from the collection of: p. botte

I will show you all the things.  All the things that have been said about the way that things are in my head.  I will show you all these things.

I don’t show these things often because of the coarseness of the things.  There are things that are said that make no sense.  They are as verbally unanchored as a dog’s bark.  They are sounds that mean Stay Away.  They do not threaten the hearer with a physicality of flesh-violence.  Rather, they are a warning that violence will follow in the neurons or behind the eyelids or along the dreamshadows that run the walls just as you open your eyes.

The coarseness is an animalian thing.  You sit there in your chair, head tilted (like a dog’s, I might say), curious about my trepidation.  It’s ok, you say.  It’s ok, you can speak these things.

And yet, you think that the coarseness of these things are simply due to my uncouth speech, my unlearned tongue.  But what you don’t know is that the coarseness is deeper than that – it is a brokenness of the logic of speech itself.

I will begin by saying things and you will say, Surely that is not quite what he meant, or maybe, He simply misspoke there – that doesn’t mean what he thinks it means.

And the more that I speak, the more you will be pressed to justify my words with your charity of heart.

Charity can only go so far.

I will say these things and, as I do, the shades will drop behind your eyes.  You will see things that will no longer be permitted to travel to the thinking part of your mind.  You will hear things that can no longer flesh themselves out upon the drafting-table of your consciousness.

I will show you all of the things.  And you are going to stand in the mud of the field with me, your lips pulled back (like mine) as if we were both – the both of us – two panting dogs, waiting for the rot of our last meal to pass before we can gorge ourselves on the den of dead possums we’ve just found beneath our paws.

I will show you all of the things.  I will show you all these things.  And maybe you will listen this time.  Just listen.  If you respond, I am afraid that the noise in your throat will be garbled with a confusion of blood and hunger and thirst and homelessness.  I will show you all of the things and the two of us will be bound, together, in a land of desolation.