I am not totally devoid of usefulness. I can smear ink around like nobody's business. I can tear apart a pen or see something in the corner of my eye. I can use a dictionary to look up spellings. I can look up Croat, crocket, croquet. I can say Croix de Guerre. Maybe Peter's right. The problem with Human Beings is their brains weren't built for this world of Human Habitations. Their brains were built for very daring escapades. I told you already I was a Human Being once. I had a white kitchen and made soup. I learned to make noodles and I would stand there with my shirt off, wrapped in a white apron, and roll out sheets of pasta with an empty bottle. I did the things Human Beings do: I burned the mail, I grew a beard, I made passes at her junky sister, I hid cigarettes in the brick, I eavesdropped on the neighbor's amazing climaxes, I got thoroughly drunk, drunk to my heels, drunk till my soul was coming up for air.
I remember standing in the dirt lot behind the house where we rented a railroaded apartment among the other apartments, with beautiful French doors boarded up to make a wall. I'd go out with the stale crusts of bread I learned to bake and broke the crusts up under a wild unkempt bush that towered over a jeep someone had abandoned. Birds came from everywhere, slowly. You could lie in the bed with the window open and feel the Canadian cold in the early autumn air and hear the birds singing to each other in the bush that grew over the abandoned jeep. You could lie in there. It was quiet sometimes enough to count the different kinds of birds by their singing. You could hear them there. I wasn't a Human Being very often. Besides, I was lying. It was Spring. You could feel the ice in Canada. It wouldn't leave the air. Pant pant pant. Wag wag wag. You very easily could take a suck of water, swim down down down. But, stupidly, you don't. You go on treading water like a Human Being waiting for the frenzy.
Do you know what I'm talking about when I say Empty Kitchen? Do you know that I mean The Kitchen Was Empty But I Was Baking Bread? Do you know that means For Her For Her? Do you know what I love about Li Po? Yĭng rù píng qiāng jiāng shuĭ líu. Magic Mountains. Do you know that when I say Magic Mountains I mean God Is Walking In The Clouds? I don't mean he is looking for any lost school children. I mean God Is A Magic Mountain Walking Alone In The Clouds. Do you see what I mean? The room wasn't empty. Then it was. I was a Human Being. Then I wasn't. I had a girl. Then I didn't. Do see that Red Army means Loving You Loving Me? Do you see the baboons running in the river? Do you see the baboons listening to Modern Music? Do you see that Modern Music means Red Army, Baboons Running In The River, Loving You Loving Me? Let's all listen to the Modern Music. Let's all say, all together, I am a baboon running in the river. The philosophers in the back are welcome to step outside. This is not the time for semantic jousting.
My armpits smell like fried fish. My crotch is rotting. There is really a ghost in this apartment. It says, throw yourself off the balcony. It says, make the red tea. It says, write about Her and write about Him. It says, climb over the railing to the balcony below. It says, you have no one and nothing. The ghost is God. The ghost is God walking around inside my head, inside the apartment inside my head. How can one man's body produce so many smells? My piss smells of mead, my armpits of fried fish, my mouth of red tea and dog shit, my feet of Leviathan, my hands of suicide, my asshole of Nolan Ryan, my batteries of Khrushchev, my pituitary gland of Soviet Georgia, my teeth of barbiturates, my heart of baboons running in the river, my liver of sea lions, my pancreas of a .357, my eyes of dandelion sirloin, my cock of the maggot devouring chance.
Andrew Haley’s poems, short stories and translations have appeared in Western Humanities Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Zone, Quarterly West, The Smoking Poet, Stop Smiling, Otis Nebula and Sugar House Review.
Editor's note: This is Part 3 of a six-part series. We'll run a section each Monday through August 23.
Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.
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