Tuesday, 20 September 2011

• Feeding the Wolf (Death, Birth, Resumption, Life)

  *This piece is subject to change as I am posting as I write and editing even further. However, feel free to offer your comments. They are appreciated. I want the message to be clear, as clear as it can be when I'm being cryptic.

  Death 4:21PM

  There’s a wolf among the sheep stalking out its prey, salivating over succulent flesh. It wants a taste, a bite, a little nip – a taste, a touch, a sip of blood to start the feast. What could be better than the sound of teeth grinding bone; a broken-record sound repeating through the octaves; grinding, grinding, grinding through gritted teeth and clenched fists. Chew slowly and swallow, savor, devour, enjoy. Never waste a piece of this divine dinner, this perfect plate of perceptibly human flesh. Grind away on those bones the same way a man grinds away at rocks in his way, the same way he grinds away at life until his bones are dust and his eyes are liquid goo pouring from his sockets. Cosmic revelations never leave you starry-eyed; they only cause supernovas inside your head. Nothing tastes better to the wolf than planetary ooze dripping from your lips. The sheep are slaughtered, naked patients in an asylum screaming laughter to a moon they no longer believe exists – a moon inside velveteen wings meant to encompass the world; the blindfold tightens around your eyes as he ties lace about your wrists; tight, tighter, asphyxiated against the bedposts. The sound of the sea would rock you to sleep as a child, but now the motion moves you in ways you never would’ve dreamed; think cosmic, orgasmic; pretend there are stars behind that blindfold, stars staring down upon you, stars and moons that don’t wish you dead. Pretend there’s no wolf in sheep’s clothing, cloaked in velvet night with lace draped around his wrists, a Cheshire’s grin upon his lips, and knives for teeth—forget how deep razorblades cut, forget how bones grind against pavement (the way chalk wore against the driveway), the way a dog grinds a bone to dust. Forget the wolf among the sheep salivating over succulent flesh; forget the cosmic revelations exploding inside your head; forget the planetary ooze that slides away beneath you; forget it and forgive it, the way the world forgets and forgives you when you die.

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  Birth 6:01PM

  The full moon gives birth to the world below where the wolf stalks his prey. Through an ocean of grass he trots, his footsteps silent among the breeze, to where a lamb sits on a hill, bathed in mother’s moonlight. The lamb bleats softly, its voice carried away on the breeze like its life will be carried away inside the wolf’s maw. Just another predator devouring its prey, taking with it more than flesh and bones, but memory too; happiness and peace. Death steals more than breath, it steals existence, it steals memory; it creates a vacuum in the world where a beating heart once was, a vacuum quickly filled in by the atoms all vying for universal attention.

  Mother Moon gazes down upon the scene as the wolf overtakes the lamb. The lamb cries out, a lost and lonely sound swallowed by the breeze passing through, collecting voices and sounds to store in another time and place. Memory is lost; a void is filled.

  And yet it burns through velvet restraints and violent convulsions only remembered in the heat of passion; touch-induced paranoia. A single touch gives birth to a slew of violent memories better left forgotten, like the corpse of the lamb drying on the hill; wide, wild eyes staring into a starless sky. Associations are made where skin meets skin in the throes of agony, screams for release (from a butterfly cocooned upside down in chains) rent and rip the air; the sound of satin being shredded. Silk slides over the skin like honey, sweet and sensual, until its sliding down an esophagus. There it bunches up inside the windpipe as claustrophobia settles in, nettles in like the roots of an aged oak tree clinging to the earth long after due.

  Mistress Memory gazes down upon the scene as the wolf enters the womb, oblivious to the bleating of the lamb leather-bound to the bedposts. The grinding begins, that hated sound of incisor on bone, of death grinding away at the gears of life, stripping them down until there’s nothing left but metal hulks of ancient machinery rotting in a locked warehouse. This is how memory dies, and thrives – ground into the marrow of the mind; wounds heal and only bleed when re-opened.

  Memory, a jar closed with rust and left on the shelf, covered in dust; take it down and examine the contents within, pry open the lid with a crowbar and the stench of death and decay will remind you why you left it there in the first place; why associations made between skin are left undiscovered under the sheets (woven from the sheep’s skin the wolf devoured).

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  Resumption 7:08PM

  There are scars where the lace embraces her wrists; scars where marrow mended into fractured bones, cracks like veins running through alabaster. There are teeth marks dotting her flesh from the tower of her throat, dying along her ribcage, and petering out among her hips. Rabid red lines rip through her left cheek, a memory to be relived in the mirror.

  She has been consumed.

  In the corner he sits licking his lips, savoring the flavor of her taste; sucking the blood from his clawed fingertips. His grin reminds her of a crescent moon lying on its back as its being swallowed by the night sky.

  She has been devoured.

  This bag of bones is drowning in an ocean of silk sheets. Memory sinks into the satin pillow saturated with blood and tears, but mostly tears; fear is born of a mother with no name. The moon watches from the window, shedding light upon a murder scene (police tape, crime scene: do not cross) where the skeletons still breathe—this is how bones mend and scars heal, through tears and truth, both of which can only be uncovered in the light.

  She has been healed.

  And the wolf comes again with a new name, a new face, under a new moon; a starless, vacant sky like the void in her eyes.

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  Life 8:53PM

  There’s a lamb among the flock with a broken leg and a battered spirit. It’s sick and dying but its mother won’t leave it like the others. She hovers above it like the moon, radiating ghostly light to ward off the darkness (but light never spared the scars). The wolves descend from the hills, sharp eyes waiting for weakness; unhinged jaws salivating. They want to grind their teeth into the lamb’s bones until death obliterates every other memory— until a supernova explodes inside her head and stars oozes from her eyes. They want nothing more than to taste the planetary goo residing inside the lamb’s flesh; truth can be found in the subtle matter coagulating in our veins. This is the wolves’ truth: death. And because of this the flock flees, leaving the lamb and her mother to fend for themselves. The predator encloses its prey, cutting off memory’s retreat. The only place left to go is inward, and so the lamb succumbs to self-preservation. The moon, the lamb’s mother, hovers overhead watching with dying starlight eyes as her baby is consumed—singled out, soldered down by victimization alone, and swallowed, alive and bleating. Where a heart once was there now exists a vacuum, soon to be filled by all the other atoms vying for universal attention. And even as this shell, this husk of a human-lamb-being dies its memory lives on, moves into another place, another phase where the collective unconscious lingers like a blood stain upon the carpet. This skeleton rises even as flesh dies and the crescent moon smiles because memory carries on—like the foot-soldier into battle, nothing will stop his cause; realize then that you are not alone, little memory, your are surrounded by ghosts just like you; shimmering smoke-beams thriving in the world forever. Remember that night always follows day; remember that truth resides in you, because you exist; remember and relish it the way consciousness remembers and relishes in you when you live on.

   

   

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