The Tunnel Read online

  A person’s mother on visit said get up. A person got up to stand by the window. The mother said goodbye and left. A person sat down again.

  There was a tree where a bird was, of the window, and kept a person company or parallel. And a bird flies and so it returns to a tree where a bird was.

  Taking tea a person takes tea and to watch pleasantly the bird and the day is not badly spent. And more tea as there is no limit to the indulgence when an afternoon is not too bright as it may rain, as sweet cobwebs lull with no little love the timid mouse of the heart.

  Grey is the light and a green tree there and the ceiling asleep, a cobweb puts the ceiling to asleep.

  Then dead persons on a washline in wind that is before it will rain.

  Table with a drawer. In the drawer there lives a spool of thread with a kitchen knife and a nutcracker and a rubberband to be touched during days spent seeking essence.

  Hair can be touched, one does not know if it has color, on a day before it will rain hair may get grey, as if strings of rain out of the head.

  An orange is color of a bright orange before it rains. The orange is then alone. I do not like alone, as it is cozy I admit but too perfected in a round orange of that color.

  The ceiling snores, it is a lovely place, I think of all things I love the ceiling best.

  The floor has a certain way to live by itself, though with us it will not join me for tea as the tree and some of the air will, which is welcome but to disturb not any of the dusts in their lays and joyous charities to my soul.

  I see mother in air coming hooked to a basket of oranges. Her hair is white as is her face, wearing grey as air is. Is it mother or air or the blooming of an orangetree.

  It is mother coming nearer.

  Without tree where a bird was as now a mother to occupy the window, and the ceiling purring in this while, and mother through the window at me looking as I can see a cobweb gently nodding, and I take its mild approach and keep my face so that it can appreciate that my eyes are for it only.

  The huge one with a basket of oranges and a lace collar, becoming no doubt if the eye was allowed to weave only in little eyelets of lace, to appreciate as foam may teach, dear me along the beach. Or wearing bright brass policeman buttons, or a tunic of birds and a waist band of fawn pipes so it seems, and wearing a shawl of father shackled to her neck, dead I believe but lifted by wind.

  Through the window onto the kitchen table, a table with a drawer in which living does a spool with its delicious thread, neighbored with a kitchen knife and a good friend a nutcracker side by side with a rubber band.

  Mother said stand up. And then mother said stoop.

  The ceiling does not, cannot, like mother and I concur.

  The floor has been spared mother as she stands on the table, where now she dances giving an attractive display of ladies’ high laced boots in motion, less soft than the cobweb’s motion, she quicker than and less with love.

  Her oranges come jumping from their basket skipping to the table and down to the floor, and now the floor must feel as it must as it receives these new ones with certain gracious flights of dust disturbed and politely moving.

  Mother decides to sit on the table and stare at me for the rest of my life, which is not to see a tree where a bird was, and her policeman buttons seem so angry, I am sure we shall be friends as they tarnish so sweetly. Did not a spoon come with very brightness not to friendship, soon to tarnish and to love. Yes the teaspoon clothed in mirror, and soon to love, took friends of tea stain and dust, but the tarnish meant such much.

  I did not live long as mother walked through my breast and out the door to the rear where I never look as it takes turning as I never.

  I heard the dusts never too bitter rise in her passage and come resting to the floor with certain socially agreeable comments which makes life so much something or other, but it is very nice to know the community, or something like that as mother puts it, or has put it, hidden it no doubt that I might rise and discover it for myself which is not likely anymore because it is quite unlikely that I shall be forced to overflow my borders with any sudden distaste that might arrive surreptitiously in the night on the wings of some indigestible tidbit that turns as I shall not to be a seed of some tree that aspires through my limbs parasitically, for I have not the strength to use or to be done with.

  There was a stone once that I knew of whom certain persons had asked to join a certain violence. The stone refused to give itself or to refuse itself, not that it ever came to the point of actual refusal, the stone merely shut its eyes and remained silent, and for all I may ever know the stone is still living with some grass, or is it a shadow that said hello.

  It is possible to sit in a chair.

  The Fall

  There was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holding them out saying to his parents that he was a tree.

  To which they said then go into the yard and do not grow in the living-room as your roots may ruin the carpet.

  He said I was fooling I am not a tree and he dropped his leaves.

  But his parents said look it is fall.

  Signs

  As he said his ghost person self was not to be loved too much as it was a ghost person and that he was not himself anymore since the puppet master was making him a vicarious person in a house full of signs.

  A certain cup in arrangement with a spoon and a doily contrived a certain mood that all will be well if you hold your breath for the count of three.

  There was also a huge face on mother’s back which was her real face. The other little face was a phoney little face that pretends kindness on the front of her head. The huge face looks at one as mother pretends to be washing dishes at the sink, it is the big ugly man that looks out of her back, her apron tied in the back to effect a bow tie effect for the big ugly man.

  As the flesh and bones under the skin had become water and drained out of the big toe and one was empty one had been forced to submit to bamboo rods which were forced through the tips of the fingers up the arms as through the toes into the legs.

  One tries to concentrate on the small effects which try to speak in a quiet way, small scenes like the corner of a room arranging itself to speak in symbol with its little table flanked by a meaningful shadow and some small colonies of dust.

  Then again when his mother climbed on his shoulders her skirts all up around his head, and sat there moaning, he could not tell whether his mother was being borne by him or he being born by her.

  To Be of Some Use

  If the head could be converted into a sort of shack for animals one might turn a pretty penny, small animals that profit one their eggs and fur, as one must leave and so make certain business arrangements.

  There was a certain stone that did very well in the middle of a wood, but then that is not for me.

  As a child I had wanted to become an automobile, but then I grew up to be 30 years old.

  To do useful work like lifting one’s hand into the air and pinching the underside of a cloud.

  The walking of the black squares on the linoleum in mother’s kitchen might be turned to profit, say by hooking a string to one’s ear which could be attached in a distant city to a dummy’s mouth, or across the Atlantic to a Dutch windmill on a day when there is little wind.

  Or a yawn might be used as a prelude to sleep.

  I said to mother the head might be used to keep tropical fish in, and one might carve out a small income — a mailorder business so to speak, mailing oneself in a coffin — saving the costs of a book-keeper by, so to speak, having the business in one’s head.

  Mother slapped me across my mouth, which one is hard put to interpret.

  Not to feel too useless these days I keep myself busy smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. I am not against spending my time sleeping just as long as I am doing something with my time.

  Had I more arms and legs I would seriously consider becoming the frame for an umbrella — with some sexual arousement my penis coul
d be used as the handle — Is it not already used to help old ladies up and down stairs.

  Sometimes I just breathe. Did you ever do that. I say to mother, look I am breathing.

  I get little recognition — or mother is scanty with praise only that I might not rest on my laurels — that I will keep a firm and steady gaze into the darkness that others choose to call the future.

  I seek a land where I might become of some use — or rather my use might come to some recognition — that in other words, mother might come eventually to write her congressman of my worth — and that the daily papers might be filled with picture stories, titled: He Smokes A Cigarette — He Can Breathe — Etc. And that crowds might stand outside the house cheering me as I sleep.

  Perhaps I should kiss the face of the kitchen clock for luck. Perhaps its little hands with rapture would encircle my neck, and we might be happy.

  I am sure happiness is not too far away.

  Through the Woods

  There was a woman who sits in a chair and becomes welded to it, and to further herself on any path she tilts and rocks — like, to have tea, I don’t mind if I do, from kettle to teapot and oh me to teacup and back for sugar and then to find lemons or is it milk or cream, the saucer is missing and then the tea is cold, and lemon is better if so I wish which I do not as I wish for milk or is it cream, or would I best appease myself with lemon, which is all to be had on the kitchen table which I cannot find, nor can I the kitchen or its house.

  So she had to go through the woods tilting and rocking her chair through leaf and vine. Why am I going where I cannot tell the time of day. Because that is where they said hello to Matthew. Which is not the answer said her head. So she had to go through the woods sitting on her chair.

  And then there was a kitchen with a kitchen table with no lady sitting on a chair. So the kitchen had to go through the woods because where else can a kitchen go when it decides.

  The woman who sits on a chair and the kitchen saw each other as each supposed the other didn’t and each decided to hide from the other as it was for each a quaint jest deserving no further mention save that neither ever found either, and it is sad indeed to go through the woods never finding.

  Father and Son Travelling

  A man had a sack which he kept father in. As he stood in the doorway of mother’s house in silhouette with the sack over his shoulder, mother said, I see you are humpbacked, which is well, like the mother is the son, a flattery which is also echoed in our chin hairs, in our similar balding.

  No, no, mother, my humped back is father …

  Yes, your father was a humpback with chin hair, bald because he is of the family, flattering me by every loss and gain of his aging body; when his hair went so went mine, it was a morning not quite like this night, yet not quite dissimilar to be that different; but to go on, we had been sleeping, yes, and weeping, as was our way, also reaping, as was our way, the harvest that the dream is yielding; but when the morning came we found all our lovely hair on the pillow. It is my hair, said your father, as he gathered it up and spilled it on his head. And then the door opened and the wind came in and gathered it like a tumble weed and took it away. We stood at the door and watched the lovely silver stuff go down the road.

  But I have father here in this sack, we have been travelling.

  How nice for father and son to find the earth round or flat, or how you say, humpback, growing your chin hair, no matter where, it keeps coming out like your whole head was full of it.

  Father wishes to blow you a kiss through the sack.

  Wait son, I shall have to put some underwear over my face to keep discretion and modesty, while well admitting it is most flattering to have a person with chin hair demonstrate his affection … I think it better though if he did nothing, rather thought of my nude body discreetly inside his head.

  He is now thinking of your nakedness, mother, which is a fine picture for the father to take on the road as he travels with the son. Goodbye, mother.

  Yes, yes, goodbye, hello …

  One Two Three, One Two Three

  A clock has twelve numbers — Father, the clock has twelve numbers, and I have ten fingers, which equals twenty two things — Father, father, mother has two eyes which I saw with my two eyes, which is four eyes …

  Will you stop counting on things. They never turn out when you count on them, said father.

  Father, you have two eyes which with my fingers is twelve, said the son.

  The old man said to his wife, will you make him stop counting, because it’s like having bugs crawling on everything.

  I can’t, because he do it in his head where I can’t make him stop. He do it like in secret, said the old woman.

  Why do he have to be so secret, asked the old man.

  Because he have a funny shaped head, she answered.

  The old man said to his son: Why have you got a funny shaped head.

  So I can wear little hats instead of big father-hats.

  But you bigger’n me already, and you still wearing little hats. Ain’t you never going to wear a big people’s hat, said the old man.

  Father, I have one head, I counted it, screamed the son.

  Mother, said the old man, make him stop having secrets.

  I can’t because his secrets inside his head, she said.

  Well maybe if we have dinner he’ll put food in his mouth so he can’t tell his secrets, the old man said.

  We having your favorite because we ain’t got nothing else, which is just as well because it’s your favorite anyway, she said.

  What we having, he asked.

  One two three, one two three, father, screamed the son.

  We having, said the old woman, water and love.

  Their son said: Water & Love & my head equals three.

  That’s poor folks’ food; they lives on love. I’d rather have some of your nightgowns—Why don’t you make some nightgown stew, and you could throw the boy’s photograph in for flavor, said the old man.

  I’m going to my room, we’ll have dinner tomorrow night, she said.

  I don’t care, go to bed forever for all I care—Your son’s got a bullet-head, shouted the old man.

  Look out father, or I’ll shoot you, screamed their son.

  He’s going to shoot me with his bullet-head, the old man said.

  Well be damned you old fucker, his wife screamed.

  III

  from The Clam Theater 1973

  The Agent

  … Assigned to you when your flesh was separating from your mother’s, this shadow, who seeing the opportunity at hand, joined your presence in such a way as some say the soul is given.

  You have always caricatured me in my travels. I have seen you on mountains, and in dim cafes. I have seen you hold your head, your elbows on your knees; and while I was sad you were serene!

  I seek a mastery over fate, of which you are, in objective witness, the agent of … I run away one night as you sleep, the trusting wife, whose borders have opened in the universal dark.

  She feels in the morning among the sheets for the easy habit of her husband’s shape — Now arc the earth, sweet dark, the law of umbra give you panic to search me out with your cunning speed of light!

  The Ancestral Mousetrap

  We are left a mousetrap, baited with cheese. We must not jar it, or our ancestor’s gesture and pressure are lost, as the trap springs shut.

  He has relinquished his hands to what the earth makes of flesh. Still, here in this mousetrap is caught the thumb print of his pressure.

  A mouse would steal this with its death, this still unspent jewel of intent.

  In a jewel box it is kept, to keep it from the robber-mouse; even as memory in the skull was kept, to keep it from the robber-worm, who even now is climbing a thief in the window of his eyes.

  The Ant Farm

  In spite even of Columbus the world collapses and goes flat again.

  The sky is a bell jar where a child in another scale watches his ant farm.


  When the bored child yawns two thousand years pass.

  Someday we have crashed to the playroom floor; the careless child knocks us over with his fire truck … All that dirt lying in its broken sky.

  Swept up, it is thrown into a garbage can at the back of the universe.

  Ape and Coffee

  Some coffee had gotten on a man’s ape. The man said, animal did you get on my coffee?

  No no, whistled the ape, the coffee got on me.

  You’re sure you didn’t spill on my coffee? said the man.

  Do I look like a liquid? peeped the ape.

  Well you sure don’t look human, said the man.

  But that doesn’t make me a fluid, twittered the ape.

  Well I don’t know what the hell you are, so just stop it, cried the man. I was just sitting here reading the newspaper when you splashed coffee all over me, piped the ape.