lullaby
I want to trace the pattern of my thoughts on the skin of my arms. Like a staphylococcal infection, they would trickle through my veins, up from my wrists (whoever appointed wrists as the repository of personal woes?), wind their way through capillary beds, soaking up everything which cannot be expressed, but which wants out anyway. They would trace themselves out, painting my body in its true hues, bypassing Judeo-Christian preposessions and uniting matter and energy in one inextricable whole. They would sing their song in words audible, finally, to the world. Sing with the thrum in my temples, the swelling and collapse of the jugular, the pulse in the vein cutting obliquely from my ankle to my big toe. My fingers would resonate with them, and maybe, just maybe, if i touched an instrument i could make it carry the tune. Tone-deaf to hell! If i caught it, i would carry that tune, that note - high, clear and resolute. I would use every molecule of oxygen in my body, and as the last one passes my lips, maybe i would find release.
I spin a web of thoughts, feelings and images like a giant spider. I try to take each one through till it finds its mate and connects, then tug, gentle and patient, testing. I want to be able to close my eyes a feel this fabric whisper reassuringly against my skin - coddling me, shrouding me, protecting me from the free-fall that lies outside. I am my only, my most willing prey. I know my way around with my eyes closed. Only with eyes closed.
If i open them i see me, i see my body, and worst of all, i see the world. And i see it looking back at me. Reflecting, splintering into me in millions of "dos", "donts", "shoulds" and "musts". And i ooze out, i deflate, i lose the connection with the cosmos inside myself and become a catalogue of bones, organs, and muscles. To slam so suddenly from the altitudes at which i dwell (or is it depths?)...
There are so many cosmi, though. The head, the womb, the stars... The change in zoom makes my head spin, and my stomach contracts warningly. In my head i am a predator - lithe, graceful, streaking; almost discorporating with my own efficiency of movement. I do not like the womb. It is too close to the outside, there is a draft, a subtle reminder of the edges of my universe. No, the world does not have to be flat to fall off. We all know there is no spoon, so i have to be careful to keep imagining gravity at all times, lest it let go of me.
I have become quietly amazed, lately, at the true meaning of relativity. It is inversion. The opposite of love is not hate, right? The opposite of anything can never be of equal force. Vectors dont matter. An opposite is an absence of force. An absence of equal magnitude, of course. You try to crawl into your head to hide, you burrow deep, feverish with anti-claustrophobia, craving visceral contact of all exposed surfaces; and suddenly find yourself suspended in an ever-expanding universe. Those are moments of my sweetest loneliness. I know i am the only one who can take me there, yet i imagine another consciousness beside me, breathing in prallel.
This is my own brand of gluttony, a connoseurship of self. Sifting the experience of being me through concentrically constricting filters, holding each molecule up to the light, marveling at every configuration. Somewhere, a suspicion starts to buzz, insistent. I am browsing through the familiar, the known, and the explored; re-reading old books, tracing scars i know will never bleed again. I dont want to listen to that buzz, i dont want to carve into the flesh of my universe to expand it. Because first it will flood everything with blood, choke me, drag me like a tsunami to the very edge of my cosmos and throw me against a wall of my own bleeding feeble self. Yeah, i want to get past it. But i dont want to go through it.
I just want to carve my thoughts on my arms...
I spin a web of thoughts, feelings and images like a giant spider. I try to take each one through till it finds its mate and connects, then tug, gentle and patient, testing. I want to be able to close my eyes a feel this fabric whisper reassuringly against my skin - coddling me, shrouding me, protecting me from the free-fall that lies outside. I am my only, my most willing prey. I know my way around with my eyes closed. Only with eyes closed.
If i open them i see me, i see my body, and worst of all, i see the world. And i see it looking back at me. Reflecting, splintering into me in millions of "dos", "donts", "shoulds" and "musts". And i ooze out, i deflate, i lose the connection with the cosmos inside myself and become a catalogue of bones, organs, and muscles. To slam so suddenly from the altitudes at which i dwell (or is it depths?)...
There are so many cosmi, though. The head, the womb, the stars... The change in zoom makes my head spin, and my stomach contracts warningly. In my head i am a predator - lithe, graceful, streaking; almost discorporating with my own efficiency of movement. I do not like the womb. It is too close to the outside, there is a draft, a subtle reminder of the edges of my universe. No, the world does not have to be flat to fall off. We all know there is no spoon, so i have to be careful to keep imagining gravity at all times, lest it let go of me.
I have become quietly amazed, lately, at the true meaning of relativity. It is inversion. The opposite of love is not hate, right? The opposite of anything can never be of equal force. Vectors dont matter. An opposite is an absence of force. An absence of equal magnitude, of course. You try to crawl into your head to hide, you burrow deep, feverish with anti-claustrophobia, craving visceral contact of all exposed surfaces; and suddenly find yourself suspended in an ever-expanding universe. Those are moments of my sweetest loneliness. I know i am the only one who can take me there, yet i imagine another consciousness beside me, breathing in prallel.
This is my own brand of gluttony, a connoseurship of self. Sifting the experience of being me through concentrically constricting filters, holding each molecule up to the light, marveling at every configuration. Somewhere, a suspicion starts to buzz, insistent. I am browsing through the familiar, the known, and the explored; re-reading old books, tracing scars i know will never bleed again. I dont want to listen to that buzz, i dont want to carve into the flesh of my universe to expand it. Because first it will flood everything with blood, choke me, drag me like a tsunami to the very edge of my cosmos and throw me against a wall of my own bleeding feeble self. Yeah, i want to get past it. But i dont want to go through it.
I just want to carve my thoughts on my arms...