Posts
Jesse S. Mitchell
Nothing but a reoccurring dream, a mouth full of steam, the whole end of the world, the collapsing walls, soft, behind her. The thin skin, frail, around the Earth, cosmic dry and cracking tattered in the margins leaking water and hot air, the undeniable pressure, the unbearable pressure. Standing in the rain, seething, still breathing. Her train-depot-core(not heart) waiting to beat, waiting for lights to glare through the aperture, the tunnel tear of the universe shimmering so near, waiting for the platform rumbling, the tumbling trumbling noise. Completely mammalian nothing mechanical, an embodiment of hysteria, a ten-thousand voice quivering timbre shout.
Ayahuasca burning, fire around her eyes, like Saint-Saens, Danse Macabre, bonewhite the moon.
Not all the things humans do on the surface of this planet make sense, or add up to anything. Some of the things are so very confusing. And this human was an expert at chaos, our lady of the pandemonium. She had caught the ever present eye of the whole universe, completely, some time before. Not all souls abounding are ignored. In between the pages of cruelty and tragedy, astronomy, something transcendental and the story unfolds and is appreciated. Not that she ever knew. Skeptically, she even accepts the possibility of rainless days, totally alone. Climbing relentlessly over the hard pebbled face of this mountainside, the boulderous waste of hard stone life. And she has been climbing long, a longtime but not forever and by the time she reached the altitude, high enough to get noticed, she was already deeply scarred. A red ribbon of thick imperfectly healed skin chocking round the front radius of her throat, a random assault on the street, from which she was saved by that the tepidness and lack of skill on the part of the monsters of this world. But not entirely. The cut was too shallow but the wound was deep.
She is tall. A Patagonian giant with wild pampas grass shooting out of her head, black and thick, a braided cloud. Scissor legs, sharp bones, tired through and through, cutting their way around the paper thin atmosphere, cured concrete and black mass marble at her feet. Big eyes but shallow eyes, dilute and hesitant, wavering and rippling, weary eyes from rushing after, looking over, peering through transom windows, checking around corners and in the peep holes of doors. She rubs them constantly with the bony backs of her hands.
Waiting. She imagines a bloody rush, a last minute, final hectic fit of violence to end it all, to close the casket down. Throw herself head long into the path of a racing train, the drum beating, syncopated pulse blasting in her ears, boom, the big explosion. But she loses interest. Deep down inside she is too lazy, too stretched out, too masochistic to let herself off so easily. It is the breathless miserable lingering that remains. Upward. She climbs. Upward.
But purely avian inside when she lets it all quiet down. The eyeless ghosts that pass back and worth around her body, stoic, the knifeless razors of ugly crowded depots, all the ricketing and tickering. The dangerous desperation of suffocation. But when she closes off her senses, totally sensationless, blind and deaf, blank, black, and numb, she becomes all avian, all angel, all eagle and around her grow out the thickest wings, hollow boned and fully feathered. The warmth and softness, and under these surreal vans she can barely feel coming up the slightest breeze, warm, thermal updrafts. She knows if she can catch them. She can glide, float away. No more climbing. No more labor. No more cutting. No more bleeding. The curses all lifted, just like her, up into the spiraling air.
And all the wars be over, the whole damned world below, warless, deathless, effortless. And as she spins high above it all, never-ever returning, watching the perfect blue thing move around in the smaller and smaller circles, because she will never land, going higher and higher. She would go so far out, if she did open her eyes back, she would be seeing into the future. The days to come.
Her feet hurt. The pain ricochets from toe to heel to ankle and lightning flashes up the back of her legs, shaking the ligaments and trembling calf bones. Thighs aching, hips sore, back breaking, the flood of feeling anchoring firmly back into reality. Frenzy all around, mad din, pushing and shoving and commuting, bleating and daring and darting.
But that is the hurricane and it is death defying and it is maddening but it is only filled with soulless bodies, empty flesh, no power. Instead most of everything all around is monotony. She has to fight that, she has to push against it to save her life. Be a dervish. Be a wildly excitable atom. Be heat. Dip her spear in Chinese Gordon’s blood in Khartoum. Her weak nervous system the infidels.
She can feel the approach. She can feel the rattle of dead wood and frozen steel, numb but shivering under her blistered feet. The delay and waiting, the abscess of tedium quivering to eruption. And then she could hear the chugging sound. The quiet that spread over the throbbing crowd, the unbearable pressure, the silent blanket, the reoccurring nightmare, the morning ritual. She could see the ugly wedge shaped faceless mass careening and then slowing.
Whoosh.
Open the doors. The airs exchange. The outside natural and humid air fights its way into the carriages and the inside parched and inelegant stuff rushes out in hisses. The result is a gigantic empathic mist that envelops. A fine esoteric haze. A vapor that surrounds her as she boards the train and with every further step inside, she loses more and more of her mind until the awful beast struggles and jumps to life again and begins rolling steadily down the tracks.
As the lights and signs go whipping by the small stained windows and everything becomes a bewitching blur, she starts to see a thousand little twinkles of quaking light all around her. It feels weightless below her. She feels lifted up, high up, something purely bird-like. The steel train cars that she inhibits sway and swerve, squirming serpentine. She puts her hand on the wall for support. Everyone else is gone. Disappeared. A great giant snake snatched off the cold rocky surface of a rock, clutched in the scaly warm talons of a busting upward eagle, a daze of light and a cyclonic fire of wind around her. And she doesn’t hurt. And nothing on her is sore. All the sameness is evaporated, the ennui lifted like a scrim. She kicks off her shoes and she imagines they fall forever through a superheated atmosphere.
And she smiles.
And that is how the Eagle saw the end of the world in Veracruz.
Nothing but a reoccurring dream, a mouth full of steam, the whole end of the world, the collapsing walls, soft, behind her. The thin skin, frail, around the Earth, cosmic dry and cracking tattered in the margins leaking water and hot air, the undeniable pressure, the unbearable pressure. Standing in the rain, seething, still breathing. Her train-depot-core(not heart) waiting to beat, waiting for lights to glare through the aperture, the tunnel tear of the universe shimmering so near, waiting for the platform rumbling, the tumbling trumbling noise. Completely mammalian nothing mechanical, an embodiment of hysteria, a ten-thousand voice quivering timbre shout.
Ayahuasca burning, fire around her eyes, like Saint-Saens, Danse Macabre, bonewhite the moon.
Not all the things humans do on the surface of this planet make sense, or add up to anything. Some of the things are so very confusing. And this human was an expert at chaos, our lady of the pandemonium. She had caught the ever present eye of the whole universe, completely, some time before. Not all souls abounding are ignored. In between the pages of cruelty and tragedy, astronomy, something transcendental and the story unfolds and is appreciated. Not that she ever knew. Skeptically, she even accepts the possibility of rainless days, totally alone. Climbing relentlessly over the hard pebbled face of this mountainside, the boulderous waste of hard stone life. And she has been climbing long, a longtime but not forever and by the time she reached the altitude, high enough to get noticed, she was already deeply scarred. A red ribbon of thick imperfectly healed skin chocking round the front radius of her throat, a random assault on the street, from which she was saved by that the tepidness and lack of skill on the part of the monsters of this world. But not entirely. The cut was too shallow but the wound was deep.
She is tall. A Patagonian giant with wild pampas grass shooting out of her head, black and thick, a braided cloud. Scissor legs, sharp bones, tired through and through, cutting their way around the paper thin atmosphere, cured concrete and black mass marble at her feet. Big eyes but shallow eyes, dilute and hesitant, wavering and rippling, weary eyes from rushing after, looking over, peering through transom windows, checking around corners and in the peep holes of doors. She rubs them constantly with the bony backs of her hands.
Waiting. She imagines a bloody rush, a last minute, final hectic fit of violence to end it all, to close the casket down. Throw herself head long into the path of a racing train, the drum beating, syncopated pulse blasting in her ears, boom, the big explosion. But she loses interest. Deep down inside she is too lazy, too stretched out, too masochistic to let herself off so easily. It is the breathless miserable lingering that remains. Upward. She climbs. Upward.
But purely avian inside when she lets it all quiet down. The eyeless ghosts that pass back and worth around her body, stoic, the knifeless razors of ugly crowded depots, all the ricketing and tickering. The dangerous desperation of suffocation. But when she closes off her senses, totally sensationless, blind and deaf, blank, black, and numb, she becomes all avian, all angel, all eagle and around her grow out the thickest wings, hollow boned and fully feathered. The warmth and softness, and under these surreal vans she can barely feel coming up the slightest breeze, warm, thermal updrafts. She knows if she can catch them. She can glide, float away. No more climbing. No more labor. No more cutting. No more bleeding. The curses all lifted, just like her, up into the spiraling air.
And all the wars be over, the whole damned world below, warless, deathless, effortless. And as she spins high above it all, never-ever returning, watching the perfect blue thing move around in the smaller and smaller circles, because she will never land, going higher and higher. She would go so far out, if she did open her eyes back, she would be seeing into the future. The days to come.
Her feet hurt. The pain ricochets from toe to heel to ankle and lightning flashes up the back of her legs, shaking the ligaments and trembling calf bones. Thighs aching, hips sore, back breaking, the flood of feeling anchoring firmly back into reality. Frenzy all around, mad din, pushing and shoving and commuting, bleating and daring and darting.
But that is the hurricane and it is death defying and it is maddening but it is only filled with soulless bodies, empty flesh, no power. Instead most of everything all around is monotony. She has to fight that, she has to push against it to save her life. Be a dervish. Be a wildly excitable atom. Be heat. Dip her spear in Chinese Gordon’s blood in Khartoum. Her weak nervous system the infidels.
She can feel the approach. She can feel the rattle of dead wood and frozen steel, numb but shivering under her blistered feet. The delay and waiting, the abscess of tedium quivering to eruption. And then she could hear the chugging sound. The quiet that spread over the throbbing crowd, the unbearable pressure, the silent blanket, the reoccurring nightmare, the morning ritual. She could see the ugly wedge shaped faceless mass careening and then slowing.
Whoosh.
Open the doors. The airs exchange. The outside natural and humid air fights its way into the carriages and the inside parched and inelegant stuff rushes out in hisses. The result is a gigantic empathic mist that envelops. A fine esoteric haze. A vapor that surrounds her as she boards the train and with every further step inside, she loses more and more of her mind until the awful beast struggles and jumps to life again and begins rolling steadily down the tracks.
As the lights and signs go whipping by the small stained windows and everything becomes a bewitching blur, she starts to see a thousand little twinkles of quaking light all around her. It feels weightless below her. She feels lifted up, high up, something purely bird-like. The steel train cars that she inhibits sway and swerve, squirming serpentine. She puts her hand on the wall for support. Everyone else is gone. Disappeared. A great giant snake snatched off the cold rocky surface of a rock, clutched in the scaly warm talons of a busting upward eagle, a daze of light and a cyclonic fire of wind around her. And she doesn’t hurt. And nothing on her is sore. All the sameness is evaporated, the ennui lifted like a scrim. She kicks off her shoes and she imagines they fall forever through a superheated atmosphere.
And she smiles.
And that is how the Eagle saw the end of the world in Veracruz.
No comments:
Post a Comment