Pennhurst 2

I’m here to tell you a story. It’s my story, really, and certainly not anyone else’s. Passing priest of the new psychological order. Wears the white robes, follows the arcane texts. Passes out communion. They call it an SSRI, but it’s all the same. “This is for my own good”? Swallow. [ ] will tell you quick before IT starts fuzzing, the moments get long, knottingtied to the air, painfully attaching you to the hollowness of this present moment with taut intestines. You still feel the numbness, you know? That’s a reassuring companion. Keeps you through the long days and even longer nights. Only this lingering sensation of numbness, of what has come before and no longer touches me directly, keeps me breathing, keeps me glued to this fleeting nothing, to this pale life. Yes, it has been said, I may be finished with the past, but the past is not finished with me. I am trapped, looking backwards.

Thick pain in the chest brings me back. Right under the sternum. That’s the thinbelly hollow spot. Like swallowing saliva, keeping awake. You just kind of do it, don’t think about it or anything. If you do think about it, you feel kind of sick. Spit in a glass and swallowed it afterwards. Got sick. So now it’s white rooms that go on forever and priests up close. Haven’t seen Agent or Jesus in months now. Just swallowed back up. Didn’t understand them. Don’t think they meant to be understood. Jesus of the eternal return. Had to show up and turn everything upside down.

White walls are here because they caught me Working. Bombed the Hive building. While the flames burned around me, there was dancing and singing. Something the Agent said came back to me then, a commentary, a running monologue. “Millions of souls were freed from slavery to the Great Eye, Novus Ordo Seclorum, Eye of Shiva, blaster of towers… Of course the gate-keepers brand me ‘terrorist.’ It is no matter, through the power of association the entire structure will topple in due time. This is high ritual, and the ultimate sacrifice for the survival and evolution of my species, which I love so dearly. Even my friends, my teachers, have disowned me. Horus, the bull of your father is avenged. We can now return to our mother, whole. The dove resides within the blasted tower, and within that destruction, that madness, we lay the seed of the purest aspect of life…”