Storytelling
(Oh Christ)
Her head snaps back, whiplash fast, lesser necks have ended up in yellow foam traction, knotted chiropractic hands for this. If she weren’t so strong, black splatter wouldn’t hit the trees, cover her sideways only to slide off oiled plumage, dust, cartilage and bone, out on the edge of a forest that is no longer trees...
(those are dead too, they are)
Instead, iron casts raise mockery up past man-levelled mountain tops, first year art projects in rows and rows of malignant non-conformity.
(these are the students, their structures have failed…)
The mouse struggles between her talons. Nearly a rat, torn and broken, one nevertheless has a while to wait before one reaches absolution yet.
Fucking “whoosh.”
(here we go)
Swooping down over city streets, life in this beak, struggling for the last of bloody grips, pulling sinews, glistening, what a body can be put through, yes, every predator a vulture, all prey verging on martyrdom, oh...
(I drop only bombs, you see)
Or tufts of fur, a single crimson droplet like rain, barely spit, hardly napalm, hardly anything. Wind...
Yet still vehicles are nothing for the wars that take place overhead. Well, not wars. Struggles really, conflicts maybe, but not wars. Only violence and death.
(Mother-fucker)
She’d sigh if her mouth weren’t so full of nearly dead rodent. Up here, one has too much time to breathe. Up here, one has too much time to survey the damages... What was once merely concrete and steel, is now concrete, steel and metaphor. Life vanquished into thought and words...
(a nest full. I must get back)
Hungry mouths crying mother for carnage... No. Those days are over. How quickly she forgets. He. They. Dead. Gone like the rest of them. Murder by aluminium and glass...
Modernity kills. Post-modernism kills dead.
(the end of actuality)
No, no, no. Determination is always key.
(and these people have lost it)
Determination is not always key.
(But I’ve still got it)
Unlike all the rest. Every one shot down, black fucking plagued. No longer even littering the streets as freeze-dried remains, dirty wingspans, attractions scavenged by rabbits (they couldn’t have just killed off the rabbits, could they have?), housecats, maggots… In some circles it is believed we could subsist off of maggots. They devour everything we do and do not trust. The stuff of life in the stuff of death. Store. Flourish. Squirm…
(I was born of maggots, I grew strong of decay)
Laughter.
(people are the reason. but they’re not either)
She cocks her head sideways, somewhat to the left.
How it happens is the way all things go. Devolution, unresolve. Quietly now, without a coat of arms as protection. One could turn to mush in a coat of arms, as one does, become slush and custard ooze, and it wouldn’t matter. Survival is style, hard casing, nothing more. And instinct is not unbeatable, except when it is.
It is.
Isn’t.
Is.
She’s simply a hard stressed gap between thought and feeling, idea and reaction.
(the end of the family line)
Yet, God, here she is, nearing closer now. Life no longer even matters between her lack of lips. Merely strings of banality, tatters of fat, muscular tissue, now in past motorways, vehicular tragedies, city slights, to the roof one goes...
A tower is a tree, a defence mechanism, decorated tall in mountains of unhappy Christmas tinsel, discarded pants, battery acid, carburettor parts… A castle of calamity, broken simile, obsessive compulsion.
(my nest. my home)
Tangling away, spiralling up into darkness, higher now, only so high, to where the living get light headed, the thoughtful get weak, and there’s a nest all fitted out of barbed wire and thorns...
(crucify)
The locusts, crickets, mice, forgotten meats, she drops her cargo into the midst of it all, a soft muffled wetness. Leaving it for the time, she’ll be back to play with it in a bit, but for now a clumsy way to the edge of things, broken eggshells, precariousness...
(something is wrong here)
Perched out over the city, she is no longer here. She is inevitability, inopportunity, inconsequence, a whole host of ‘in’s posing as nouns... No, she clearly isn’t. Letting biology take over, succumb, disadvance, defeat, how all good things come to an end so one last thought
(Someday I will make it whole again)
A whisper is a cry out into the distance...
(I’m sorry)