When

How do I say when? I forgot to say because I wasn't sure when. And that's why. Really it's when that I say why. But to you. That's when. So say! Because when I said I say, that was why. You're when. I say to what that I can only see what's visible. And I mean that in the context of when. You're what. It's something I say to you.

Who am I and what is my debt to Yvonne Rainer?

Artist as Exemplary Sufferer

Artist as Self-Absorbed Individualist

Artist as Young Girl

Artist as Changer of the Subject

Artist as Medium

Artist as Ventriloquist

Artist as Consumer

Artist as Transgressor

Artist as Failed Primitive

Artist as Failed Intellectual

Artist as Shaman

Artist as Visionary

Artist as Transcendental Ego

Artist as Misfit

Stick To Me Like Glue

Even on your most confabulated days I still smell the honesty on your personal carcass...

Shy Girl

She is very desired. She uses her words sparingly, in the sense that she spares them from themselves. She was nervous about dancing, so she told me. This is her magic: What she feels, she is. Her appearance is yoked completely with her being. Her appearance is totally hers. There is volume to her––that kind of volume that costs nothing, weighs nothing, is nothing. She leaves you space to be. Her body is wise and quiet when she is doing something. The things she does feel lucky to have her. Three or four moments. She is like your little sister’s long hair sweeping across your thigh as she bends down at the dinner table to pick up your dropped fork. Her eyes meet yours and there’s nothing there, so there is everything there. 

3 times agirl

1.

I’m not a punching bag, or flat stone. I’m a living person whose understanding floods monstrously like gaping, tumorous people. I am gaping, tumorous people. And I think of you sometimes. I thought of you when he was inside me, punching me like a hole puncher. And when I heard your calamitous heaving echo through the single walkway. I think of you when I’m hating you, when I’m annoyed by you, when I’m considering you, when we’re saying nothing talking, when I’m waiting for or coming to you. I think about you. I don’t want closeness with you, I just want somewhere to go, all the time. I know you know I’m extraordinary. I don’t think you know about outside of extraordinary. I don’t want to fall into bad habits––that’s when I start to lie. If I don’t get enough sleep, I can’t free every person I see. 

2.

I am moving from above- to underground. The air and light around me changes. 

3.

Why is it that when I’m most emotionally unmoored it’s my identity as a girl that I turn to? The girl, she is aloneness in a room. Objects and subjects are just furniture there. I’m there. Sound is. You’re not. The girl there is perceivable and honest for this reason. Her body is in a room. She’s questions alone. I was in that room once. I turn to those songs because they’re the ones I listen to alone. Leave me to her. Lead me to her. I’m there. They’re only for me as they’re only in me. I’m that room I’m a girl listening to alone songs amidst free time I’m me. This is basically a tautology. I love people, I do. And I’m that girl. Maybe there’s another one. But there’s always that room. The one beneath my feet, beneath my hands. And there they are. Going with you now. When I’m in that room I don’t forget. I’m just remembering anything. No one thinks I’m weird because there isn’t anyone there. Or the only no one is me. I’m not-me in that room. I’m the presence of the absence of others. I’m made of myself. You survey a transparent globe from a courteous, rumbling distance. I glance you from afar, my budget. And when you put your hand where it belongs, me, I get so snowy inside. I’m the holidays in that room. My hands grasp my feet, the floor. I’m the ceiling. You insulate me. I go to the room where there is only sound a movement and alone, girl. I play my favorite songs and take off all my clothes, paint my nails, fold my clothes, do my eyebrows, roll out, apply tiger balm, journal, watch a movie, clean up, stretch, read, write. I do fucking everything in that room. YOU CAN’T COME IN. I am trying to save the world in all caps. 

Poem for Frege

If I was ever in an empty room, that’s full. An Eastern European show runner looks exactly like Jessa from Girls. I don’t really know what my job is, or what anyone else's job is. A sheet of veiled substance hosts thoughts and their memories. An opening door lifted in the air sings my emotions. We lift this small girl. The one that is not us. Another girl sings and cries a song we all know to be sadness, longing, utopia. I sat on a satin couch feeling very seen as you silently complained of your station. I hear unfortunately everything you say, your body being my strange, desired book. A male pop star chooses a name for himself. Some years later he hears a girl say "his name" as she introduces herself: "I am ____." We learn hers is only spelled slightly differently. They are extensionally identical and intensionally distinct. 

The Embawdiment Poem

When I’m free from myself everything is just like a body. When I’m free from myself I’m just like a body. I have joints and muscles and liquid and empty space and electricity. There’s no secrets in me when I’m free. Nor desire for any. So music comes, so music goes. Places float in and places flow out. I read my lines, I do my choreography. I’m somewhere for a moment. I send a message. I do a dish, maybe sing a song we love. I love you from time to time. We go somewhere and return. I thrust my pen to some surface, remembering my spine is behind my face. My body falls away from itself in a million different directions. I leave myself alone, putting attention on the other person for once. My sits bones move back and up as my legs fall forward, leaving me weightless, without effort suspended in balance proximal only through feet to the ground. This is how I stay dis-attached from things. I fixate on how back and up is just the absence of forward and down. My jaw loosens, my eyes sprawl like wings through my visual field. Taking me somewhere. I extend by recognizing the absence of extension. I go in by going out. We meet there sometimes. I magnetically, you receive. We go toward each other. When my body empties like that I have all this time in my hands. And suddenly something alights in my vision. I lint roll a concept of myself. My heels move forward and back behind my torso. My knees move forward. My knees that are also my thighs and shinbones. My legs, the ones that are only ever in front of my torso. I heard a miracle in the faucet this morning. Spewing music I notice dancing all around me. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is mine.