[prose]Failure

[JetPlane]

A piece I'm planning on expanding possibly into a novel.

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Two doves chased each other on my patio. One was angry. His movements were clipped, the drop of his head proved anxious and mindful. Their squat, capable bodies chased nearly endlessly. Their movements perfect mimics of another fight, another flow, another careful insult, injected into the conversation so subtly, it was as if someone had punched me and the pain left me with stars.
Could I graph you? Place a map to heaven beneath your feet, watch your body curl, shrink and disappear. See you small and happy, waving at me from the little blue path stretching out before you, a path of ink so dearly reminiscent.
Of what?
Where do we go from here? Is the path so deep and muddied? Do your feet sink further with every step? Do you slink away into the trees when I’m not looking? Your feet slipping into paws, your back elongating, your mind swelling out before you, a wisp of color, a breath so small and lovely.
Let us make a tenet for tonicity. Give me a clean bill.
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Would kissing you be so wrong? Cupping your mouth like an apple, a bloom, lapping the exhaustion with my palate…oft the goddess laves.
And slaves we were. The prostration of your tender, potent servants, our movements inclined only to yours, a balance achieved through study, notes of “From the first moment I saw you, I wanted to be your lover,” a pitter of laughter, a titter from the excesses of your overt understanding. Writing is a battle. The concoction of words, melding, moving, mimicking, maneuvering syllables, wishes, desires, blatant undertakings for another throw into a waste basket. The cruel ring of a bell, the empty, false happiness of a longer look (please, just this once), and yet, always, the inevitable conclusion, the pause, the pull to a servant, the irritated brush of an insect, her pooled distaste, the petulant, unsatisfied drag around her lips. A failure close only to death.

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If I was to cut you, simply in half, for a moment only, in that space of time, stretched as thin as gossamer haints, what would I find?
Drug Addict. Unmarried. Undisclosed desires. Disciple to the wisdoms of pertinent suggestions.
Would there be more?
You drink to sleep. Nothing more, nothing less. Its ache hurts you, drawn to you through ribbons and ribbons of blood, miles and miles of milky veins, the need for escape, the ability to wonder again, as collected as a newborn, achieve it through this, achieve it only though this.
Anything else? Deeper, yes.
Abused as a child. A metal broom once. You weeped when you went to school and felt the pull of bruised muscle when you tried to write. Easy to hide. Long sleeves in the middle of summer and everything was numb. The pain was inconsequential, your mind was merely waiting.
Also, an abuser yourself. Expected, right? The abused always become the abuser. You say it so many times before drifting to sleep it becomes a lullaby, excusing, forgiving.
Children? None. Thank God, you whisper.
Who do you abuse then?
No one.
Really?
Her face is so clear it burns. The many times you struck her in the mouth. Never what you wanted. The unruly splinter in your mind, so beautiful the first time you met her, even after all the changes and reciprocations, the way she’d manipulate you. She did, didn’t she?
And you ruined your own bereft honor to beat her, mercilessly. You had every reason to. She smiled too much. She was losing too much weight. She flirted with that ugly, pimpled bag boy at the supermarket. They were obviously sleeping together. Excuses, excuses, let them calm you, give you reason, action, motivation. Let the blows flow like rain, blood. You were an artist, the symmetry never faltered, each of your movements, planned, articulated, strategic, the wonder of her flowering bruises, the blows so temperate, so controlled, they were like making love where the rhythm was nothing more but a concentrated, ruminated sanity.

You are a work of fiction and nightmare. Sleep. Please don’t ever wake.

-

I have a first line. It is the words that disrupt and coddle. The balance of two opposing enemies. It is humans that fight against each other. We have no common enemy to fight against any longer, only the degenerations of each other.

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The world breathes. The air is so clear. The sun so bright. There is not enough of anything to come undone. Impartial reason and need is a thing of the past. Philosophy has taken on brighter, happier subjects. Precise language is a need to filter; philosophy is merely the work of beauty transcending our dusty beginnings. Let us bring God to us, not wait until we can go to him.
Sheila never favored color. She was wary of it, felt always deceived by it. She kept her color learnings basic. She described colors only by their original conceivers-red, blue, yellow. She wore sunglasses when she could, a precaution for all color conversation lovers to stay away. Her mind was governed by gods of black and white. She had much dignity in her profession as a black and white photographer. Her dignity stemmed from her need to change all things to these two preliminary, perfect basics. She was fond of shadows, but only believed that they were an adulterated version of the truth. The world was meant to be black and white and everything else was a taradiddle.
She woke up every morning in her white-walled room, lying in her black, four-poster, canopied bed, to her defined, simple alarm beep. The idea was to align the mind, simplify, illuminate. Her two entrances (and quick exits) into (and out of) love had left her with the understanding that her alarm clock was not only irritating, but left her guests with the wrenching feeling of being hooked by the gut and chucked rudely into the real world. She found their alarm clocks stupid and sully, obviously the works of impatient and arrogant painters, rather than the perfect, refined art of her mathematically conceived alarm clock.
She kept bird feeders. Their voices were far from music, but she found their presence a reaffirmation everyday of why she hated color, most people and animals. Two doves, this morning, as she pulled back her curtain, had found some entertainment by chasing each other around and around the pole holding her bird feeders. It reminded her of a movie she had seen when she was young. Something about their action, the feeble attempt of the smaller dove to keep away from the stout mountainous one reminded her of a cuckold chasing the man who had helped to make him so.

Some funny runt of a man, hairy, uncouth the kind to leave his hair in the drain, unsexy and unwholesome, being chased by some gorgeous, yet emotionally stingy doctor. The runt would whale his arms about, while his follower would be collected, graceful, so sure of himself that each muscle would move in perfect, shameless unison. Humans could unite if they had a common enemy. All of the doctor’s muscles would have one common, inescapable goal-and that would be to capture and beat the living shit out of this stupid, silly runt that had seduced his willing wife away from him.

She was tired this morning. She felt exhausted every morning; even after 12 hours of sleep, her body would feel sluggish and unused. But today, the feeling seemed to have exhausted a part of her it hadn’t touched before. She arched her back and moved fitfully to her bed. She pushed the canopy away and sat on the edge, rubbing her eyes and looking angrily at her alarm clock. She had looked for weeks for a digital clock which was simply white on black, rather than red on black, but never found one that satisfied her very picky tastes.
Now, the red numbers irritated her more than usual. She frowned and scooped her legs up to her chest. The act was something reminiscent of her childhood, but she didn’t rock back and forth as she once would have.