a pity! I had just started to like him! Being someone’s possession, even a useless possession, seemed to have so weird and amazing qualities. I  could sit there for the rest of my life just munching nuts like a monkey, waiting to see what my owner would decide to do with me, and then after him, my next owner. Being an eternally roaming possession that loves his possessors with deep devotion. What a brilliant perspective for someone like me, someone who could never get a purpose in his life.

My lungs were so strong. I would never imagine that they were so strong! I was shouting,  gurgling as loudly as I could..Very soon, I attracted two- three young women who started to have fight about which one of them I was to choose and buy. I can say that I enjoyed their little fight that soon became bigger and I did nothing to stop them. When  they started slapping each other, I noticed that the two of them had hairy tails popping like bushy tridents, out of the back side of their skirts. One of them started crying, saying that she was the one that had seen me first, so she was the one who had to be bought by me. The other two laughed maliciously at this allegation and they both slapped harder..That was a real fight now! Mm…I started to feel turned on! What a great place this was! I felt my tongue blowing up more between my gums, at the same time with my penis. I wanted to moo again, but something held me back from that impulsive mooing, when I saw that my hands had started growing a strange shape, something between a human palm and a calf’s hoof. My eyes were so much burning that my whole body was feeling suddenly on fire, it was as if someone had washed me all over with scorching water, as if the fire that started from my eye bulbs, was passing like a blazing flame in all my veins, in all my neurones. I wanted so badly to buy all three women and have sex with all of them, frenzily in front of all the others. Ah…but it was unbelievable, my genitals were about to explode, ejaculating fountains of sperms everywhere, on every face that was around me, without even caring if they were men or women, I just wanted to get rid of that burning river inside me! My stimulation was tremendous, I had never felt like this before!

Nevertheless, the money I could afford were not even enough for something like this, I could only buy one of them and indeed with great difficulty. What if I begged, what if I knelt before the beautiful legs of my owner, asking him fervently to resell me to someone else, just in order my price be raised for a little bit? Then perhaps I would be able to buy the two of them and as far as the third one is concerned I could see later what I could do. But I had to hurry, I couldn’t stand it anymore! I was feeling the veins of my penis throbbing like crazy, almost laughing at me. Ah! I had to take it out of my trousers!

I unzipped it in a hurry and my penis got out erected , trying to get a relief and at the same time target at anywhere possible. No one seemed to pay attention to what I had just done except for  the three women who had seen me clearly. They stopped to slap each other and they started laughing, wagging their hairy tails in a charmingly provocative way. Oh, this was too much..too much! My owner! Where  the fuck was my stupid owner? Suddenly I saw the embroidered rim of his old fashioned jacket fighting with some other jackets, probably for a good merchandise. I didn’t have the time for this kind of delay! Gasping from lust, I dashed myself against him like a bat «Sell me!» I screamed into his ear. «Sell me bastard!» I screamed once again hysterically in case he hadn’t understood what I was yelling. I shouldn’t waste a single second. I had to find the money at any cost! Meanwhile I could hear the women’s laughters becoming even more provocative, even more shamless, deeply inside my ears.Mm..I started moaning slowly as if I was in a bed making love..I would die. Die. Die! My penis was red all over, its head had started dripping and it could enter anywhere!

What a bunch of stupids (The clockwork boxes 8)

Maggie Taylor

I was a stunning performer when pretending the tortured human being. My outward expression of all of my inner pains had always the naturalite of a person who has really suffered a lot. A person though, whose quality has not lowered at all, despite the grief that has flogged his life. On the contrary, pain has steeled that refined human quality of being sublimely tormented, in such an excellent and superior kindness that it might start dripping through one’s pants or even one’s manchettes. Even my shirt collar started screaming out my geniously  king-like despair. That beast in front of me was, at last, caught in my nets.

He finally turned his head and looked at me, a little annoyed but I could discern a slight flame of some sleepy interest in his eyes. A flame that was ignited more when the sighs of my inner pain started getting louder. I waited that he would ask me «what’s the matter sir??» or « Are you Ok sir? May I help you?»..but no..He was only standing and looking at me again and again and again. He was probably the leader of the calves flock, I cannot otherwise explain his stupidly passive stance which got on my nerves more than anything else. I was about to explode.

«Buy me!»

My tone was sharp and demanding. Having recognised in his watery eyes the leader of the cattle race, I wasn’t able to risk it and  wait for his own signs of interest or pity. I had , by all means, to rise my price. Time was passing and the calves were multiplied. The leather ribbon was full of juicy young little calves and others more aged who were trying to attract attention by showing off other distinctive qualities, such as a tender look of devotion, or a dynamic eye- blinking connotating  their internal flame which was a guarantee for their tasty meat. What a bunch of stupids... How much different I was. I, who was already feeling my tongue getting wider and longer in my mouth cavity...How strange..That slowly longening tongue which was about to choke my larynx, gave to me an intimate feeling, a familiar and known recollection, something undefinable that I couldn’t exactly recall and name in my conscious mind. But it was there and all I wanted to do was just moo. Mooooo I wanted to moo and lick this idiot’s face, filling his cheeks in my tender calf’s saliva, but instead of doing this I looked at him with a brilliant adamant determination, so brilliant and and so adamant that he started searching his pockets like crazy, in order to buy me. Ah that damn one dollar which was my starting price!

He left the money, in a transparent box next to the giant machine and at once the machine recorded the sum and the name of the bidder digitally. In order the procedure to be completed the man bent over and whispered something in an iron ear-shaped slot. The slot gurgled happily and making a strange noise as if it was trying to swallow something, it showed something like a password which represented the real name of  the man.

«You are mine now» he whispered, his eyes  having a weird shine..

«I can use you any way I like» he continued, scanning my appearance  from my toes to my head.

The situation was too much uncomfortable. Having spent a tiny amount of money he could do whatever he wanted with me. He could sell me to someone else or even give me away for nothing to anyone. At least I had also the right to buy live stuff now and that’s what I was going to do at once. I looked around. Bodies were cramming in the room, clinging tightly one onto the other, rubbing their stomachs or their backs. Smiles were flying into air, sad or frowning expressions were begging for someone to pay attention to them, legs were rising up provocatively, tongues were sliding in and out of mouths, cheeks were blowing and perfect dentures of teeth were shining like beautiful foaming waves. There was frenzy in this declining atmosphere combining the sickness of a tragically pale mask and the exquisite glow of a blushing face.

My intellectual chin (The clockwork boxes 7)

Oskar Schlemmer

I was suddenly pushed by a guy who frantically wanted to bid for a man who was lying lustfully on the ribbon. A carefully folded scarf was on his lap. Next to him a young man was caressing his chest vehemently, moaning in low prolonged voice sounds. A woman, was smiling meaningfully at the frenzy crowd, shaking a red fan gracefully. All of them had small rectangular labels wrapped around their waists, on which their names were written.

I stumbled and  fell on the leather ribbon. My hand was caught in the alongside thin strap which was going back and forth next to it. However hard I was striving to release my hand I couldn’t make it and cold sweat started dripping all over my body. I remembered  what the man in the fancy tuxedo  had previously told me when he dragged me into that room when suddenly I felt a hand pushing me upwards and then another hand helping the first one. I found myself on top of  the leather ribbon. Someone else tied  a sign around my waist.

“Please, can I have your first name and your family name sir?’’

Both my names were written on the sign in seconds, along with the one dollar amount as a humiliating starting price for me. Anyone could buy me for a dollar. I tried to jump down but to my horror I realised that I couldn’t. Something kept me stuck on the ribbon. Maybe it was the wavy movement of the strap which made me feel like throwing up, maybe it was the fact that my curiosity was  much bigger than my resentment . Damn it! I had to be smiling if I wanted to find a buyer! From what I had understood, only if someone bought you, your  value could become higher afterwards. And that fucking one dollar starting price had got up my nose. Grinning like a stupid narcissus, I bent my head backwards, being careful to my intentional expressing some air of mystery and fascination. I took care so that my lips rose up a bit, up to a certain mouth angle and I half-closed my eyes. I was certain that my blurry, shy gaze, would remind all the possible buyers that they had in front of them a superior quality merchandise. I was like a rabid dog! A dollar! A fucking dollar! I would find the man who had signed that humiliating price on my label tag and I would break his neck. What a disgrace..And I had to lift my chin a bit up. How come had I forgotten this fundamental movement? Of course..there it was! A pinch of subtle pride and my chin was like a sail in the sea air, stating that it was an intellectual chin, a chin which belonged to a human being of a supreme genius. A chin like that, fucking shit, cannot cost only one dollar! I wanted to scream while the one dollar price remained one dollar as the minutes were running. But couldn’t all these people, who were shouting as if they were sane, see what an excellent quality stuff they had before their eyes? Did they prefer to buy the worst merchandise? What was the real value of an inflated arm muscle comparing to my matchless style? 


I leant over and pulled the sleeve of a man who being tired from the tension and the shouts, was wiping his forehead slowly with a small embroidered handkerchief.

«Psstt..sir!»

«Psstt..psstt..» I insisted, holding on his sleeve tightly. He didn’t seem to be listening to me. He kept wiping his forehead even when it was completely dry of any sweat.

«Sir! Sir!»

My voice was getting louder, some heads turned towards me. Under normal circumstances I would have felt embarrassed, as I usually feel when my voice tone becomes a little more harsh, but my frenzy was such that I didn’t care for anything. I wanted someone to pay attention to me. Anyone.

One dollar!

That dollar was a pain in my stomach and whoever priced me so, would realize his big mistake later.

I was fully aware of what a ridiculous spectacle I  was  up there, with that label tied around my waist  but also I was sure that for the first time of my life I didn’t give a damn for this public hilarity. After all, there were so many of us ridiculed in there! Big stuff! Half of us were lying like sleeping calfs on the rolling strap and the other half  were waiting like horny buyers in a meat market to buy the cheapest calf and at the same time trying to turn themselves into calfs too. A calf-what situation. I should start sighing at once! How is this possible that this brilliant idea had slipped my mind? Something like this would definitely attract the attention of that idiot whose sleeve I had been pulling for some minutes now with no result so far.

“Ufhh..ufff again ..and again ufff”