Shady Dealings With Language, programmed by Claire Potter, curated by Lauren de Sa Naylor
&Model, Leeds
http://www.shadydealingswithlanguage.org/leeds/
I
run around in circles
And turn in fire alarms
I'm nutty as a fruitcake
When you're not in my arms
If you're meant for me like i'm meant for you
Baby, we fit like a glove
If you're lovin' me like i'm lovin' you
Baby, we're really in love.
Hank Williams, Baby We’re Really In Love
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Alongside female children building lego structures
at the kitchen table, I read Anne Sexton’s Love Poems:
‘adultery looms as the next horizon of sexual destiny,
once marriage and childbirth have ripened a woman’s body
and mapped her pleasure centres.’
This is the aftermath of the aftermath.
The day following on from O Juizo Final –
The Final Judgement, which coincided
with Language Urges, which
colluded with Language,
which Urged me. . .
I don’t know how to say it well,
but it was close to death (which of course translates as
close to birth).
A past and potential lover collided over the crepuscular body,
that is, me, and couldn’t find a way to fit,
to articulate them through my body as conduit,
so they collided with a violence not unlike childbirth;
it was the brutal revelation of being that is out of one’s control.
I am diffused through multiple proxies.
Yes, my flesh is there, my skeleton and muscles synchronise
to propel me hither and thither, room to room,
up staircase and down. In fact
my body is all I have to offer. [S/M Whore. Bad Mother. Where was your daughter when
you fucked a stranger in your hallway, who you let in, putting yourself at risk – Oh, sweet
risk, where have you been, I longed for you, you have dragged me out of my torpor; oh sweet
risk, the point of you has been missed, but I trust the man who revealed your transformative
power to me far more than my accuser!
Risk – Tryst
So closely related.
Oh, this revelation].
Yes, I said that – but don’t be a fool, don’t
misinterpret. I mean to say
the athletic propulsion of my body, singularly –
my dualistic body, my body divested of mind,
sexuality, domesticity, intellect.
Just the flesh, bones, blood, muscle
co-operating autonomously as
vestigial thoughts that previously tortured
coalesce with thigh muscles as they reach
outward, outward, onward, up and downward,
reaching and being; the bones ache, this
twisting within the space
between the mind/body split
ever-occupying borderlines.
This radical transparency is at the same time
invisiblity: here, now, there in the
occupied space. Other bodies;
there is one body I long to make my body present for.
[again, again, once more: narcissism, fucked-up, fucked-up father, constantly misaligned
relation, supreme alienation – cause or result? Absence of a co-conspirator, “the only man in
her life,” misinterpretation, pathological liar, deceiver, disempowered, radical transparency,
invisible, contained, held, not held, handled by a total fucking stranger so sweetly, with care
and trust, the stranger one can trust, finger-fucked to orgasm, (autoeroticism with a tool), an
egg in the palm of a tattooed hand, transparency, visibility, an echo that ripples perpetually,
read, written, killed, dead].
I am not the architect,
nor the arranger.
Passivity, ‘letting go’ (having never held on).
Not an attendee – a ghost,
a dead thing, a corpse whose insides have come out,
and, thoroughly rifled through by the truly creative mind,
are permanently disordered.
This is the violent destruction that precedes
something emerging anew; some new thing will emerge.
I make preliminary decisions then withdraw
into domestic responsibilities.
I am cyphered through E, through B, through C –
Sweet C; I read him posthumously today, it was like
he was here again – drinking stubby bottles of cheap beer:
always dour, expressive. That ring on his delicate finger.
My father’s ring on my index finger,
the ringing of bells in Claire’s poem,
the ring I tried on and considered buying for myself,
the silver ring that adorns the hand I fear,
recognisable fear,
fear that has already gone,
vestigial fear.
I was absent, but their presence was thread that
penetrated my flesh: a vessel.
Their text(ile) was connective tissue -
my urges mirrored via their language.
My unstable hiding place: my narcissism.
And turn in fire alarms
I'm nutty as a fruitcake
When you're not in my arms
If you're meant for me like i'm meant for you
Baby, we fit like a glove
If you're lovin' me like i'm lovin' you
Baby, we're really in love.
Hank Williams, Baby We’re Really In Love
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Alongside female children building lego structures
at the kitchen table, I read Anne Sexton’s Love Poems:
‘adultery looms as the next horizon of sexual destiny,
once marriage and childbirth have ripened a woman’s body
and mapped her pleasure centres.’
This is the aftermath of the aftermath.
The day following on from O Juizo Final –
The Final Judgement, which coincided
with Language Urges, which
colluded with Language,
which Urged me. . .
I don’t know how to say it well,
but it was close to death (which of course translates as
close to birth).
A past and potential lover collided over the crepuscular body,
that is, me, and couldn’t find a way to fit,
to articulate them through my body as conduit,
so they collided with a violence not unlike childbirth;
it was the brutal revelation of being that is out of one’s control.
I am diffused through multiple proxies.
Yes, my flesh is there, my skeleton and muscles synchronise
to propel me hither and thither, room to room,
up staircase and down. In fact
my body is all I have to offer. [S/M Whore. Bad Mother. Where was your daughter when
you fucked a stranger in your hallway, who you let in, putting yourself at risk – Oh, sweet
risk, where have you been, I longed for you, you have dragged me out of my torpor; oh sweet
risk, the point of you has been missed, but I trust the man who revealed your transformative
power to me far more than my accuser!
Risk – Tryst
So closely related.
Oh, this revelation].
Yes, I said that – but don’t be a fool, don’t
misinterpret. I mean to say
the athletic propulsion of my body, singularly –
my dualistic body, my body divested of mind,
sexuality, domesticity, intellect.
Just the flesh, bones, blood, muscle
co-operating autonomously as
vestigial thoughts that previously tortured
coalesce with thigh muscles as they reach
outward, outward, onward, up and downward,
reaching and being; the bones ache, this
twisting within the space
between the mind/body split
ever-occupying borderlines.
This radical transparency is at the same time
invisiblity: here, now, there in the
occupied space. Other bodies;
there is one body I long to make my body present for.
[again, again, once more: narcissism, fucked-up, fucked-up father, constantly misaligned
relation, supreme alienation – cause or result? Absence of a co-conspirator, “the only man in
her life,” misinterpretation, pathological liar, deceiver, disempowered, radical transparency,
invisible, contained, held, not held, handled by a total fucking stranger so sweetly, with care
and trust, the stranger one can trust, finger-fucked to orgasm, (autoeroticism with a tool), an
egg in the palm of a tattooed hand, transparency, visibility, an echo that ripples perpetually,
read, written, killed, dead].
I am not the architect,
nor the arranger.
Passivity, ‘letting go’ (having never held on).
Not an attendee – a ghost,
a dead thing, a corpse whose insides have come out,
and, thoroughly rifled through by the truly creative mind,
are permanently disordered.
This is the violent destruction that precedes
something emerging anew; some new thing will emerge.
I make preliminary decisions then withdraw
into domestic responsibilities.
I am cyphered through E, through B, through C –
Sweet C; I read him posthumously today, it was like
he was here again – drinking stubby bottles of cheap beer:
always dour, expressive. That ring on his delicate finger.
My father’s ring on my index finger,
the ringing of bells in Claire’s poem,
the ring I tried on and considered buying for myself,
the silver ring that adorns the hand I fear,
recognisable fear,
fear that has already gone,
vestigial fear.
I was absent, but their presence was thread that
penetrated my flesh: a vessel.
Their text(ile) was connective tissue -
my urges mirrored via their language.
My unstable hiding place: my narcissism.
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