Letters
I
Letters to a Young Kleptophiliac
Dear K ---,
I feel it's time to have more at our fingertips; it's time to make a full inventory with our most sensitive parts. This bareness is demeaning for those who remember mountains surging up around us. As for myself I don't have any appetite unless the alarms are at full blare and our hoods, pulled down tight, conceal castles. I starve here all day in this well-appointed tomb waiting to hear that everything is yours. Your pocket inverted is an escape chute; otherwise I'd reinvent what is private and redefine limits. That's what we all want - to be burrowed away. But I digress: I recommend opening as wide as you can; openings are not couched in terms of surrender but of expectation, of fulfillment. We can all use more wriggle room.
Dear K ---,
What a fond memory: wearing long coats and kneeling, pretending to sweep the frigid floor with our sleeves. We tucked entire shelves against our skin and how the metal burned! We'd bite into ice if that meant we could keep it. I can't wait for the day when our chattering consumption will be scoured as a historical document. But you've taken things to a higher level. I hear it does tribute to you; with each illicit shudder you consume and possess it, sight unseen. It's that little boost of self-esteem we all need. We're all screaming underwater with only bubbles to show for all our inborn cravings. These days the humblest object will not obey me, leaving me ravenous from the salt of my empty hands.
Dear K---,
Amazing fact: an octopus can escape from the thinnest crack or the smallest hole. But despite conventional wisdom, suction goes both ways. Beware what things you draw to yourself and pull your feelers in from time to time. In an oasis between safety and danger, lock the door behind you and pick your guitar. I can see you only with long drooping hair when you sing your songs of possession. You sing of the relentlessness of time, not that it passes but that it deceives. You vow revenge, reaching for the sand from the broken hourglass with eight hands, greedy for each grain like Laurence Olivier forced to swallow his stolen diamonds. But time will hold you still, prick you with knives. Even while you're bound and gagged, hammered shut, tentacles will taunt you, curl around you.
Dear K ---,
This autumn, even the golden light has a clandestine quality. Yet it was the darkness that betrayed you. Even so I never expected to find you slipping - slipping! I send sincere regrets. Did they scour you clean, vacuum you dry? I imagine the moment: deep in the corridor, recessed into shadows, tears were shed for plump flesh's salvation. Still you wouldn't relinquish your prize; you wanted more - more! You hurried into the thorn's embrace with an ecstatic sigh. Silence will fool you 'til the end, I find. I myself am torn between desire and resentment, so bitter it is vinegar mixed with brine. I'd pickle myself if you'd steal me.
Dear K ---,
Tremendous. With each fight or flight you equate ownership with solipsism. This morning I discovered a prism of new meanings in the term "kleptocracy," new euphemisms too. We are all falling through a chasm, clutching onto whatever holds out its hand. Always betting on something finer, you let yourself drop deeper and flout the law of diminishing returns. Meanwhile I compose a candid novel in glowing adrenaline ink. Semi-autobiographical, of course, a squalid tale of a voyeur resigned to blindness. I will place it high among my shelf of eyeballs. I will grease the floor, the eyeballs will roll freely, and the doorknob will be coated with oil. Longing vainly for tongues, all will blink subversively while you expose your vertebrae to capture.
II
Letter to a Young Agalmatophiliac
Dear A---,
I'll trace a few simple rules. Illusions of movement are easily camouflaged. It all happens behind the scenes in a velvety succession of after hours. Mannequins exist behind glass because there's such fear of breaking the flood bank of equilibrium. Beyond the seamless barrier, daggers pierce the most cold-blooded fish.
Imagine the sculpture gallery at night. In naked frustration rows of empty torsos desire your gaze. Pit them one against the other like puzzle parts, watch them couple madly, floating headless into legless. Even hard mouthed refusals catch fire from your scratched and swollen lips. They strain their marble tongues in envy when you make your slippery escape. While breathless you hear the porous gasps of granite and the exhalation of rubber. You're soon buried, crushed; clutch the avalanche closer and feel its weight; all shapes adore you.
There are limits to explicit affection. We two laugh at blood stains and bruises on transparent flesh. So beat your fists against the indestructible and learn to crumble. Detail is a vacuous distraction in the formless deserts we seek. We make plush all retreating desires; we bend and unravel. Press against them with all your throbbing and grasping. If your hand slips, chip away like a routine archeologist. Never mind complacency; the unmovable draws you on. Knock against the echoes of stillness. When it rains, mold corks to smother the voices that escape sealed throats.
Pedestals attain vertiginous heights above the vulgar rot of warmth, but statues erected so proudly are puny and confused things pacing within the tightest cages. Today I mixed thigh dust with lime and puttied myself over. I stand in surrender waiting for your featureless reciprocation. On the surface I am unbearably rough and dry, but search further. Few penetrate this paradox. Hidden are pockets of moisture, smelly cavities and salty recesses. And even if you shatter your reflected effigy, no one will be the wiser.
END
