LIVING IN GERUNDIVE TIME (2022)

text, lecture performance

ask yourself
what is it
what is it that you want to tell?

she whispers in my ear

tell me
what is your revelation?
how can i benefit
from your desire?

preach it
groan it
cry it out
loud or quiet
however you want

tell me your story
let me be a part
of your arrival

i see you

mirrored in the blade
step aside or i’ll ram a knife
between your fourth and fifth ribs
so long and so deep until a hiss
sounds, a melodie in a major key

while you are shrinking like an advertising balloon, i start laughing, spit in your eyes

can you see me?
tell me your story
what is it

i whisper to myself

How can I explain
that my greatest fear
is precisley of: being?
that my greatest fear is living whatever comes?

living in Gerundive time

that I can’t stand seeing?
that I can’t stand hearing?
that I can’t stand speaking?

that the sponge becomes so full,
it begins to dissolve?

Save me and my not-formed soul!

so i can be the cockroach
and i can take the holy risk of chance...

Does life come from God or from
the Devil?

I want to push life into the corner
to understand, what it is
I want to suck out its marrow
to reduce it to its shell and
fill it again with emptiness

Whisper to me
What is the meaning of pain?

She preaches
that

pain was an energy
we solve together
the body was a membrane
and God enters at the wound

that pain was an experience
you have to endure to grow,
to grow beyond your limits

she confesses
that

pain was a chance to heal
[you don’t change until it hurts]

So bring on the pain!

Embody life in words!
Respect, what you cannot know!
Endure yourself!
Negotiate your boundaries!
Exhaust your limits!

she commands

I command my body to breath to tremble to buzz
I command my body not to suffocate

I keep control
I sway between
determination and exposure

how can i remain offensive?

self-possession drips out of my scuffed skin, water flows out of the vase, lilies begin to whine

how to behead their blossom?
how to clot my blood?
how to block the leak?

wounds i didn’t know existed
begin to suppurate

I open my pores,
i expose myself to survive

My body takes what it needs,
it dominates my destiny

I become both
domination and submission
punishment and ultimate love
cruelty tension and divinity

I endure myself

I preach to myself

my body taught me to be aware
of what cannot be heard and cannot be seen, to perceive without senses

my body taught me
that control is a fragile
construction of trembling minds
that control can be a self made jail
that control is a straitjacket that
you pull over your shoulders and tie tighter and tighter with your arms crossed

my body is path and habit
at the same time
an attentive space of
light and pain and memory
an expanse of exhaustion

my body, [] taught me
that every crack becomes a
compression sometime

So tell me

where is this place in between and
is it cold there?