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THERE'S A CREMATORIUM IN MY LIVING ROOM
At least, once every day,
I will let myself get too hungry,
Oh, I will starve, I will shake with weakness,
Lower blood sugar until I almost fall down,
Go trembling to the refrigerator handle,
As a hanging
slump I will bite my sandwich
As if made from wood spread with dust,
Stiffen both neck and jaw as I chew,
Eradicate all taste,
Chew slowly as if not chewing at all,
Oh, bite the
fallow cheese,
Put your teeth on dull tomato,
Eat of the kitchen to sustain
And then just leave your body hanging there,
Evaporating in the afternoon shadow,
Petrified Formica tree, by the linoleum of no water,
Oh I promise,
I swear
I will drive myself into absolute terror
At least once everyday
For the minimum of one minute
I will hear the barking dogs,
And on Mondays, I do sit around
For an entire hour in a paralyzed gasp
My mouth caught in the cold gray blur of glass window,
Oh, stare, the misery which underlies
Everything is
just beginning to come through.
There are
trees in the walls, swaying
In a darkened breeze,
Can you smell the burial soil?
Fresh death waits in the pacing of my room,
Rented with heart beat
A memorized rhythm of father’s decay.
Woe,
Is me,
The bad memory is living,
I walk in its neural connections,
My only path.
Blessed is He,
Who made this catatonic emotional state
Blessed are all the Fathers of my depression
Oh King, Merciless,
For all the pain of my aloneness
For all the feelings that you can not handle
Oh, Let us commune with your hatred
So pure,
Let yourself live
In the levity of no flesh,
I will die.
Like rain
water in a basin
Fill me with your fear and rage,
I will drink,
Fill me with your sickness and envy,
I will guzzle,
Make rain.
Make your
harsh uttering, dribbled screaming
Make your cries penetrate the empty space between tree branches
As they painstakingly reach through the plaster and paint,
These large wooden saints hold out their tired limbs in despair
And sing to my mind,
Oh bludgeoned and strewn in this field of psychotic children
What was once strong and porous, flowing
Now sags dryly, spread out as withered beads
Don’t even cry,
Tears are only idols arranged for sympathy,
And such convulsion makes assumption.
As if you were
the loved type
Don’t even weep
Not a peep, of that agony!
Paralyze all muscle of communication
Until the face is of the original family stone
Now look in the mirror
But don’t scream,
And see
The elderly infant who has come to speak.
The cold burns
on his face,
As the Blessings explode out,
And all who listen to the ruined
For whom bind deadened air to their eyes
Who attach to the eviscerated molecule
Of gray,
And hysterically sway like flames of fire
If you obey, Oh the
Babies will eat through their wombs,
And exfoliate your name,
Dress in your rhythms of deafness,
They shall devour,
Until all is of the collective static,
Bow down into shallow breath,
And dismiss all sensory information
Of life.
For all those
who listen,
I will replicate your every moment of living
With death,
Drive all emotional warmth far from your heart,
Until your tongue is a useless broken lever,
Press down to strip your ears
Into a bodiless home of wailing screeches,
Walls robbed of all cloth,
Ambition burned, Yes, your future
Will burn as cover letters in a fire.
Leave you small and limp.
Everyone wants
to kill you,
Yet you are very close,
Close in my aloneness,
What you are is the attainment of absence,
I cuddle to the cold,
And know the essence of who I am,
Is longing
And gurgle out the sounds
Of not having,
Is all that
I will ever have,
For what I can not know
Only know what I know,
Where I was born of Hatred in Bliss
Revulsion in Unity,
All my disgust,
And all my Fear,
This communion is all
That I will ever know,
Now, give me the Demerol,
In all my Mother’s Pussy,
Warm twice against her stomach wall
For all eternity,
Coming through her belly,
Ripped out!!!!
Blessed is the crushing woman,
The feeling of death in the first movements
Of life, Even before the knife
Now please give me some more,
I can make a whole new birth
With my mouth, Living, moving in a
A day dream of having nothing at all.
Adam Shechter earned a BA in English from Hunter College, graduating Phi
Beta Kappa. After college he worked in publishing and the collectible
paper business. In the past few years, Mr. Shechter has been studying
psychoanalysis at the Mid-Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis. He has
applied these studies to work with homeless men, and angry children.
Adam has performed with Storahtelling at the Jewish Museum of
Heritage/Holocaust Memorial, and contributes to the on-line/print
journal Mimab amakim. At present, Adam has been attending various open
mics around New York City, and continues to explore his voice. |