Pain’s System, and: The Vein Cleanser

Pain’s System

I am sick like the man in Dostoevsky’s cellar.I live in a fragile nightin a fragilesystem. An eclipse,a ring, a circledrawn with absolute precisionso nothing buried aliveor reduced to ash can enter.

Ihavestoppedthinking.Pain has forced me to this.

“Pain is one of the most important things in my life,”said Marguerite Durasand ended up looking for itat the bottom of the Seine.I too look for somethingat the bottom. Or rather,I need something. I am not surewhat, butwill soon know.It has so many layersno theological or metaphysical treatisecan describe it.

Pain fills me and tells me how to move,which wordsto say.I am silent now.You will be silentin time.

Yesterday I told myself: Walk to the door and close your eyes. If silencehides your mouth, cover your face. Swallow, swallow:

Emptyworldsflayingthemselves.Not a sliver of sunis attracted to misery.

I was hugging her in the shadows. Sometimesshe got too red and frightened me,like the dead at night.I am truly frightenedand the fever returns,like the schizoid neighborwho lost her two sonsand now only knows how to gofrom humiliation to humiliation,her worn-out blousecovered with medals,begging cigarettesas she burns her fingersand speaks with her dead heroes.

She dreamed of her sons’disappeared bodies.She closed their eyes.She opened them.Closed their eyes. Opened them.Just as black needles do,carnivorous plants,humans who are like a cancer.

Dostoevsky also had his Superman.I read:he suffers,suffers a lot.

I killed her until the end of gloomwhen impertinent light arrivedwith its colors and noiseof souls flickering outas I do.We don’t know whenwhat is within us begins to dim.Outside, yes.

Pain says: Stop dreaming. I have seen the souls trying to kill their vermin.

She has a nakedness without soul, a fire thatslowly devoursher blood. An imperfectbut seductive ideologythat does not judge itselfby any law of civil morality.Filled with rhythms:contradanza,danzón,salsa,merengue,bolero,son,cha cha cha,jazzand a lot of rumba, where knives or machetesare used from time to time.Manliness, virility,skill, and dexterity.Always tormentedtrying to showwhat you can do:

“When we sing we folks from Matanzas employ a joyous rhythm and goodbeat and everyone who hears us gets caught up and parties with us.”

Am I?I amnot.My pain knows how to write.I am delirious . . .

My fever has returned or perhaps it never left.A new generation’swater and spiritare broken.Break  ingwithin. The soulless onesbeat their drums,they beat them.

Repeat this: The more you hit the wall the more it will hit you,pain just told me that.

The more you hit the wall the more it will hit you . . .The more you hit the more . . .Shut up!!!

I have not suffered up to now.

I cannot go against myself when there is no more wall andfewwantto go againstthe beautyof their own illness.

The Vein Cleanser

The exhaustioncaused by trying to distinguishbetween a real landscapeand one that is deformedis like the pain you feelwhen the lonelinessno one can curescrapes your mouth.

The exhaustionprovoked byhow they prick youprick youand prick youso the vein cleanser will enterand make itself at homeso hell will enterand make itself at homelike makingand healingscarsthread by frayed threadabove rootless bloodthat barely coagulatesas it matures.

There is too much painat dawnat the doorin the chairon the tablein the curtainsin the trembling glassand in the hairthat fallsI feel afraidand then don’t...