Two Metal Belly Men

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(After Umberto Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913; after the biathlon
event of the 1976 Winter Olympic Games; after competitive tandem cycling.)

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Two men lay out prone, one in front of the other. Both bronze men (all-bronze, every part
bronze, these are metal men) belly-down, heavy metal, prone on green lawns, their bronze
mass big and dense over the plush of the perfect green grass.

(Two bronze men flat-down and in a line. One, two, bellies-down flat, one down flat
behind the other, and so like this: bronze head to bronze feet, Second bronze head
right below those first bronze feet, and down from that head to the second pair of
bronze feet.)

Bronze man in the rear, (prone to the rear of the first), begins to move forward now, animated
now), belly-crawling forwards, bronze elbows, bronze points of the knees help him, stretch of
bronze stomach, big pectorals help him, all his bronze parts pick across and rub heavy ahead,
along the green ground. Grass blades pressed and pulled and combed out in lines heading
forward, as the bronze man heads forward belly-down, prone.

Bronze head of the bronze man, belly-down to the rear and crawling like that, comes
to the flat bottoms of the feet of the second bronze man belly down prone too (though
the second metal man not moving at all).

Head of the crawling bronze meets the bottoms of the still feet, of the second bronze man
ahead, and keeps crawling forward, belly shuffling, flattish on the grass.

Head presses-up to feet and makes pressure between the two volumes, the head and
the foot-bottoms? No, not here on the grass.

On the green grasses (perfect green), the bronze head meets the flats of the still feet and
passes through them. Head keeps being belly-crawled outwards and forwards, and passes
right through the flats, zero pressure, near-zero pressure, (stone passes heavy through calm
water etc.), the bronze head passing through the bronze flats of the feet has bronze eyeballs,
the bronze eyeballs see what they will as they pass through the feet, into the feet, into the low
bronze legs of the stationary prone forward man:

Bronze eyeballs passing through see this: see the inner walls of the
second bronze man (the bronze man ahead, still), inner bronze walls,
it’s the inside of the bronze feet passed-through, the insides of the
bronze low legs being passed-through now, pocked and striated inner
bronze walls inside the bronze features, the inner walls like the inner
walls of dug-out pumpkins, of finished jack o lanterns (shallow
trenches from the digging-spoon, linear, numerous).

Skin is there, flesh, the bones are there, tissues, tendons, fluids (synovial fluids, blood) are
there and are bronze and all are passed-through, zero pressure.

Up and up higher now, bronze head of the moving man passing through thighs of the
unmoving man, in reverse-taper from the knees up to thighs, as the bronze and moving man
belly crawls still further up, knees up to thickish thigh uppers. See him go, and as he goes, he
sees all bronze insides, all bronze inner walls through all-bronze eyeballs, all the way
through, up to the bronze buttocks, passing though the bronze buttocks like nothing, through
bronze perineum, asshole, the puffy baggage of the scrotum (pressed to the rear), bronze, and
right through, bronze glands, all the heaped lines of intestines metal too, peristaltic bronze,
and eyeballs moving right through, like nothing at all.

Head of the first metal man moves through the second man, and the rest of the
first man moves through the second metal man too. Head passes through the
convex cups of the buttocks like nothing, while down lower shoulders pass
through calves and through knees, through full thighs like nothing, stomach
and heels, belly-button and heels, all moving through all like nothing.

Head of the crawling bronze, the moving man so much further along now, head passes
through the high stomach, through the mid and low back of the unmoved second man (inside
walls, all bronze walls—of the stomach, of the low, mid, then high of the esophagus, the
string of the esophagus and the foamy lungs exchanging volumes, complicating one another
as the eyeballs pass right through everything regardless, everything bronze, all heavy metal
walls acting unlike walls.

Head of the moving man reaches the neck of the unmoving
metal man, and so through bronze pharynx, up under jaw,
through the jaw, head meets head, contours of two heads hover
together, (one metal head passing through another), a
momentary match, and so briefly one head with two sets of
everything, (limbs of the moving man belly crawl, all angular
and shuffling through the limbs of the unmoving metal man,
like a dog in deep waters), heads match, then moving head
moves on, right through, forehead overtop second forehead,
lips and mouth through nostrils, behind nostrils and bones,
limbs bump forward so head at the front carried forwards.

Stomach of the moving metal man moves right through the head of the unmoved man
back of the head, nape of the unmoved man passing through and being passed through
like nothing with the stomach in it as it is in the ambulatory stomach.

As they are now one metal man is half the other metal man. Moving head will keep crawling
forward, overtop the green of the grass and under the bright of the sun and a creamy blue sky,
the moving metal head, prone head, will advance so far that the feet down below will pass
right through bronze shoulders, around bronze neck and unmoved bronze head, and so the
moving metal man will become like that—

the second man (the moving metal man now ahead), having
seen every shimmering inner wall of the unmoved bronze man,
so two bronze men lay out prone, belly-down on the grass in a
line, one, two.