eating caviar and starving

I'm eating caviar and starving. I'm out of money, the check cards are empty and I'm scared to death of credit. It ruined my parents' marriage. (credit, not caviar)

Today, while rehearsing in a hot sweaty classroom and while covered in robes and also while busy crawling on my knees adopting the deep (fake) register of a grisled British accent-having wizard, I almost passed out. Everything went wierd and wavy, my head felt empty and heavy and sick...and I liked it. I'm starving and it kind of feels good.

I would like, when I get back to New York, for people who have not seen me for two weeks to look hard at my legs and my waist and my face and worry. I would like to look like a ravaged Picasso scribbling in his own blood and spit. Starved and extreme.

I am staying with my bosses. They are a wonderful couple who have repeatedly insisted I eat, eat, eat anything in the house. However, I am one of those unfortunate individuals that was cursed with a Southern upbringing too proud to accept kindness. Kindness means charity. Charity means pity.

I am stubborn as a weed. Stubborn as a mule, as a mile, as heat on pavement, as a splinter. Hungry as I am, I feel funny frying up someone else's eggs and pouring glasses of someone else's milk. I certainly can't make myself anything frozen. Those are specifically bought entrees. They feel personal.

They have crackers and caviar and I have been stealing them.

I suppose it's not really stealing if you have been granted permission to eat, eat, eat anything in the house. However, I do not feel this permission extends to the caviar. Caviar seems expensive. I do not know for sure, as I have never, ever bought caviar, but it tastes expensive.

So as not to arouse suspicion, I lick the knife clean every time I airlessly lift the little black jar from the refrigerator, unscrew the cap (while humming or talking to myself to muffle the noise) and dip just a little of the caviar onto a peppered water cracker. I lick the knife clean and place it back in the drawer. (Adding a new knife to the dishwasher each time might arouse suspicion, as would running the water to wash it myself.)

I do this several times a day, whenever I feel it is safe, whenever I feel the hunger has reached a ridiculous pinnacle and perhaps has grown beyond the walls of my room. I eat caviar crouched down in the kitchen over the trash can, ready to mock "cleaning up a bit" should anyone walk in. The thing about caviar and crackers: they can be consumed quickly, and with stealth.

The jar is getting low and I more desperate. Should I begin replacing the little black eggs with little black coffee grounds to disguise my progress? Should I kill a pigeon, rob a Denny's, confess that "I really don't eat when it's hot." is a lie?

I think I'll just keep eating caviar and starving.

A new thing.

I stole a shirt off the back of an angel and he turned down to me with tears...pooling the plates of his eyes like pale dinner blood...he turned his sweet obedient face (angels must do what we say) and asked for it back. I kept the thing. I kept the thing because it was an angels shirt and is probably worth something. Like one holds on to the deed of Graceland but sells the house of a haunted raped baby cheap. (Angels and ghosts are different things.)

The angel mentioned the cold as an argument. He mentioned his modesty as a plea. He mentioned his fair, hairless skin as a medical reason. "For my health..." he said. "I will burn." he said.

You would have laughed here, too. "An angel does not burn. Besides, it's chilly out. You're more likely to freeze." I spoke to him with my coldest face. Again he mentioned the cold as an argument. I said nothing else.

He offered some miracle, any miracle.

I said nothing else, thinking of him as a genie, thinking also of calling him that to his face for offering me a wish. A wish. A genie. I said nothing else.

He offered me money. He threatened me Hell. He offered me Heaven forever. "Heaven forever", he said. "Take it. It's true. It's there and you do want in. Everyone does." I thought of a country club membership salesman-his clipboards and papers. I said nothing else.

I wondered why an angel threatens Hell before offering Heaven. I said nothing else.

I think, had this been millions of years before and had I been some new thing writing the book on new things for new things with new things no one had seen because things were new, and not even things were things...yet...I think then, that if this angel had allowed his shirt to be stolen then, by me-a new thing (shirts, of course, being an old thing) that while watching the angel turn his back and show me his bare shoulders and his rough thick wings rising from his back like sores, like soft feathered buildings, that I may have written the word "tired" and also the word "thief" and also the concept, the word for the concept of teaching some other thing not to give another thing the thing it wants most from you.

My show this Saturday

  

Time

A stranger in the street
and remembering another...
I stole his lips
when a light was offered.
He asked me about the parade.
I had a flag. It was natural
that he should ask.
Minutes later, while walking alone
I almost caught the flag on fire.
I almost caught
the paper on fire,
trying to write
and smoke and wave the flag
at the same
Time
to notice a statue
of Hanukah in a window,
wet mats on the sidewalk
outside a bar
I thought about stealing
and stupid ivy growing
over a wall.
Just growing.
Stupid.
Because of that.

Well here it is.

I'm so not into this anymore.