to be read aloud, three or more voices, as one: in unison

your mother and i

feel it is important

to share our view of the world with you

before we go.

the physical world which is to say

the planet as it is for us

will have dissolved or become translated

before you reach proper dying age

although now it seems merely covered over

things will get worse.

ask anyone whose intelligence

you respect. for the time being though

i want you to know

what information technology means

in our estimation, your mother’s and mine,

because it is, we think, what will continue to flow for a while

when all the rivers are dry and the oceans are fetid and rotting

and the sky is opaque both for real and in all minds

your mother and i have discussed this

at length throughout our marriage

though especially recently

and we feel as christians

that it will have been more important to have left you

with what we can tell here and now from our perspective

than having taught you how to ride a bike

so i am simply going to tell you what we think.

information technology has brought about

a proliferation of relations between the first

and the second person above all else.

if this seems hard to understand, son,

think of the words of jesus christ

sometimes so elliptical

just take them into yourself

and let your body meditate on them

your mind will mould itself toward the revelation

you won’t even have to try.

what this means

this constriction of minds

into relations between a first and second person

what this means is all ideas and events

are consigned, doomed, to exist as though they

were interpersonal, one-to-one

and this levels all enormity

into a billion billion versions

of something somebody thinks they think.

understand me son, this is not liberty.

this is a grave limit to all things. the lord,

what atheists might be willing to call something deep in us no matter what

a something that is also general, perhaps unprovable, but felt

like life itself

is an antique referent difficult to integrate

when things of the public sphere are received in private

and the most excruciating intimacies are easily uploaded

when all things exist to stand in reserve

for the first person

son, understand me, the first person is anyone,

anyone

for whom truth and real things get rearticulated into something odd

that is neither near nor far enough away.

waits

i think you will say that i make no sense

and am behind the times.

waits

look.

we are people.

we do good things if they make us feel good.

we are limited.

naturally your mother and i have had our doubts

about earth and heaven and other things

but it seems to us that the righteous will not be separated

from evildoers in heaven or hell. the separation is and has always been mental

and must be. nevertheless, we feel, your mother and i, that

there must be something beyond

what makes us feel interpersonally good

or bad. one almost expects that god

might one day call one on the phone or cause

the electricity to shudder in a significant way

and yet

we, your mother and i, have in our lives

continued to search for signs almost against our will

in for example

birds

or sex acts

yes

signs of the all-knowing, the universe itself or creator

against our better judgment

we have also searched for this

or something resembling it—for what is the difference—

in our own feelings, in what we lack.

we cannot verify what is in our hearts

nor can we excise it. what people on earth have done

as they have moved across and covered it

is to disperse what is in them. this dispersal

is called culture.

son,

information technology promises

that everything secret shall be disclosed

everything hidden shall be extracted

the promise of disclosure however

does not draw us nearer to grasping

death, or life for that matter. god remains

a nice thing to think.

in the spirit of disclosure

although your mother and i believe

that there is a good power in secrets

but let me not digress. in the spirit of disclosure

for this is the spirit of the times

i will tell you what there is to be told

what might otherwise recede into comfortable and

more elegant mystery

my manhunt screen name is juicytroll13

the password is now1964

i like to be fucked by big men

over 200 pounds is what i like

i like to feel a weight that can crush me

i like to wear a ball gag when they do it

because drooling makes me feel humiliated

and this is exciting because unfamiliar

i like to be fucked by pos men

(son,. if you don’t know, this means men who are HIV positive)

because it is more exciting

than smoking cigars or golfing and i like

to have them degrade me so i can pay

in my mind and through my body for

my impotence and mediocrity and failure

ever to have transcended contingency in the choices

i have made in this life.

all these feelings participate in my pleasure and magnify it,

believe it or not.

you may or may not grow old enough to know

what i mean.

in spite of all this or rather to be fair

in addition to this

i am a good and well-adjusted person

by our society’s standards

and perhaps even a little more thoughtful

and successful than most who come from my social class.

i do not mean to suggest that that your mother and i

do not love each other and one thing is for sure

i am not gay. let me tell you.

your mother likes to begin on top of me

she rides me very hard and comes, usually twice, three times.

then i flip her over and throw her legs

over my shoulders and i watch my cock go in and out. she loves it.

or rather, she loved it, but it has been several years since, well.

what i mean to say is, son,

your mother had a beautiful pussy, pink

and symmetrical, smooth and wet,

not wrinkled and rubbery like the pussies in pornography.

although she no longer stimulates me,

her body having become what you of course know well

despite her cruelty-free lifestyle.

i respect her for the pleasure i have taken with her

and for her other good qualities, in spite of all the bullshit

she has put me through.

we made you in the manner i described. i have burned a dvd of this

for you. now son, you know that we are not perverse individuals.

it is our hope, your mother’s and mine,

that in your life you will experience not only your own

sensations when you become a man,

if there is time enough for that, but also, too,

that by watching our recording, which was easier

to digitize than we had anticipated,

that you shall see

what we have felt and done and perhaps

feel some of it too, and be filled with a wonder

at the beauty of creation and the panoply

of human frailty that, finally out in the open

and in the relief of something so general it cannot disappear,

is to be your brief inheritance.

though sex is visible we reckon it is somehow

also not

and what can be seen and heard or known by proxy

which is to say transmitted technologically

of love boredom enthusiasm

or any other feeling

remains a question too, we feel. your mother and i

wish to illustrate

that the technology clearly works

while also warning you

that we, your mother and i and everybody else,

do not. not merely.

son, it happens that

we recede from one other

and from ourselves

does it not,

despite the presence of everything in us and around us.

and there is a blindness or deafness in this asymmetry

this dissonance

that we suspect is past all danger, that is simply mortal.

it is our conclusion

that the mind must cultivate a secret

on which to live.

waits

people have died

i know

of seeing one they love or merely have

engaged

in sex acts with another

on a recording. a recording that remains exclusive and total

in its partiality. believe me, son,

jealousy is a revulsion worse

than there being a war on

and all the injustices of human history that have ever existed

when it is bearing down on you

i have lived through it and i am telling you now

i would prefer to degrade myself than be dragged through the shit

by your mother or any other

but that is neither here or there

i digress again.

listen. i am speaking as clearly as i can.

mother brother sister father or baby

everything will become visible

audible and knowable

everything, more and more.

the details will mass on the horizon of what you can understand

and you will adopt various attitudes through which

to assimilate, absorb, and deflect

but the world will remain

a mystery. it will probably become even

more mysterious as it ends.

this is why it is lucky that we are little

and that our lives are small too.

son, i swear on my life

i am speaking as clearly as i can.

it is what flows between us that is dangerous

and that, though beautiful,

has bombed the world.

your mother and i are ready now

having exhausted our knowledge of one another

withstood it and survived our way into

a kind of dismay that’s also boredom.

all things seem equal to us now

arabs, meatballs, 401ks.

our task is complete.

we want you to know that it is mutually

that we have decided to have died of it

and that we hope this will confer a worth

onto our very painful and but we admit it futile struggle.

your mother and i want you to know

that love has taught us nothing

outside of its own terrific force

which though we have withstood it

has only

cracked us open

and made us spill

out.

waits

son.

it is in the design of what i have called love

to not be able to be completed.

it is this incompleteness

that has brought about the spillage

and leftovers that for millions

of years perpetuated the world

and it is this selfsame

incompleteness

incontinence if you will

that will end it

waits

very shortly, son,

waits

shortly,

shortly now