Monday, May 29, 2017

Gentle Arts

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Is drowning
Peaceful
A quick death
Euphoric

Is drowning or burning worse?

I recall a memory that burns like wine
A past lover warms my hand with his, while we sit
on a city bus Stranger's stares burn like halogen lamps
We are hypervisible in their gaze By virtue of experience
 I am more well-versed in the art of being seen
He fidgets nervously like he needs his body to speak

But the dead cannot speak
And our social death is activated
By negative space between the past's compensation
And the present's intensity
My body melts into salt
and water I submerge him in my gentle sea
As we flicker outside of space and time

Our bodies propel like jellyfish: temporal
Transulecent shapes at once distinct and indistinguishable
From the surrounding marine
We have inverted the gentle art of being seen
We have invented the gentle art of being hidden


Do you understand the violence it took to become this gentle?

In a moment of joy I gasp at this new means of survival
And forget my shape and revert back to a body
a pillar of salt with Water filled
and stomach
 a whirlpool of bile

Internal and external pressures equalize And collaborate
on the graceful execution of my demise
Water and air mix with the earth of my bone
 to seal my fate I spasm in reflexive protest at my aquatic death
In a moment of subemersive clarity I remember how many times
I have died before and been reborn
Every instance of life and death and life an death stacks on top
Of each other like Russian dolls of consciousness

The violent sea is now a gentle womb
And I am once again flowing into the shock of life

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