anywhere i can find to put words

1.mirror it back. is it time? are you ready? is this what we've been waiting for, the shape of it at least, the bend and shake, the hello hello, do you read me, could you read me, would you even bother? because if this is what it looks like, we have some serious matters to discuss, and if it isn't what it looks like, why are you even here? there are all kinds of truths betrayed about us in the way we tell a lie, the sorts of lies we tell, the times and relationships we tell them into, that's before even we get into the nature of that costume. you were always making yourself up for me, putting a line where there ought to have been a telling silence, telling me what this silence should mean. so, then, silence. silence now, silence please. dissect the meaning of this silence, the ultimate reason for the place we are in. please consider: place of silence, place of unreceived messages, place of awkward telling shifts, one foot again the other, a twitch at the hip, who you've been, who you'll be, those blank spaces we'll fill in readily with stories, with interesting stories, with colorful narratives designed to conceal the true surface of our every uncertainty, the real evil that's always been calling the shots: who we are, who we are now and always, this eternal waiting room of self that we will not acknowledge until it is much too late.


2.tell me again. tell me again who you thought i could be. tell me about the first time you saw me or, if that isn't the most persuasive tale, tell me about the first time you loved me and then tell me that story again, tell it to me over and over again. of course that's the story i will only ever want to hear: tell it again. play it at a different speed. speed it up. draw it out. draw it out slow, tease me for hours, bring me to the brink of desperate pleading then bring it back to the part where you let me pretend i'm in any kind of control. tease the narrative out of my listening, give me what i need you to give me, wound me with the absence of what you must take away. it's all the interplay of sensation and intended sensation. the reaction you'd like me to have, but not yet: the reaction you'd like me to have, but not yet: the reaction, the response, the bite and the chill, the thin rise of fear, that look in the eye, god, that look in the eye: and as it was, so it will be: never who we are, just who you've been, just who you'll be. if you want to know who you are, look into a mirror.


3.anyway, we're tired of that framing device. it is tiresome. it's that same oily buildup we fell asleep in and then woke up to and now we stumble around bleary eyed, pointlessly trying to shake it off, pointlessly trying to scrub it off, and here it is! and here i am! again as i was as i am as i always will be and that's only this oily moment going into eternity, no escape, no surrender, or only escape if you surrender, or what the hell escape and surrender, but who's to say what the other side of that looks like? it's probably the same old thing. some old thing, some ever-present old thing we've been looking at for so long we don't see it any longer: but what's to see? oh my heart, oh my gut, oh my groin: my stomach ruing over its emptiness even as i plead for acknowledgement of my offerings: a plate a dish a bowl a box a paper wrapper an internally foil sealed tube, a bottle, a glass, a jar, a name of it a place to go something you can stand to look at for three seconds in the oily eternal moment, in the ever-recycling this too shall pass, and then there's me, and then there's you: and you? what about you? what are you about?

AND AS IT WAS
SO IT WILL NEVER BE