Come on then, I dare you: ask me a question about joy. I'm as confused about it as you; the way it stumbles when you pretend to be drunk off a glass of champagne. There are hands in my chest building beautiful, fragile machines so tiny they would make you smile; set free it would be a parade of silver figurines spinning in maddening circles, shooting sparks in silver and red; pieces rendered from the debris of everything around us by the tiniest hands you have never seen smaller than those escaping from your fingertips to reach beneath my skin building tiny mountains, setting explosions in my chest. Come on, I'm waiting: ask me a question about joy. But whisper it, softly so the engineers don't wake just yet: when it is only you and I, ask me a question about joy; so that your lips may move with closed eyelids and you may not hear my answer but I may tell it to your hair plastered by aggressive pillows into a chaos just for me, tied into tangles, fixed before sunrise. Have your coffee and move outside again so their filthy air may touch you and filthy eyes can watch you pull up your perfect stockings on some subway car where the whispers are drowned out by metal and voices: drowned out by God and all his nonsense. When you come back, I will be waiting: ask me a question about joy, but wait a moment, for the silence when the noise escapes my head I will let you see the copper orbs and wind up tops of tin. I have built them all day every day for half a decade waiting for you to ask if you can see them, to ask me what the blueprints are. I know you have drawn up some plans. Ask me a question about Joy. Because the colors are getting darker and the neon has grown so bright. I want to see your metallic machines spinning loose with mine; sparking, buzzing, short bursts of robot life sparkling to a stammer, stumbling when you pretend to be drunk off a glass of champagne. Ask me a question about joy. There is an army of graphite ballerinas programmed to spin counter clock wise slowly gaining speed until they explode: They need to explode, and I need you to watch them. There are firecrackers and perfect mixtures of gun powders to show you rainbows; to melt wax to crackling bursts of sulfites in their perfect crimson minds; Just ask me a single question about Joy, and I would show you that it does not alight like pigeons on sidewalks as you cast out your bread; it is built by blueprints you have always held so tightly it was swallowed through your pores. It is always in your blood, it is waiting to be carved into tiny scraps of wood, waiting to be assembled with screws the size of atoms; nanotechnological computer chips built of paper clips and tacks. Ask me about joy, because I do not know how to build it; but I yearn, I yearn, I ache to reveal my history of clumsy attempts so that the sparks of try will shine in your eyes to light your room to warm your hands when it is dark and you are shaking it is always dark and we are always shaking and we never, ever whisper. -e. _______________________________________________ Five7Five mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/five7five
