9
And then there is the return and the return again, back to the city whichloses everything at 4:11 one radiant yellow afternoon, and so back to thelake where energy replenishes its own grass-scented appetite and loonsduck and ducks loop and a young catfish is absconded to a bucket from aswamp and the children perk up at its funny feline whiskers as it skitters incloudy frantic purgatory, giddy as a kitten except for an implicit panicshared by all creatures grabbed (even kindly) from their origins and set tocircle in a plastic pail. Oxygen is not enough for a decent life, no, one cangather the desire for return and refine its slick blue-oiled feathers andfashion a cable through which the readied shafts, line up one after thenext, shoot, sailing each on its flight path home like a single heroicspasmotic sperm or stretchy ovulatory jelly discharge caught by thewadded fleece of a gym sock held tight to snuff fourteen-year-old lustfrom the presence of an eavesdropping babysitter. Why is it hard to bearthe individual's trueheart greed, his or her propellant need which scripts allhope into a score of actions that displace some other dream from itsmarshside amble? If you wish to fuck yourself, fine, yet soon swims thepremise of another organism, ballooning its own plump cheeks to find thestuff it wants to feed on, to be filled by, or to fuck in cascading jolts offorward-moving impulse, and where will the excess power-rush crash ifthat one pure wish is stunted or shut out? A catastrophe is what evolves ofa catfish, O poor little catfish!, when scooped up for a take-home trophyof certain poster kids' nature hunts, who search apostle-like for theirown essence in among the cattails and sunfish. O, error! O, horny toadsgalumphing by the cottage's back patio, hiding in the shadow of the gas-poweredbarbecue, charading the wallflower wattage of stones.
[....]
12
There are certain days when she/he desires to write about the body. Onothers: his/her body. To which do the asshole, the tits, the balls, the cuntbelong? Forcing a shuttlecock from side to side, quick, between two racquetsraised for the arrival of sensation and sense: What springs to life at themention of touch, how the word arcs and bobs in the air on its path tomaking contact with skin, brain, palette of the outthrust tongue, bouncesto the back of the throat and is gulped like sex into the sanctum ofher/himself, the low tucked-inside moist pad secreting juices and scent andmuscling urges. Is she or he inside or outside identity when he or she stuffsit in her or him, crossing hairs and siting a soon-felt separateness whereinand so far as he/she can tell, the simmering body misses its limits? Stir thebody already, stir him/her into it.
To make a gesture of retreat and re-entry. Unlike the wind or rock or sandclogged with water at the edge of the lake, or even weather's constantshifts which remove static from the picture. To masturbate is to set thebody his/her swirls in motion clockwise and lengthwise and with thehand's fingers to rub and strum the kettle's metal side bright withbuoyancy and how the midst of her/him rises to the shape of whateverhe/she's thinking.
