Beyond Recognition: A Monologue in 12 Sections -by Norman Lock

CHARACTER

A MAN 30-50. He is blindfolded and bound to a chair.

He is dressed in pajamas.

1.

  (Silence, then:)

MAN

Where to begin?

  (Pause)

It began
yesterday, or the day before I

  (Irresolutely)

It's difficult the passage of time is difficult
to tell

If I could feel my face
if I could feel how bad I need a shave
whether there's a beard I could tell how long
something anyway, a guess, an
estimate—that would be something, a beard
as it is it's hard to say how long I've been here
with your eyes covered, it's hard, and the fact that there's no sound,
  nothing but silence
is also difficult

But let's say it's been two days
two or three—three days at most I've been like this
three days ago I came down to—this is important
(Irresolutely)
I think it's important
three days ago I came down to breakfast and my wife said, “You're not   yourself today.”
I was sitting at the table spooning sugar into the cup
one, two spoonfuls of sugar, sitting there
at the table
not saying a word
I had a headache, my head was splitting
she sat across the table from me, watching what I was doing with the   sugar

I looked up I
stopped stirring the coffee
I looked at her—“What do you mean?”

“Nothing it's just that—”
she shrugged, went back to buttering her toast
the way she buttered her toast always annoyed me
she used too much butter—that was one thing
and she spent an excessive amount of time spreading it around
because of all the butter, there was much too much of it
so she had to work it in, into the bread, the toast
with her knife
her butter knife
back and forth, back and forth
as if she were plastering a wall, I
it annoyed me

“What do you mean I'm not myself today?”

She shrugged again—first the right shoulder, then both shoulders
  together
I put down the spoon
it clattered against the saucer
loud, loudly
so that she'd know my mood, that I wasn't going to be shrugged off

“It's just an expression,” she said,
“a figure of speech.”

She was right
it was just an expression, one I'd heard before
many times
an innocent remark
I'm sure she didn't mean anything by it
it was just one of those phrases people use
you hear them all your life
but then
one day you hear it as if for the first time
really hear it
what it means and the world opens up dangerously
yawns in your face
and you're on the edge
the edge of the abyss
which is another expression—two, in fact
two figures of speech we've heard all our lives without really considering
  what they mean
and then suddenly you do
you do consider it
and, Christ, it's like the world opens up

which is what happened three days ago over breakfast

“What do you mean I'm not myself today?” I repeated

“Well, for one thing, you never come down to breakfast in your pajamas.”

That's true, I don't

“You didn't shave this morning and you always do.”

Also true
but that morning I couldn't stand the thought of it, didn't want to feel the
  sting of the water and
and that scraping
I had a headache, I was, in fact, hung over, I
I've been drinking lately
drinking, I mean, more than usual
down in the cellar
I'd taken to sitting down there nights, watching TV and drinking to get
  away from them a little while
I wanted
to think
and there was always such a racket, such a lot of noise
so for the last month or so I'd been going down the cellar after dinner to
  think and watch TV and get
not drunk
in a better frame of mind
that night I'd gotten into a wonderful frame of mind
my mind was
glistening

(Silence)
She was right, I wasn't my self, but then
if not myself
who
who was I?

Well, that's when it all began, I think
with that one simple observation of hers
a meaningless observation unmotivated by
she meant nothing, it was not malicious, simply it wasn't like me to come
  to breakfast unshaved and in my pajamas

I should have let it drop
I should have let the whole thing drop right there
but, like I said, the world opened up at that moment and I stared open
  mouthed at the abyss
looked it in the face
if I wasn't myself then who was I?

(Silence)

(Laughs)
It wasn't something I believed in, this idea that there's something
something inside
you can't see it, touch it, x-ray it, find it with a knife
you know what I'm talking about, don't you, this
I always believed in the body, the brain, the mind, memory—all that,
and that's what we are
that is what makes us who we are and different
but I haven't lost any of that
I haven't lost my mind or my memory
I still have my body, my brain still works
I'm talking, thinking
so what've I lost, what's missing exactly?

And yet I feel that something is
missing, something
essential
but I don't know what
not to be yourself—what does that mean exactly?

(Pause)
What am I doing here?

I went outside to take some pictures
I like to take pictures, taking pictures is something that makes me happy
I went out after that disturbing conversation with my wife, left her to
  finish buttering her toast
I didn't bother to change
I went out in my pajamas
what did it matter? at that point it didn't matter one bit how I was dressed
I did have the presence of mind to put on my raincoat, my shoes—I'm not
  a complete idiot
it had been raining
it was a cold, damp morning
damp and foggy, a fog floated above the trees
white
a white morning
the tops of the trees, the roofs had disappeared
the fog was really thick up there
I wasn't going to take any pictures that day
I'd have to find something else to do now that I wasn't going to work
I had no intention of going to work
that day or maybe ever again
to hell with it! I never liked it
I saw no point in it and now that I wasn't myself I saw even less
that woman—she could go earn her own daily bread to butter
I was through
I was never one of those people who defined himself by what he does for
  a living, no
maybe that's what went wrong, I didn't have that prop
if I had liked my job, if I had thought it was important I could have kept
  going no matter what
habit would have carried me there and back
my whatever—my self could have dissolved, washed away
like dirt or sand
washed away in the rain and left the props, the
frame, the
or—say like an old umbrella somebody tosses
it sits in the weeds, the bushes
after a while the fabric, whatever, rots away until there's nothing left but
  the struts
I could have been like that umbrella if my job had meant something to
  me
if my wife had
meant something
apparently she didn't
it didn't
nothing did apparently
the cat, the kids

(Silence)
I walked around
I went and stood at the newspaper stand and looked at the headlines
they didn't interest me, they didn't concern me
they had nothing to do with me
I was never a political person

And all the time the fog was getting thicker
and lower

What to do?

I started walking home
where my things were, my books and bottles
my camera equipment
went down the street and round the corner and
nothing
it was gone

The fog was sitting there where the house should have been
I felt around in it
nothing, nothing
not a sign, not a clue
just a vacant lot full of trash, old plumbing, and a tub
an old-fashioned tub with feet

(Silence)
I've made an assumption
I'm assuming there's somebody here besides me
that I haven't been talking to myself all this time
that, uh, I'm in a room a
an enclosed something—a space
a room
and that I'm not alone
or
if I am
alone
then somebody is watching me
over a TV monitor
or listening to me over a radio
or something
the alternative is too terrible

(Silence as he listens intently)
You're very quiet

As I was walking the streets looking for my house, a car passed by
my car
and sitting inside were my wife and kids
wife in the front seat, kids in the back, and next to my wife a man
a complete stranger, I'd never seen him before
I had the feeling that he had replaced me
that he'd somehow
somehow
what?
filled up the place that
that when the world opened up and swallowed me several mornings ago I was
reconstituted, my molecules or
atoms—juices? something
mutated
in a flash, the blinking of an eye
in the space between the syllables of a single word
I was out and he was in
he was me and I was
I didn't know who

I started to follow the car
took a few steps in the direction it had gone
but where would it get me? what was the point?
and then it, too, disappeared in the fog

I stood there in silence
before moving on

Inside the silence was a tiny sound, a
hum, a
like a ringing in your ears
the world sounded very far away
because of the fog maybe, faint and far off
as if heard through a sickness
the fog wrapped itself around me
all the white morning wrapped me

(Silence)
I remember dreaming that night
several dreams
very vivid
I've been wondering if that's when it happened
I changed
something happened—why not a dream?
In one of them—I assume it was a dream
it may have been real I suppose although it's unlikely
isn't it?
I was sleeping, I woke
sitting on a chair by the bed was an old man
he didn't speak
just sat there smoking cigarettes
an old man with white hair
looking at the floor and smoking silently
I knew he was God
don't ask me how
it was dark in the room
a dark night outside the window
but there was a little light on the floor
around the chair where he sat
which made me think it was he

Who else could it have been, shedding a ring of light?

I didn't notice what brand he was smoking

I fell asleep again

Or dreamed it
and when I woke it was light out and in the room
and he was gone

Odd, the chair was there where he'd sat and looked at the floor
I might have put it there myself
I don't remember
I might have
I moved it back under the desk where it belonged
I went back and looked at the floor again
for, I don't know
evidence
a ring on the wood left by the light
ash
I found nothing
the floor was clean and unmarked
If it weren't for the chair
I might have put it there myself for some reason known only to drunks
I shook it off and went downstairs to breakfast neglecting as you know to
  change out of my pajamas and shave

To continue

There's
how can I explain?
Inside I'm becoming raw
do you understand raw?
As if I'd been scraped
my insides
scraped clean with a knife
or as if I'd swallowed ground glass
yes, that's more what I mean
ground-up glass
swallowed
I hurt inside
you picture thousands of tiny cuts
red wounds
sensitive linings
membranes
fissures
red and oozing
not a pretty picture
better not talk about it

But what I want to say is it's strange now that I'm lost I should feel all
this be so sensitive
I never suffered in my life
a twinge here and there
in the teeth, headache
a touch of arthritis, neuralgia
the usual aches and pains
nothing major, not what I'm feeling now
it's as if the
the thing that's gone
call it what you like
got torn out, extracted
like a tooth from the gum or
when they knock a building down
a skyscraper
after they've hauled away the debris
nothing's left except the hole

I had hoped—thought, I'd thought to feel nothing at all under the cir-
  cumstances
that there would be nothing to feel, no pain when no self, no person to
  feel

I was wrong like a fish, a single-celled organism feels
or a plant winding towards light feels I feel
I was wrong
you can't get rid of it, feeling
it lies coiled in the skin, the cell
a thin ribbon of steel
waiting to rend

They drove off into the fog and I haven't seen them since

I was taken into custody a little while later
I didn't exactly see them
the ones who grabbed me, I
they grabbed me from behind
I never heard them coming
they must have been hiding in the fog
or lost in it
they put a bag over my head, a sack
a rough
burlap
it smelled like onions, an old onion sack maybe
they put it over my head and tied a rope lightly round my neck to keep it
  from coming off
I felt panic

Because of the sack more than anything
it was difficult to breathe through the burlap
the onion smell
not entirely dark, not black
I could see light
dimly
they treated me roughly
although they were careful not to strangle me with the rope—that gave
  me hope
they pushed me along the sidewalk
into a car
shoved me into the back seat, I fell onto the floor
someone got in beside me, the door
slammed
the car
started
nobody said a word
we drove for a while
nobody spoke
the whole time I was on the floor
lying on the side of my face
light flickered through the burlap
we must have been going under bridges or maybe through woods, the
  light flickering through the trees
no one made a sound
the car hummed
the floor was hot against my face
finally it stopped

Once inside, somebody went through my pockets
still not a word
looking for—what, papers
my identity papers?
I had none
I was in my raincoat and pajamas
besides, I had lost it
I was certain I no longer resembled in the slightest any picture of me
  taken before my, my
transformation if that's what it is
but why should God wish me to be transformed
assuming the old man who came and sat by my bed
a chainsmoker
was he, the ancient of days?

Unless it's a fulfillment of the promise, the
prophesy that we
one day, one day to come
we're to be made over
like new
given a new identity

If so, what's mine
and is that why I've been brought here
to receive it?

Or has one thing nothing to do with the other?
have they brought me here because I was seen wandering around in a fog
  in my pajamas
just another vagrant
which I've become
having no home
having mysteriously lost my house?

That stranger who drove away with my wife and kids, he might not have
  been a stranger at all, but me
the me I used to be
who is now changed
beyond recognition
a stranger in fact to all shreds of his former self
that skin

I don't know
it's possible I suppose it's possible
most things are
in the infinitely complicated scheme of things
possible
as we've seen
as history teaches
not to mention our own experience which they say, they're always telling
  us
is the best teacher

Since then, nothing
not a word, not a sound
perhaps
no, I was going to say maybe they don't speak my language but that
  wouldn't have silenced them
it would have emphasized my isolation, my
incomprehension
I wonder
I wonder what's worse
the effect, I mean, on me
this silence
or if they spoke in a language I don't understand
as if I were a text undergoing translation
which in the long run the most harmful?

Assuming they aren't dumb

Unlikely
unlikely to be waylaid by a gang of mutes
a religious order sworn to silence
for what reason?
for a reason to be revealed in time
God's own?

I think the answer lies in something more mundane, more commonplace
  inclining towards my earliest speculations that I was taken into custody
  for loitering in my pajamas, on a public street, with no visible means of
  support, no place of residence
in the visible universe anyway
with a camera
suspicious
that was confiscated and
I assume
opened
in a dark room
its tightly furled secrets prodded
poked
poked and prodded with a fat finger belonging to some functionary of
  whatever's responsible for having me detained

What was on that roll, I wonder
what pictures?

I've been trying to remember what was on the roll
what pictures I had taken

If God had been in my room, what effect did he have on the film, I
  wonder?
God is light, at which end of the spectrum does he exist?
Is he visible light or invisible?
Invisible surely—then how did I see him?
Does he emit x-rays or ultraviolet?
Can he penetrate the closed eyelids, those curtains of blood?
Can you see him if you wear special glasses like the kind you put on at
  a 3-D movie?
What about infrared? would they see him through their instruments,
  stumbling across the battlefield at night?
Maybe he's fogged the film
ghosted it
maybe when they develop it they'll see his face but won't recognize it
  through the cigarette smoke
who knows?
Not me
I haven't a clue, not a
there may be nothing there at all
nothing to see at all
an overexposure
just the blackened negative, the empty white print
the nothing that comes from too much light
burned by an excess of light
the radiance
his
heavenly brightness
burning out the film
turning it opaque
impenetrable
so that the print, the white paper print, can't take the imprint finally of the
  light shining through the enlarger
in the last stage
obscures it
arrests it, the light, so that there is no image
nothing
nothing to see
nothing there
nothing at all

Which proves nothing about God's existence one way or the other

(Pause)
I only hope there's nothing incriminating on the roll, nothing
damning
although what that might be I can't imagine, being innocent
a perfectly innocent amateur photographer
family photos
the wife and kids
the house, backyard, the car, the cat
all of it gone
vanished in the fog
snapshots

(An anguished cry, finally)
What am I doing here?

It only goes to show it's dangerous to lose your identity
you can replace your passport, your papers
your collection of family photos
if you've had the foresight to store the negatives in another
  place, in case of fire or theft
otherwise, they are irreplaceable
those images you
you'll have to start again taking new pictures
or with a new family
starting your life over
sometimes it's easier that way
easier to begin a new life than to cry inconsolably over the loss of a lot of
  old pictures
but your identity, that's another story
there's nothing you can do
when it's gone it's gone
you just have to wait for it to come back
and if it doesn't, well
there's little you can do about it
practically nothing
except wait

There's no master you, no template
no negative you can store in another place and use to reproduce yourself
and as to going out and starting over, well
it's not that easy, is it?
starting over, not easy to set yourself up somewhere else
because you're empty, you've been emptied out
voided
empty
with nothing to go on
nothing that you might use to reconstruct even a rudimentary self

It's not the same as amnesia where you don't even know your name or
  whether you have a wife, children, a car, a house, a cat
when everything's been erased you can start fresh, let people and events
  write all over you
sooner or later you'll remember who you are or become somebody new
but this, I've been left words, my name, pictures in my head of wife,
  children, car, house and cat, can see them all here in the dark so
so it won't be easy to build over top of them
as if they had never been
even though they might not recognize me if they saw me, so changed am
  I though in what way changed I'm still not sure I understand

Close your eyes and listen
I'm a voice coming at you in the dark
close your eyes
all black
my world
behind the blindfold
black and empty
the world has fallen away, I
afraid
that
later
later they'll come
stub out cigarettes on my skin
put wires into my ears
shove hot wires up
in
beat me with iron rods
beat me

Sometimes I feel something terrible hovering close to me
it beats against my cheek like a wing, why have they brought me here?

When I'm released
if I am
to where
where released and into what when they finally let me go
if they do
if they do
where will I be then?

Where I am, what's it like?
I haven't seen it
I haven't run my hands over the walls
if there are any walls
I may not be in the narrow space I imagine but in a public square, a
  compound, a dark and endless plain
though there is no wind, no sound, too silent for out of doors
a gymnasium or some vast hall,
an auditorium,
a courtroom sitting bound and blindfolded before silent judges

(Angry shout)
Is anyone there?

I can't stand much more of this, how do they expect me to stand this
silent treatment?
I'm confused
I can't get a clear picture of where I am
what they could possibly want from me
am I in a hole, is that it
a hole, a well
the well of despair?

I'm beginning to fall apart
I'm beginning to
I

(Silence)
I had a skin condition once
eczema
the skin began to flake from around my nose, my eyes, my eyelids, the
  corners of my mouth—flaked, fell away
I was afraid it would go right on flaking down to the bone
little by little
until the bone, my skull showed through, a skull
of course there was no danger of that happening
still every morning when I woke a new layer of dried skin had peeled
  away during the night and was left hanging in shreds from my face
  ready to be sloughed off into the washrag
my morning ablutions, washing away skin, an
erosion
an erasure
I was being slowly erased by my own hand

I want to talk about photography
what I like about it is its fixity
that you can fix someone, a face, a scene
an image, arrest it, stop it from changing
only photography can do that
and death, death can do it, too, except it's more complicated, for the
  person being fixed by death, because the process of disintegration does
  change the dead
what doesn't change is our image of them
the mental picture I'm talking about stays with us
for a long time anyway
for a long time when we think about someone who has died the picture
  we have of him or her is how we last saw him or her alive
but of course the person who dies changes beyond recognition

I took pictures of everything!

Something else that's interesting
it has to do with pictures
is the way pictures—printed pictures turn blue in the sun
you've seen that before, haven't you? how pictures hung in store windows
  after a while they turn blue?
At my wife's hairdresser's I watched the faces of women in the window
photographs illustrating different hairstyles
beautiful women, achingly beautiful if you know what I mean
women rarely seen in nature, models of a perfection that is not of this
  world
our world anyway
I'd watch them from the sidewalk as I stood outside waiting
for my wife to be made over
(A short laugh)
watched them month after month turn blue as the sun stripped away—
  first the yellow, it's weak and the first to disappear, then the magenta,
  then the black, leaving just the blue, the blue girls looking as if
  they'd drowned
or taken cyanide
the beautiful drowned girls floating behind the window
vanishing in sudden reflections of the street
fading like a memory

But photographs never fade
at least not for several lifetimes
which is long enough

Am I dreaming? I may be dreaming

I should have been a professional photographer and sifted life a bit at a
  time, frame by frame, photo by photo
better than a librarian
writing's of no use to anyone
stories
no one cares anymore
it hasn't anything to do with anything
life
life on a page
marks on a page, the one has nothing at all to do with the other
just words
pictures lie closer to what's visible and what's not visible can't be
  rendered
except in dreams
and as soon as you put a dream to paper it loses its reality
or unreality
it isn't convincing any longer

If someone were to take my picture now would I be a blank
a nothing
air
not even smoke
just thin air?

My happiest times were spent in the darkroom
there I was in control
and it is so restful
the dark
so easy on the eyes, so
and the way a face, a scene
life composes itself at the bottom of the developer bath
emerges under the red light
and is fixed there
so that not even death can alter it

In the dark
the silent room
not a soul around
just images blooming indelibly at the bottom of the tray
underwater
wavering like the faces of the drowned
in the bath
sprawling pastures, meadows dotted with flowers quietly submerged in
  the bath
mountains ringed by flood
streets and houses
faces smiling up at me from their watery grave

What does it mean to be dead?

On the subject of death all the experts are silent

Still
you ought to be able to guess
have an informed opinion
informed by what you've experienced in living
life being, as we are told, a mere preparation
an exercise for death
only less so

Is that what this is an exercise?

Or am I dead?

The day I was born someone went to the store and bought a gun
a high-powered rifle with sharpshooter's scope
it sat in the closet or on a shelf
until on another day
the day I got married maybe
a beautiful day as I remember
he went to the store and bought a box of bullets
beautiful in their brass jackets
now he is driving toward the outskirts of town
the light flickers over his hands as he drives under the trees
now he is walking through the woods
he's in no hurry, he's early, he'll have plenty of time
he carries the rifle cradled in his arms
the weight of the bullets makes the pocket of his hunting jacket sag
soon he will walk into the clearing
he's early, he has time to smoke a cigarette
listen to the birds
the wind in the trees
they're bringing me to him as if to a wedding

A marriage
arranged the day I was born
he's been waiting patiently all these years
the day has come
the bullets fit the gun perfectly
they're made for each other
we're made for each other
there's not the slightest doubt that this is what I was born to do
all of us
there's a bullet waiting for all of us
it's got our name on it, yours and mine
no matter if we change our name, change our identity, we can't change
  that
our destiny
which is death
in an open clearing
or an enclosed space
the jumping off point between this world and the next

If there is
if there is

I'm dividing
what's left is
breaking up
coming apart
dissolving
into bits
atoms
bits
particles of consciousness I
I'm in the river and the water tears at me
the water floods me
the water is eating me away
where's my mind going?
I'm disappearing
I can feel the life running out of me like sand
I'm being airbrushed out

Disappeared
I—no
no I, no me
disappeared
gone

(Silence)
I imagine my own death
I imagine it more strongly than I have ever done
I am walking the beach
it is late afternoon and the light is falling
I take a gun from my pocket
I can feel the ring of the barrel hard and cold against my forehead
I'll fire and fall face down in the water after I fire, I won't know anything
  more
I see myself lying face down in the water with my feet in the wet sand
the waves roll over me, tug each time at the wound
they suck the blood little by little from my forehead until I'm white
white as a ghost

When I was a kid I used to have nightmares
I'd wake in the middle of the night, shaking
once my mother came into my room and found me trembling
I told her about my nightmares
she said she could suck them out of my head so that I wouldn't have them
  anymore
every night before I went to sleep she'd come into my room and suck my forehead
I didn't have them after that
not for a long time anyway
not till now
now that there's no one to suck them out

I imagine myself lying face down while the water sucks my head clean of
  nightmares
no more bad dreams ever again
unless you dream in the ground
do you dream when you're dead and if you do, what do you dream?

Of worms singing in your ears
and what do the worms sing?

Something shrill and terrible

No more talk about death
no more

Today someone brought me water
he didn't say anything
still, I'm not forgotten
someone brought me water
the cup at my lip—I expected vinegar
or urine
“I'm not political,” I said
he didn't answer
they must know that
that I'm not political
it was water, plain water, it had gone flat, but it was water
he said nothing
I smelled him
his sweat, his smell
something he'd just eaten was on his breath
meat
liquor
he gave me water

My expectations are high
I haven't been forgotten
I'm not political
they must have examined the photographs
innocent scenes
apolitical
they could not have interpreted them any other way
pictures of my wife, the kids, the cat, the house
street scenes, scenes of the countryside
all innocent all
banal
a waste of film
my expectations are high
soon perhaps I'll be fed
they know now that I'm not political
I've been watered, soon I hope to be fed
and then my hands
untied
the blindfold
removed
I've been forgiven

Perhaps my new identity is being readied now
my new papers, my
prints, a new face
some new I I've never yet imagined
I'll leave here a new man
soon
if not today
tomorrow
if not tomorrow, the day after

It's not so bad
this is not so bad, it's not so bad here
it could be worse
I haven't been beaten
I expected to be beaten
I haven't been abused
no one has hurt me
no one has touched me
spat at me, reviled me
hurt me
I wish someone would touch me
not hurt, just touch, the slightest pressure

A hand grazing mine
a finger
a hand, a finger—something to interrupt this weightlessness, this
  loneliness
to be beaten would be something anyway
to be hurt
not hurt too much but
a little
a small hurt to let me know I'm not living among ghosts

To be given water isn't enough
to be given food isn't enough

To be spoken to

A voice in the dark

A voice to come out of the dark
at me

Into me

A voice would be enough

I am waiting for the earth to give up its dead
I am waiting for them to shake off their coats of clay
of dust
of indifference
I am waiting for them to shake off sleep
I'm with them
the apolitical dead
I am with them under the ground
our final resting place
our common ground
I'm waiting for them to come and embrace me
wind their bony fingers in my hair
dissolve my bonds, my body, my bounds
lead me to where we all dance the last ecstatic dance
waiting for the roof to be pried off and for whatever it is that is outside to
  spill in like water
like blood
like light

I see them now
they are bruised with shadow
they bear the marks of their torture
they are silent, they've lost their tongues
pink erasers, their tongues lie quietly in desk drawers
everything is a blank
documents
passports
papers—everything has been erased
the words have scuttled from the pages of books leaving them empty
the words have crawled into the corners, into the shadows in the corners
  of the room, into the sprawling dark
the dead are approaching slowly with their slender means

Someone's coming
the dead flinch back into shadow
press themselves against walls
jibber unintelligibly that they have no politics
he's coming to lay the black pill of silence on my tongue
he will show me the instruments
he will instruct me in pain
he is coming for me with his radiant knife
to cut out my tongue

I know who I am
I know it now

I will root here
my skin will whiten
my bones will dissolve and my skin become loathsome
my body will become a finger
a thing belonging to the dark
fingering the earth
blind urgency in the dry earth
making a place in the belly of the ground
listening without ears to the dirt give way
a vein in the earth waiting to be stripped out

I know what I am
a thing belonging to the dark
a root
my new identity
sleep
the long vegetable sleep
then dirt
then stone and the sleep of stone
then stone
then nothing •

Norman Lock