::::::::::::::::::::
The subway let me out somewhere in the center of the city. Maybe I could find her here. Slabs of concrete jutted at irregular angles, breaking windows. Stolen merchandise, the useless kinds, fell unstolen, my silent personalized city. Plastic mannequins, still wearing dresses, brassieres, all out on display, were the closest thing I could see to women. Up above, clouds of broken glass, suspended in time, multiplied individual shades of evening. Sky scrapers were caught in falling. Darkish gold, a fire glowing, solid stillness solid marking, enshrouded reflective edges, illuminating emblems of destruction, a pristine pathway.
I took a step forward. I'd seen this place before. Certain paths led certain places, maze-like. My dream city. Bright colors flung banners on high. Smashed in cars asphalt peanuts littering the sidewalk. It smelled like subtlety and extension, an indescribable brink on the senses. I followed myself into the street. By where I was standing, a set of stairs in the street, bleached white, led into the sky. They were white, marble. I approached them. They led to a maelstrom of gravity, an undulating sea of crushing force, heaxi-directional.
I climbed.
And it should have been impossible, but until I got the top, breaking through clouds in the sky, moving towards the moon, there was very little sense of falling.
Blooming blooming I spotted a desert rose, calamitous. It was the kind that shouldn't be growing in the desert, the beautiful kind. It's petals were dark, pure redness, an elegant blooming, sprouting defiantly here where not even the strongest flowers grew, still
swaying in the wind, subtly,
just so that
I took
not
ice
of
it
the
st
e
m
glistening with the unmistakable shadings of weaponry. Sharp, shadowy thorns, acting always in defense of beauty, with prickling tips all along a path leading down to the
r o o t s
(Perfect beauty in a desert rose. Pristine petals clandestine
destiny)
::::::::::::::::::::
A great beast
rose out of the sea. It had scaled skin, big claws, and inconceivably large teeth. It broke
the surface with a wave, thrashing out: and a roar,
over
arching,
that most probably could be heard all throughout the city. Taller than a
building, it scraped the sky.
If
I were attempting to be
(contrite)
allusive, I would say it had multiple heads, red skin, three numbers etched on its forehead, a body composed of many
different animals, a clear voice that
could speak
a large #
of human languages, but that wasn't true. From this distance, despite
contradiction, it could most probably only
talk to snakes,
and it was barely
thirty
feet tall.
::::::::::::::::::::
When I got to the top of the mountain, a b
e
a
m
of light came to me, and I looked down at
the whole anonymous world, possibly asleep. In the distance the
carnal city, glistening next to the sea,
and the
emptiness
of the desert, in a warm dry cocoon. I relaxed, took
a deep
breath,
and looked
towards
the moon.
There he was, and he looked just like me. He had my face, my arms, legs, my eyes and lips, hair follicles falling exactly the same, that sweep of the brow, turn of the shoulder, stance, shift in the pelvis, pockets, a fondness for color, lapse, inclination to blinking. He stood on the opposite side of a line dividing me from me. He blinked. He shuffled. In an attempt to forgo similitude (impossible), I restrained myself.
I thought of taking a step forward. Dark purple arrows shot through the sky, sweeping in clouds, taking prisoners. Soldiers leered prismatic, inner skeletal structure of steel, blueprints, marks of construction, engravings of ownership. He did not own me. He looked like me but he wasn't me. He knew my secrets, from outside, cause and inter-action, a vilified shadow, but he wasn't.
Especial, a barrier grew between us, self and separation, my ghost. Surely he couldn't question this. And did I want him back, could I wonder, to think of absorbing. Metaphorically, though not in appearance, he had only one eye, and he kept secrets. His posture was not his own. The bastard had taken it upon himself to copy my shoes.
Could he, should he, would he know: the liar that is me, a lie. I'm not a fighter, and I'm not any good at keeping secrets. My games, my poetry, my language. No one listens to artist, not the artist himself; benumbing, I stuck, bleeding eye to eye to flaming banner, unable-no, not willing to undertake filial significance. All my life I'd been too good at being something like a person. To capture. What voracious weakness I. The keeping. No thought of (color). Not a glimpse of humanity.
To be an artifice one lie making voices and voice. I stumbled. Again. Stumble and choke. Lines of vivid color, distinguishing image and significance. A fondness for hearing myself speak: I like. Playing games- with: words. But; no(the liar) can never paint pictures enough. Shell of the shell, wanting for half a goddamn fucking name. Loss- time taking; no way(I've forgotten[how to speak]). Maybe in the past I'd fallen to the center of the universe. My disembodiment and my sense of the prophet. Death dying a whole unreal multitudinous ghost of voice.
::::::::::::::::::::
A great beast came roaring from the depths of the sea. Not to say I'm repeating myself, but the reptilian was clear in it, separating an element from the aqueous. Stepping heavily, on an indeterminate number of legs, it overturned ancient sand on the beach, into the canal, going against the water. It made its way to the bridge (jutting stone steal connecting land to land shit and flat surfaces cars emptiness and a big long row of yellow lines), and dropping, destroyed it: a shower of rock, falling into the water, crush and crash, this to destruction. Climbing outside, it sunk into buildings, destroying them; with some strange little panic for the virtual absence; no screaming, no blood streaming flesh in the bay. Underplaying destruction, it shore through a million dollars worth of glass, upturning cars, destroying the solidity of height, permanence and strength, petroleum syllables lining streets that ought to do a better job defending themselves. It roared. I realized it looked different from changing angles, growing heads, sprouting flaming tentacles, occasionally breathing a full flaring stream of fire, pure shining beams of plasma, bathing the world in acrid evening glows. Reaping death in the autumnal sun, a fanning swirl of leaves, debris and stuff all arching to some glutinous rainbow, it tore. Anthropomorphic claws. I thought of getting closer. Way back on the beach, watching it go, I though of clapping, as it put on quite the show.