/* I like to work on small bursts of fiction or essayistic thoughts. This page is to document the creative process as I publish pieces here that are complete (even in their fragmentary forms. I may return to certain pieces to mine for film or novella ideas. Or I might not. I'd much prefer to embrace the poetic act of publishing and sharing the work, letting it live as it will. For you to read. And I thank you for reading. */
Broken, the eternal void chews off a rotten chunk and spits. Flux drips from the outreaching dark. And it grows, still widening in disbelief and haunted by what the eye sees. The Thing Forsaken by God crashes through the atmosphere. The Thing Forsaken by God splatters tentacles deep into the churning ocean. Above, a secret cloud spreads far the word, takes root under a wet blanket. Images bluster, turn to a flicker: life dirtied by torn friendship, stripped to nothing but shredded maps and tears in the morning’s damp glow. A tiny hand reaches out to brush air, grips a pile of entrails under bay windows. The poetry of regret smeared across glass. Paint-dipped pink fingertips. I can still hear her feet patter across the tatami and straight to bed, stay away from the basement, leave it locked. And it hurts to remember. My eyes drip bloodshot from the sun and all this grief. Tropical flowers exploding slowly in great clusters of summer by the pool. To be alone among the cicadas and power lines and just grazed by the slime’s wanting beak. It yearns to chew us all. Step away. Shut the door and reach out. Just enough to snuff the candle, inhale smoke. Shut eyes, little one. The flux weaves rage, a boiled lust dissolving on the tongue, turns to tears. The flux reflects itself as it twists and gropes and grasp and suck and hold and swallow and swallow and devour the mess and weep for the dead and turn away, turn away, turn away, little one, from the forsaken light.
We crossed the creek and headed up the hill to the fence. There were sections of fence that we bent to fit our bodies through. Over yonder, the sun shone brighter. We crept quiet across the field. You could nearly feel the air shift, but only fully when you had already went too far. And there seemed to be a particular path one had to follow to arrive at revelation. And we could hear something tracking us up through the woods. Run until you hit rocks. Follow and circle to the wood's edge and veer to the left where the grass has been flattened. Follow where the green glows in the sun. And keep moving. Until the woods break to open sky. Run to the bright horizon. The tree looms farther out within the field's heart. Let that tree speak to you. And don't stop. Were you to even dare a glance back, you'd find misery lapping at your heels with lips smacking and teeth snapping to rip your skin and pull you apart. And then, just as your legs wobble to airy pillars, only then did you embrace the fullness of ecstasy. And the sun dripped into your empty eye sockets. Lit with passion, whatever force shone from beyond that tree worked itself over on us both -- flames of grass coated in blood and feather bodies floating from stone to dirt to the light of an invisible youth now snuffed and gone the way of rot.
They stand by the window, nearly surrounding Jake. It's night. The room is full of strangers mingling and mumbling in varied states of arousal. Like spirits engrossed in trivial tangents. But Jake is fully embodied in this cinematic moment with these three women who glow warm and fleshy just around the periphery of what he can feel. A shorter brunette graces his left side. She reminds him of a woman he once walked with in a field of golden reeds overlooking a business complex. "Shall I call you by her name?" he says. "No," she says. And as time (the presence of existence) swells with anticipation, it occurs to Jake that it is no longer happening at all. Jake's entire consciousness has evolved into a state looking back on the event as a memory lived or the trace of something so close it faintly lingers as a blurred tomorrow swollen with hope.
Approaching the stairs and gripping the ground. Crawling through a trail of grass, of slime. Look up. Surrounded by light prickles, by the mumbles of the dead. Claw up. Nails claw cement steps. Tear into skin. Grip. Pull. Wrench the body higher.
Approaching the stairs and gripping the ground. The desert dirt browns as the sun sets. The sun sets on your life. And you're forced to spin and rush to the one that still feels right as the mind skitters away Love, shuns empty grace. Reach and slam down fists on concrete. Shatter the concrete into words and hurl the bits to the black. Are your eyes focused on the black beyond? Or have the wisps in the mist blinded you to the light beyond death?
Approaching the stairs and gripping the ground. The dirt of your lies has been swept clean, stripped to nothing but pure light and inward flow. Tear and Pull. Grip and wrench at the ground. Sludge yourself to the holy vault. Pray the body back to life. Let the mind forget the fall when the fingers lose grip and let go.
She unwraps the gift and is suddenly blinded, veins split to the open void that now rushed toward her like a swallowing wind. A fleshy circular opening had born itself into the root of her right palm. A wavering cluster of threads and muscle that yearned to tear itself to sinewy strands. Sophie beheld her hand. She tried to conjure from the void-song, but couldn't. Instead, she was enchanted by the openings' visual conflict. Moments later she'd remember the old lady with the oaken cane, the stallion with the emerald eyeball, and the clown on North Stratmore. But those revelations would have to wait. The wound pulsated, filled with a radiant orange heat. So she held herself up to the sun and presented her palm to the outer light of space itself. Sophie shut her eyes, remembered the walk from the driveway up the steps and into the house. Especially on cold snowy days. She'd remember this so intensely, that by the time the sun burned itself into the slit of her face, her melted skin would already be trails of vapor and flame and smoke rising to heaven.