text by Ariana Reines
The thoughts that think the mind
in which they revolve
are produced through the landscape in which we move.
I was pursued by pigeons
and doves with rings around their necks.
I was pursued by dead then living
then immaterial birds.
I was beset with a capacity
to see life and death as a range of colours.
I also saw how though more loosely now
the net that would trap me inside my life
still hung over me. Over it, over us,
over me and my naked, formless, life itself
as it had in my earliest years when I bled for weeks on end
when I never slept
when I allowed vicious things to be done to me
and when I in fact wished for them and invited them.
I saw how I was held by the reflection
in the screen of my computer
when it was in the off position.
But why am I trying to talk to you now
in this of all media?
Not because I’ve seen things no one can explain
and for which no lineage credentialed me.
Not because I wished to pass out of the world and managed to
or because I wished to pass back into it
and was clemently received.
Not because I know anything
though I might know some thing
or even because I’m burning with desire to make myself known to you
at last
in the secret place I’ve prepared for us.