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Late summer elbows itself into fall,
and I’ve got five different walking routes.
Here it looks like moist ground,
and trees,
and trees,
and walking is my labor
of inventing the doing of stuff
for no purpose whatsoever.
I’m stitched together,
composed of unpaid bills,
and this city
is private.

I knew someone
who couldn’t walk on a concrete pavement
She couldn’t balance stiff surfaces
like an outcome of an entire life lived on bare earth
and now this, walking
this city like every city or town modelled after a city
is frankly unbearable
Like some balancing act of leaving
And something always else
But okay…

After the rain, everyone would run to the forest to pick the mushrooms that would pop up overnight. Woven baskets full by eye, smell, and culture.
I guess I’m going now for the purpose of not leaving,
which is more a conversation and less than a house.

“I always thought of a soul as a giant communion”, so have I, but this is a line that I stole from Bernadette Mayer.

I’m calling Iris,
who busily breaks down matter
running errands
She opens her body up,
she is missing one arm and one head.
The string that holds the earth,
my line of communication,
all beneath the body.
Like God is some mold,
an erotic ruin
but maybe it’s just me,
I just love too much against interpretation.

Another name opens the body up to the sea
the earth cuts through the waves,
you could have been a mountain
If you asked me to describe these rocks,
I probably couldn’t
You could have been a mountain
now closer to
the two-room apartment,
where you were talking in the kitchen,
smoking cigarettes and cutting wood,
where we were sinking fast and slow,
a skinny leg holding up the arch,
eating up the floor,
I didn’t know that anything could grow like this in concrete.
An army leaves this neighbourhood
in between our breathing
I find it hard to talk to you

You were born in a country that no longer exists,
and I recently turned a hundred.
I have travelled West of our desire.
Meanwhile, I’m forgetting my mother tongue
Today I’m quitting my no-contract job
for another corner of thicker skin,
zero hour contract,
I think I’ll leave this corner too.
I’ve been cooking for money,
cleaning private property,
and now this,
I’ll bring you your food and your water or just whatever.
I call you
rent, on time, for this room in this house, I’m trying
and now is night,
and I’m telling you
that I came here
with an injured sense of socialist imagination.
As if
we’re a community of rooted matter.
I’m stuck in this body and my utopia is
to let this rage collapse
into
the love of voluntarily not to leave
directed towards the you
who neither exercises force nor submits to it,
and I’ve got the time,
it’s fragile and good.
It costs me
a lot of money to acquire a language for this.
I need a third name for the corner of this constellation now.
Of what accounts for the path around it,
like in other tongues, like in everything that we cannot enquire further.
I can afford Spring but what comes after is uncertain.
What could I have said?
The world splits open on the spectrum of silence and song
Here I will live for years
Under my armpit
I will carry a short note soaked in salt
indicating my direction.

I don’t know the origin of the corner where your body is positioned with the back turned towards the world and face towards the ninety degrees of the two walls meeting in some form of a culture of the consequence expressed in the immobility where I waste my time, and time is certainly different in that specific form as it flows with the speed of force.

It’s not the same as inventing the doing nothing, like when Iris asks me for something simple and beautiful that makes her cry.

Meanwhile, it’s not a question of wherefrom, but a question of how from here-there, elsewhere-around-here, no, actually, it’s just a question of subtle attention.
It’s a lazy question of address ever since I’ve been repairing this body on the couch. Only lazy questions hold the attention of repair, did you know that?

Ever since my body was made of clay back then in biblical times, I’ve been working out the relationship between my debt and my labor. If you throw me into the river I will float with a hollow back, since I’ve been making ‘stuff’ such as dreaming language instead of making money out of time.

A river crosses my mother tongue, separating the two neighbourhoods.

Meanwhile, Ulysses returns from his odyssey. His dog recognizes him as the only character capable of doing so.

I’m so close to talking about the sea, but…
Occasionally I’m digging up some holes in the ground where I can plant myself for a little while, but it always seems to be my weakness that is giving me away and it becomes clear that I’m something else, like the memory of a dog.
I recognize you and you and you…
more like a face
rather than a country.
I’ll bring all of you home in a basket,
so, I can ask
who invented Eastern Europe?

After all
I love you
And I love you too
I call and call
Your body looks like nature outside of itself
We’re constantly making documents depending on where we go
and how we go
There is not much juice in that,
but I’ve got a new name,
and I’m speaking English all the time.