In hopeless devotion to absurd dreams
I ceaselessly spin a thin web of words:
a hurdy-gurdy turns, a sound
ridiculous yet unnerving emerges;
as the wheel rubs against the strings
the skin begins to bleed a little,
    then fists
        & skull
are slammed against the wall.

But of course,
nothing breaks that isn’t already broken…

Beauty serenely disdains to destroy me**,
so I destroy myself:
beyond the reach of sedatives or sleep,
I cut once & then cut again
        & again
            & again,
    furiously I slash
until my hand
is slick with the wet warm red
    & the blade
slips from my grip.

Now
    there is a brief moment of peace

& I survey the scene: me
    alone in a room
        covered in blood:

A fucked-up,
stupid,
ridiculous mess.

Laughter is all that is left to turn to
        but soon
that sound too becomes unnerving,
& all that is solid
melts into squalid self-pity.

Now
    what else is there to do?

I don't fucking know, so
– always one for a dramatic gesture,
for the deep allure of hysteria –
I lick away the still warm blood;
        a taste of salt,
the trace of assault
            exalted
in the crazed nature
    of what I am doing.

There is an undeniable,
self-directed
sadomasochistic pleasure to this,
which will soon turn to shame
& eventually fade
into just another memory.

So once again the impossible state:
    something both does
        & does not exist:

change,
    everything & nothing
        has changed…

***

Draped in the word-web, I begin dancing.

A proposal is made,

a proposal that this "I" is a lie,
a reified grammatical necessity,
a reference to the referent,
no more than words hidden beneath skin & skull;
words that haunt a tormented animal,
trapped within a network of veins
& a cage of flesh
that will crumble to powder one day,  
        like butterfly wings:
 
desiccated,
        useless things.

A proposal is made
that this self is a dislocated time-line,
    badly narrated
        & ultimately boring,

    a thing
severed from transcendence,
reduced to the facticity of presence
        & the unbearable density of being***.

These proposals
are to be considered at a later date,
    but I suspect
that they will be rejected.

***

I think
the medication isn’t working.

* A Short History of Decay – E. M. Cioran
** First Elegy – Rainer Maria Rilke
*** The Ethics of Ambiguity – Simone de Beauvoir