Tale of the Leopard
... There were dim and gray reflections in the pockets of rainwater near the mouths of the cypress trees. Around us, a ghostly air, thick with moisture and a cold that wrapped around you like static, hides the distance. This is where we find ourselves after days of traveling the earthscapes. The low hills near the east and the long flat deserts of the west. My hand across your face, and I've found the surfaces of Mexico, the textures of the France, the colors of Nigeria. At the space between your lips, opening like an eclipse ending... like the silence between gaseous giants glowing under the hot sunlight... their curves falling in like clouds down a peak. Your open hands... our open journey.
Let's travel the roads. Falling in. The dark cement slipped under the belly of our car. It is part of the history of the western tradition to find the garden, to climb up. Sometimes I think that we're stilling eating the fruit, to the core. Seeds and all. Truth is we needed some time alone from God... to think.
I stare at cigarettes digging into themselves to find their black ash. The process of this discovery is a neon orange glow... Umbilical chords play odd tunes, as navel units sink with a nuclear pulse.
This is a science fiction romance.
This is lying in the grass when the moon is gestating shadows. This is stars being swallowed by electric bulbs. Glass. Wire.
The trees fly by us as we drive off, like strips in a film. I want to feel your warm body. A dark lake approaching... your dark eyes. The world is a colony of ants, and it is a colony burning. In the end, though, I'm glad I found you... of all things.
We stopped for a while to learn to craft guitars. Make drums. I don't remember exactly how far we got before it was time to leave. You did make one drum, a small one. Sometimes we play it while on the road. I hear from some you can summon ghosts with your rhythms. Is that how you summoned me? Is that how you summoned me? The farming, I think, was the turning point in finding ourselves. Amongst the stalks of corn, the various shades against our skin. Harvesting in the hot sun, the long days, the nights where the coyotes would call. I want to find angle at which the sunlight disables the dark. Blonde redhead songs in my memory. Gas nearly empty in the tank. Tall grass, forest. There moths here that know no fluorescence. Remember when we danced swing in the grass? Your shoes nearly falling off we were so tired. It was time to go... They tell me you lived the life of an assassin. Is that why you couldn't sleep? Is that why we couldn't sleep?
The next day we were on a spaceship. And we never came back...
Mosquitoes come out at night. But we were already in the bonfire shaping amber, going deeper and deeper through the ember. It's too cold when the windows are down so we leave them up. I lean back in your car seat and fall into another layer of sleep. Truth is, i never want to let go of holding your hand... Truth is, I wrap around you as if it's some part of cosmic story.
You know... there's a story of the Leopard Man. It's Yoruba, I think. It goes like...http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/yl/yl14.htm ...
Will you follow me in the cobble stone streets? I have some bread. Hard but we'll be fine. Will you swing on the polls and walk your fingers down the wall? Accordions fill the air with their own agenda; lets turn away from the video-boxes in the store window. The hats. The cans. The monocles. The bicycles and their baskets. In the distance, a windmill slowly waves "acquiescence."
You know, the branches of a tree could simple be the veins on an invisible hand. You know, West African metaphysics lap me up, and throw themselves through me. I hear one can find the traces of african chants in black gospel. I don't like to kill mosquitoes but to move on i forget the stain of my own blood, and their body, on my hand. I didn't mean to. I swear. I hear the mass computation in digital technology brings back a Pythagorean cult identity. I love to smell your hair. Congo square no longer contains that sacred music and too many hip hop beats have lost the many-tongued voice.
Engines transgress. Reactors revise. The wings of this ship are useless above a certain altitude and my shoes untie. Solar breezes. Gravitons gather. There is no sound in space, and therefor no music.
... "For a great distance they ran, and then the maiden suddenly came to a deep but narrow river, which she could not cross. It seemed as if the leopard would catch her after all. But a tree, which stood on the river-bank, took pity on her and fell across the river, so that she was able to cross."
You know... the leopard to me is a metaphor. it is the haunt of an aesthetic unrealized... it is innocence... it is how it happened in Venezuela. I don't know where it came from. But we had to go and we had to leave the memory behind.
...will my longing to keep my lips on your fingers haunt me? How long will...
travel up the river with me... travel up the celestial ceilings and collect our energies in the luna landscape. I will hum a new song for you. Will you fight off the misguided one? i hear you can land this vessel. Is this true? Will you take me where the sea is crystal fire and the sky opens every night to feed it stars? When i get too little sleep, i speak like a mystic in a fog...
We ended up here... amongst the cypress trees, where we've become something incredibly difference. And it's that difference that resonates. Beacons glow red light in the distance. Jackals and spiders run with foxes across your neck. Cerebral cortex. Crossing the