Screens

Hi everyone, my eyes would always go astray, wherever they could, getting lost (I know), and finding shelter, oh, here and there, in screens, other peoples', little fireflies toward zapping glow, it wasn't my fault except by neglect, which, I mean, ugh, hardly a crime, like I could be held responsible for something self-possessed! No, I wouldn't go out of my way, I wouldn’t drift from my clear, diligent way, to snoop, to investigate, to take interest in a stranger’s business on his or her own phone, nor my colleague’s laptop, not a crush’s — an unrequited something’s — not her television monitor. But they (my eyes) found such welcome shelter there, a quiet little fire (forget the bugs) to sleep beside before setting off for the arduous war of [some other thing; destination? destiny?]. Go on.

Ok I mean I never meant to see, to read, to attempt, and finally, after much attempt, to understand, to find myself within, sink into, allow passage into me, to hold inside, and finally to discharge, (for example), by my memory, flunky as it is, what happened at Dunn’s, some time, some then, just us and her, Dunn’s sister, older or younger than he — my age, at least back then (he, I mean; Dunn) — uncertain; but certainly not my age (her, I mean hers). I mean if I could I would but I could not stop them (eyes again) from their renegade cavalier debonair deviance, pushed by an invisible hand, gazing through the little gleam in her bedroom door as I had, as I would, so many times before, (eyes) entering data into me which I had not yet the talent nor time to analyze.

It was not Dunn’s room, it was not like Dunn’s, she was not like Dunn, she was not Dunn, all that (she) was not I saw and could be seen, but what could not be seen was what what not was, but what I saw that once was not what could not be seen before. A glimmer on the far wall glew, she sat abed, aface, so that the silhouette of her horsetailed, headphoned head was haloed by the scene afore, which twitched as such:

Two men on opposite end of screen faced each other in hieroglyphic pose; fists and elbows raised swaying in geometries as yet to me unschooled. Stage left, in tattered white rags and a monk’s rope tied about the waist, anatomy beneath skin consisting entirely of muscle and skeletal support for same. Stage right, similar build wrapped in silky blacks, bandit’s mask, accents of red. Both hideous, dire figures glaring across an urban marketplace run riot-ish, windows moderately smashed which failed to faze the left, white fighter’s bare feet, abandoned machinery, smoldering, I, transfixed — Dunn’s sister hypnotically swayed, murmured, face alit by fiery scene ahead — and [some duration of time] passed as the man in white in concert with her jittering in cross legged position, violated his — its — opponent, sound and image implying, besides muscle within body, blood — more spilled than could be encased, I thought to think — bone crunched, Dunn’s sister, pale, small, (whatever a girl is), grunted along, then, then, yelled!, mocking, humiliating, words as violent as the avatar’s fists, and her hands gripped an unseen thing. The monk’s right hand entered its enemy’s mouth, she motioned, and out he pulled the innerness of what was the black clad man, robes and surface layers of the victim’s body puddled in the street, resistant muscular innards raised overhead, torso ripped from legs at the base of its spine, and she, Dunn’s sister, continued her mockery of [?].

So whatever sound I made was refused by my dumb (I mean deaf) ears, but not Dunn’s sister’s — is there anything she couldn’t hear? — she turned, yellow light of door halved her face from the blue light of the hideous captivating thing on the TV screen, and she must have invited me in!, sweet entry I could — but would — no longer long for, but could — but would not — not savor as all sensory pistons fired to withstand and grasp that to which she had unknowingly — is there anything she didn’t know? —exposed to me (her murderer, his murder). She sat me on her bed, placed plastic toy in my hand — something said, “Grip,” I gripped — she faced my face toward her monitor, and she invited me to take her place or to take the place opposite her; and when she invited me to deathless kill faceless dozens, or, by her, for such — to I — be done — Dunn yelled and gripped me from her grasp and pulled me from her room and stole me from her battering, but Dunn now gone, there is no other to grip my grasp away from all the hapless happy wandering — finding, for example, a sight from which my eyes reconnoitered so much qualitative, quantitative data, so much information, so much entertainment, like a dog’s proud gift of bird carcass to master (or parent, as they’re called in the industry), this screen on the phone of a stranger in a strange hand, at a later time, in a later place — the late Dunn no longer, sisters need not enter here, go on! Get on with it — um. Again; a sight from which my eyes reconnoitered so much qualitative, quantitative data, so much information, so much entertainment, like a dog’s proud gift of bird carcass to master (or “parent,” as they’re called in the industry), screen on the phone of a stranger in hand of same, image captured bird’s eye view, we two (stranger and I) bussed, bussing toward some somewhere, et cetera et cetera, I apprehended phone glowing alit a conversation, header, “Veronica (Work),” living body and life of scene as follows:

(The hands typed, spoke, at my gaze having already spoken) “. . .such was already the case, I guess, even before puberty,” and prepared the next message, “But it was the only way I knew how,” send, continued, “and I didn’t realize there was any other way until I was 18 years old and watched pornography for the first time, which I guess must sound pretty surprising, ha ha, but before then I had been practicing what medical experts I now know refer to as ‘prone masturbation,’” before sending, he deleted his message, rewrote, “I didn’t realize there was any other way until I saw men masturbating in pornography,” send, continued, “before then I was committing,” deleted the last word, rewrote, “practicing ‘prone masturbation,’” send, continued, “which, some studies attest, could be harmful to general penile health, but others claim these risks are blown out of proportion and that the longterm effects of prone masturbation are benign,” send, continued, “I don’t often have a difficult time getting or maintaining an erection, which is one supposed detriment to long-term prone masturbation, also called  but now that I masturbate fully with my hands,” he paused, as an undulating ellipses implied Veronica (Work)’s imminent response, he deleted his message in anticipation, the ellipses disappeared, he rewrote as written above, deleted again, waited, rewrote again, send, continued, “my urethra often burns afterward, which isn’t necessarily a terrible trouble, I looked it up. It is most likely a symptom of masturbating with too firm a grip,” delete, rewrote, “my urethra burns, not too badly, and it isn’t disease, I think,” send, continued, “At first I thought maybe I hadn’t gotten all of the semen out of my urethra, so I would pee after every masturbation, but I realized this only made the matter worse,” send, awaited Veronica (Work)’s response, ellipses undulating, no response, continued, “Then I considered that maybe lotion or lubricant was getting into my urethra and causing some sort of physical or chemical discomfort, so I tried to squeeze the intruder out, but that too only made it worse,” send, continued, “That’s when I did some research and learned that, in fact, the burning discomfort was a common effect of the walls of the urethra rubbing against each other too vigorously as the result of too intense a masturbatory grip, and also occurs during vaginal, anal, and oral sex, even though it only occurred for me after masturbation,” delete, rewrote with more or less different wording, send, continued, “I’m not sure what to do to prevent the irritation, but I notice that if I put my penis in a glass of cold water, and open the tip of my urethra so that it upsucks some of the water, the burning quells,” send, continued, “a little,” send, paused, awaited Veronica (Work)’s response, ellipses, ellipses, ellipses disappeared, no response, waited, no response, continued, “I also have realized my postvoid dribbling,” send, continued, “(a little pee leaks out after I intentionally urinate),” send, continued, “Varies in quantity and frequency, but I haven’t pinpointed a root cause, and I’m not sure if it’s related to the urethral burning, or if it could be a symptom of traumatic masturbation,” send, continued, “all of which may point toward non-gonococcal urethritis,” send, Veronica (Work)’s ellipses undulated, her response imminent, ellipses, ellipses, no response, the stranger continued, “Which is otherwise unrelated to my early-onset benign prostatic hyperplasia,” send, waited, waited, Veronica (Work)’s ellipses undulated, her response forthcoming, imminent, impending, nigh, then the ellipses disappeared, no response, the stranger waited, ellipses again, response approaching, no response, ellipses again… I noticed I had missed my stop, just by one but God such a long stop, across an over pass, or under an underpass, either way, I rushed to the door, leaving the stranger behind. (“Something really should be done about this!” I might have thought to I.)

One more, at least, fine, two’s a couple — next comes three — to attest, to make my maybe miserable history, and the history of the otherly jellies in my skull, and of all criminal sight thrust upon innocent image, all those images abducted into my nuisant, innocent brain, really — though the millions of flickerings could not be begun to be recounted, immemorable, or at least, you can’t really expect me to go digging around for some shit like that in all this shit! — there is still another, as it happens, to recall, as it may have happened; that I was a student, that I wished so much to study, to read and learn and grow, to see and hear and taste, so I went to college (“to get more knowledge”), and there there was a teacher and he gave a lecture and he had a hall where all us — they, his acolytes, and I, same — we (they and I) sat semicircle Socratic tiered at desks small just enough room for our tiny minds (while the professor professed against a dome like his own private sky filled with neat rows of stars his pupils all typing into their laptops shining back their logos aglow unto him) and though so eager, I could not stand to sit too close to the sun, no, I could not, I found a seat center rear, topmost, looking past the shoulders that sat heads that leaned wavering toward the center, the center where stood the source seeming not of the information regarding but of the cosmos itself (astronomy).

Like, if it weren’t for the vascillating mass of students between he and me, weren’t for the electric compulsion of the little muscles latched onto my possessed eyeballs, this could be a swallowed and digested summary education on the effects of [some great celestial body’s] massive gravitational pull on [some disastered disordered rubble in space], but no, of course, before me, all that interrupted, the white blue return of lights (laptops), every screen in procession, row by row by row ahead of me, they (eyes — implications, scholars, eyes and lights and planets?) would not even afford me the scholarly notes of what an obsessive stenographer I could have been — I could repeat back what was repeated to me for endless scrolls of [ex. Uranus, blue giant, Kuiper belt, X-ray pulsar], no, ignorant to the professions of the beyond, keyboards clacked, and I was kept hostage from heaven, that’s a good one, so many stars — laptops, fuck the wordplay — before me flickered in constellations — ugh — information of something beyond the nebulae, unlearning, e.g. (for example), while the painted turtle and box turtle are observed to have territorial overlap, e.g. I pretty much back then when this show was on I grew up with this show and it brings back great memories of my childhood and I also watched this show when I had friends over too and all of the shows, for example, e.g., two seats to the left, I removed my prosthetic leg and unscrewed the ankle joint, filled the hollow inside with the bags and pill bottles, along with bubblewrap for cushioning. At first, the pills rattled when I walked, or, sealed pack original PoGo’s Autoskulls ten available, US $21.99 or best offer. There have been some indications that you are no longer in compliance with the terms of this challenge. Please update your contest status soon. [An image: a large, friendly cartoon alligator slurping up the tail of a smaller cartoon otter sporting a baseball hat and wagging his arms, screaming], [video of teenage humans in symmetric dance interspersed with flashes of a girl’s face, confused, shaking], behind that, [image of three whales stacked atop one another, the middle, female, belly up, preparing to mate with the male, swimming above], the man arrested and charged with the murder and decapitation of a fellow monorail passenger was released from Del Rio Mental Health Centre after a psychological evaluation overseen by his parole officer, like, for example, elsewhere, a jazz organ player who fell out of prominence in the early 60s, but later tapped into the burgeoning demand for massage music with his two records, Women of the Storm, and Athenian Air, among and amidst and betwixt and between all these my eyes leapt, bounded, started, stopped, a distant image showed a green frog and distant texts proclaimed: Giants are often portrayed as dim-witted monsters prone to violent tempers, often with voracious appetites for human flesh. The Elephant; This type is often described as old-spirited, gentle, genuine, and wise. While engaged in a higher sense of sympathy than other types, the Elephant often suffers from a lack of empathy. The Leopard: common name, Leopard; species, Panthera pardus; type, Mammals; diet, carnivorous; status, Vulnerable. Leap. It is often this attempt to capture the future that leaves Afterworld mired in the past, but the professor had long since departed, and it was not until the clapping of closing laptops shattered my distraction that the passage of the lecture’s two hours flossed my mind, I was without solid ground, I could not feel my feet beneath me, I could not begin again, but that was once, there were many to come, many left behind, piled inside the cavern in my head, wandering, wondering eyes, they wandered on, for so long. But there will be no others, there will be no further on, no, the recollection, the remembrances end here, I have dispossessed myself of my possessors, my artificial controllers have surrendered their reins, I have undone my great undoing, thanks for reading!, but now I do my great doing, to have a task and to task it, I no longer peek, no longer gaze, no longer I spy others’ espyings, others little lights, no screen captures my (un-my) eyes, not the phone computer TV laptop [whatever] of unwitting unknowing unwanting others, but now I, the true I, the eyes of I, only they, only mine, only stare, fixed, on my own having, my own doing, to search in sight no more, here, I eye that which is only here on only my own, only machine, becoming, here I jail my jailers, on this phone here I soon endless end, here, I have found something from which my eyes will never stray. //