The Subtle Crash

The subtle crash back from oblivion.

A stark outline in the way pieces fall into place. A meandering thought. Blurry eyes, seeing through fogged lenses. 

A figure looping against the horizon.

Opens. 

The tug departs from the coastline and is steered into the middle channel. Small in relation to tankers and cargo ships, the lilting boat slips the stream and powers through the current. Half a ton per pound is its power. Dark water veins pass beneath its steel hull. The passion of the large is overlooked. The tug takes over the waterway, moving the greater forces and larger loads. The world it relies on. The world relies on it. 

The subtle crash.

Tempers flared in the godspeed chapel. A hundred faces froze and looked heavenward. The relic unseated bounced on the hardwood floor, thump, thump, then lay still. A dove flapped in the high cathedral vault. The bird spun and flew, searching for an exit through the stained glass window, across the high reliquary shelves, traced the length the body incarnate, the cathedral dome, the arches. Watched by the morning congregation, several down on their knees for communion, the dove careened through the open space. In the bible, the bird is a token of peace, symbolizing the land found — for Noah — and the sacrifice sought — for Jesus. To prayer exhumed from the prayer book, the dove flew in circles, testing the colored light pools for escape, in circles and circles, until it too was exhausted by its efforts. The congregation lowered their eyes. The final syllables dissolved into the wood and stone caress. The dove sunk, loosely flapping its tired wings, until it found purchase on our savior’s head. There, there at the pulpit! The bird slumped its body forward, as if in prayer, then expelled a greasy white and black stream on the crown of thorns. 

Here to oblivion. 

Here, in the languid hours, I find skin destroyed, 
Not mine, but another’s skin, rank and stale and shorn,
In common shapes, arms, legs, chest, prick.

A fell idea carried on pornographic images. 

Then back to my current moment. Hands to type,
Mind to the present task and future bills.
Back from oblivion to the sitting room.

A bare stomach arouses me easily, a hand, a lip,
As if the young boy were still awake and scared,
Even if my desire is crowded out by daily chores.

Even if my lust finds others seldom ready.
Even if I age into the numb decades, accidentally,
Untouched from one day until there are no more.

In response, violence edges closer to me. 

As when you braced your fist with keys
And attacked your own soft temple, right, right, right, 
Until there arose the beads of red under your skin

And pain enough to concede to the point made.
The same as you bawling, absolute, on the hardwood floor.
Like that. I watch with mute dismay

As my concussed love slides asunder, disemboweled
By an intimate attack I do not understand,
Scatters like the drops of your blood across your cheek.

A stark outline in the way pieces fall into place. A meandering thought.

Like the drops of blood across your cheek. 

These days, as in all days prior, one has to make their mensch one (1) page at a time. The universal discrepancy for measurement starts at zero. Zero being both perfect and failure, the home of nothing, the life of nothing, yet the instant in which universal deterioration, conceptual defeat, and intolerable future are absent. Zero is immune. Zero is home. So the mensch has to reclaim zero after each movement and action, returning to the absent point. However, the inevitable one (1) looms on the near horizon. The count starts in time and ends outside of time, which in many ways is a return, a reclamation of the zero, after the infinite one (1). Yet the mensch, your mensch, my mensch, progresses into the oblivion unscathed by fulcrum and father and fear. The mensch is never to be more than zero. My mensch is the never-to-be light I follow into the darkness, through one (1) and two (2). My mensch is the fasting hound chasing me into three (3). My mensch is the gutting fear throwing me into four (4). Then onward, the perfection both at my back and in my future (5, 6, 7), yet attainable only in a simple destruction. Progressing one (1) page at a time, returning to zero, lilting through the pleasant atmosphere of reimagined time, and hoping for nothing more. 

Further on, there were lights to be seen, but the destination remained shrouded in the tangential waves of heat. Blurry eyes, seeing through fogged lenses. 

Wandering one word at a time.  

We are not governed by these rules, are we? It isn’t our nature, nor our task, nor our plan, nor our fate to pin down a definition, is it?. We are the formless lovers. We finalize the ether. We foment the gradual decay. We lift the fading starlight. We aggregate the void. We push and ferment and shape and stand back, stare at the abstract monstrosity, recognize nothing, save the element we invested in its creation. We recognize nothing save the self we were seeking. Stand back. Have a look. I. 

The falling figure.

The form looks correct from a very far distance. There is a lengthening arm thrown against the sky. The torso is whole. The head is a pin point against the great sky. The form is like a dove silhouetted against the sun. A cape flutters in the wind. Legs, of the type statues bare, are barely visible. At this distance, they split and spin and intertwine. Control is lost. But there is excitement in the view. The falling is desirous because excitement is envious. To be falling like that! Tumbling and turning against the backdrop of blue and clouds!. Those who watch from the ground aren’t thinking, “What is going to happen?” They stand wide-eyed, wondering, following, parsing, “What did they get up to there?” Not with accusation, but with want. “How did they do that?” The fall will be fleeting. The act forgotten, turned into a false story. The body will disappear into the horizon. Guesses will be made about the landing geography. On a distant plain overlooked by lonely gods, someone pulling a cart will find the body and loot its clothes. The crumpled bones and smashed skin sunk into the ground. The watch will be taken, the boots tried on for size, the cape kept as a souvenir. But those who saw will know. Whatever silliness carried the man into the air was, really, truly, honestly, greatness. If they had reached the sun, even trying, the agony of the fall was worth it. If it had traversed the sky, even failing, the moments in freefall were its greatest moments. To be as much, enraptured, complete, above, this is the envy of those beneath.

The stark outline in the way pieces fall into place. 

I.