Incarnate. Marvin Bell

his inner life.

      Seeing his vomit, he thinks he sees his inner life.

      Now he can pick himself apart, weigh the ingredients, research his makeup.

      He wants to study things outside himself if he can find them.

      Moving, the dead man makes the sound of bone on bone.

      He bends a knee that doesn’t wish to bend, he raises an arm that argues with a shoulder, he turns his head by throwing it wildly to the side.

      He envies the lobster the protective sleeves of its limbs.

      He believes the jellyfish has it easy, floating, letting everything pass through it.

      He would like to be a starfish, admired for its shape long after.

      Everything the dead man said, he now takes back.

      Not as a lively young man demonstrates sincerity or regret.

      A young dead man and an old dead man are two different things.

      A young dead man is oil, an old dead man is water.

      A young dead man is bread and butter, an old dead man is bread and water—it’s a difference in construction, also architecture.

      The dead man was there in the beginning: to the dead man, the sky is a crucible.

      In the dead man’s lifetime, the planet has changed from lava to ash to cement.

      But the dead man flops his feathers, he brings his wings up over his head and has them touch, he bends over with his beak to the floor, he folds and unfolds at the line where his armor creases.

      The dead man is open to change and has deep pockets.

      The dead man is the only one who will live forever.

       2. More About the Beginnings of the Dead Man

      One day the dead man looked up into the crucible and saw the sun.

      The dead man in those days held the sky like a small globe, like a patchwork ball, like an ultramarine bowl.

      The dead man softened it, kneaded it, turned it and gave it volume.

      He thrust a hand deep into it and shaped it from the inside out.

      He blew into it and pulled it and stretched it until it became full-sized, a work of art created by a dead man.

      The excellence of it, the quality, its character, its fundamental nature, its raison d’être, its “it” were all indebted to the dead man.

      The dead man is the flywheel of the spinning planet.

      The dead man thinks he can keep things the same by not moving.

      By not moving, the dead man maintains the status quo at the center of change.

      The dead man, by not moving, is an explorer: he follows his nose.

      When it’s not personal, not profound, he can make a new world anytime.

      The dead man is the future, was always the future, can never be the past.

      Like God, the dead man existed before the beginning, a time marked by galactic static.

      Now nothing remains of the first static that isn’t music, fashioned into melody by the accidents of interval.

      Now nothing more remains of silence that isn’t sound.

      The dead man has both feet in the past and his head in the clouds.

The Book of the Dead Man (#4)

       1. Shoes, Lamp and Wristwatch

      The dead man has a fixation on shoes.

      Seeing his shoes, he cannot take his eyes off them.

      Shoes, lamp and wristwatch—these are the basics, the elements, the factors.

      The dead man factors-in time, light and travel.

      So much depends on going, seeing and knowing: shoes, lamp and wristwatch.

      The dead man embodies light and time at a distance: shoes, lamp and wristwatch.

      The dead man wears his heart on his sleeve, but it’s not what you think.

      On the dead man’s stopped watch, the time is always right.

      The dead man’s lamp is a dead man’s lamp—on or off.

      The dead man’s ill-fitting footwear is never uncomfortable.

      Long since the dead man made a fetish of entropy—shoes, lamp and wristwatch.

       2. More About the Dead Man’s Shoes, Lamp and Wristwatch

      The dead man’s shoes are two columns of x’s, two fabricated facts, two tricks propped up by the heels.

      The dead man’s lamp is a hole in the roof, a gossamer shaft, a porous umbrella.

      The dead man’s wristwatch is a plaque with straps, a black-and-white picture of local knowledge.

      The dead man learns by looking up and down, he values stamina, he assumes that all stories are apocryphal.

      Thus, the dead man’s time is time and no time, his lamp is light and no light, and his two shoes do not prevent his two feet from touching the earth.

      By fictive lamplight, on the days of the mythic calendar, the dead man stands upright but weightless in his still-beautiful shoes.

The Book of the Dead Man (#5)

       1. About the Dead Man and Pain

      When the dead man’s ankle breaks, he is stoical.

      Being stoical, the dead man is not hobbled by a broken ankle.

      The dead man doesn’t fear pain; he simply has no use for it.

      When he breaks an ankle, he uses the other one.

      When he breaks both ankles, he uses his arms, etc.

      The dead man is like quadriplegics who grip the paintbrush with their teeth, the paralyzed who sip and puff to get around in their chairs.

      Language lingers in the dead man after the event.

      In his pre-Socratic period, the dead man raced against Achilles.

      You thought I was going to say he raced against time, but no, it was Achilles, Achilles-the-Warrior, Achilles-the-Fleet, Achilles-the-Unbeatable.

      Zeno-the-Philosopher gave the signal to start, and the dead man inched forward.

      Achilles thought about running but did not move, he considered starting but did not take a step, he wondered about his indecision but did not contract a muscle.

      Thus it was that the dead man, slow of foot, defeated Achilles.

      Hence it came to pass that Achilles fell to a dead man, one of the precursor events of the future in which the dead man would forever be victorious.

       2. More About the Dead Man and Pain

      The dead man’s condition is chronic, no longer acute, a constant state of being.

      Because the dead man is in a constant state of being, his condition is chronic, no longer acute.

      He thinks that language will be the death of us so he prefers gestures.

      Now he points by implication, directs by nuance, gathers and distributes atoms of information, the vapor of data, the ether of ions—all without changing his position.

      Pain to the dead man mirrors his long refusal, his wordless challenge to the burning ceiling he used to call “sky.”

      The dead man spits