unlit wick manifesto

[Doreen Peri]

(2003)

there are no candles lit, no music coming in from
within wherever it comes from, the music which isn't,
the music which is there or not there, or without from
the holes from wherever comes-from goes-to and
there are no wherever-it-goes going anywhere at all,
nothing moving like stars stuck glued to black skies
and i cannot cry the music, i cannot cry drips from eyes,
i cannot make the salt shake loose into lip corners
or warn myself of where they will not land when tears
won't come and candle flames aren't lit and i am angry
because of it, angry because of the truth that i was born
alone and will die alone and in order to save my life,
i must lose it, right? but i don't buy that bullshit for one
goddamn second or sentence which i have been given
from some big chair i can't see there, whoever is sitting
on the throne and so i am alone as are you, so alone
so very one with all of nothing much and in as much
as i wish it weren't so, i know the show will end and so
i will take the roses on top of soil turned over with some
big ugly steel shovel, me residing in the last hovel but
i refuse to grovel or make things appear apparent
through lit candles now just wicks but let me tell you
that it is because of it that i come to you now to inform
you that this is not normal, this pain, this pain is insane,
not normal, something being askew, not that i would ask
of you any answers because you have none, too, nor would
i try to embarrass myself, though i often do, by the telling
or welling up of wet beads of salt again in corners of ducts,
only to be preconceived as fuck it there's something the matter
with a splattering of fears because there is but whether you
want to believe it or whether you don't, we all come into
this place alone and i face you now, stare into your endowment,
your art, your total complete parts separate and not of me
and i ask you, can't you see the ridiculousness of this writing?
can't you see how futile it is the fighting within? but then again
i know there must be answers for the pain, i know we will be
dust one day again, but i don't want to go there now and yet
i am reticent to tell you why because no matter how much love,
no matter the aching, the grief, no matter the chief complaints
of any one of us, they are all just that, futility burnished from
breaths we didn't want to breathe and although i have conceived
two children and want them to find peace, i have no way to convey
any dignity in getting there.

dp- 2.23.2003