curvature

by Monkey Leap

  His sense of self has always originated in his creativity of unfolding to the self. He involves himself in physics to bring out infinite truths into the explicated. He asks for what he looks for, and then grows to what he’s given. This is the rule of his mind.

  On the opposite wall he scrawls:

  “the observer is the observed”

  Somnambulist

  It’s sunbathing time - precisely ten until three. Erroneous is happy to be a part of the prototypal myth: balanced, symmetrical and proportioned muscles; long and large meaty penis with equivalent testicles; full shock of hair; deep-set eyes with large quasar pupils postured accurately in order to give the illusion of penetration to the soul; a decisively unruly and apathetic vocabulary that claims prerogative. The oil is thick and lustrous. Sunglasses carve an anonymous bolt across his sculpted countenance. Erroneous has been counting on his blessings since his father sent him out into the world to prove his poundage. He plops down onto his fixed steel buttocks, adjusting his g-string first for look, then for maximum tan coverage and only then, for comfort. He pops a carbohydrate into his mouth, and stares forcefully and blankly out to the sea. Not much to think about except getting the job of “today” executed. Ten until three: then on to the gym: notable restaurant for appropriate well-balanced meal and potential drinks with small opportune talk: quick walk on boardwalk (smile when necessary): meeting with agency or phone intercourse.

  He pays little attention to anyone, (“This is not necessary.”) objectifying most all experience as a non-experience. His father seems concerned about his life lately. Erroneous sees this as strangely unbefitting. His father has always been inscrutable and as a result enigmatic. For a period of time in his teens his father’s way of being appears cryptic to Erroneous, until Erroneous struggles no longer, and becomes just like him.

  This thought goes no further. It has reached its conclusion. Erroneous checks his watch and lies back for the beginning phase of tanning. He closes his eyes, and listens to nothing except a passing plan or assenting schedule between him and his mind. Tomorrow he will rise again, and regulate his tanning time precisely, between ten until three. He will never notice that he does not exist.

  He is a series of experiences.

  When he sleeps he does not dream.

  The dream of Ambrosia

  I am dreaming I am floating in a sea of bubbles, each one full and eventful, each has a place, and is protected,

  and in-between is the opulence of embryonic ocean, a thinking breathing extension of the life of bubbles, and inside each bubble is … reflecting … and reflection … I descend slowly ever down, and suddenly

  I realize …

  that I am bubble too

  Bubbles expel from my inside now, and float ever upward, spiraling, to join together, in the whole, to that brilliant shifting light … and down, down, down I go …

  now I see my shadow,

  the weight is my body…

  my shadow falls below…

  wafting…

  on the ripple

  of gravity.

  now my being is the bubble

  floating upwards…

  “…I shall float forever…”

  Crush

  She slips like butter from his arms.

  He stands on the edge of his boat and watches as the liquid black hole opens and swallows her. He does not hear the splash, he only hears a dull and removed shade of blood coursing in his head, and can follow it back to the muffled beats of his heart. He feels floaty, as if he could bob and drift and glide on this undulating cradle of caress in perpetuity.

  He watches her descend,

  her face uplifted,

  her hair a divine crown of shifting yellow light,

  her arms outstretched above her body,

  her fingers fluttering in a vague vision of glory,

  and haze-light and dreamlike,

  phosphorescent,

  all disappearing

  ever so softly.

  “ ‘First, the fish must be caught.’

  That is easy: a baby, I think, could have caught it.

  ‘Next, the fish must be bought.’

  That is easy: a penny, I think, would have bought it.

  ‘Now cook me the fish!’

  That is easy, and will not take more than a minute.

  ‘Let it lie in a dish!’

  That is easy, because it is already is in it.

  ‘Bring it here! Let me sup!’

  It is easy to set such a dish on the table.

  ‘Take the dish-cover up!’

  Ah, that is so hard that I fear I’m unable!

  For it holds it like glue-

  Holds the lid to the dish, while it lies in the middle:

  Which is easiest to do,

  Un-dish-cover the fish, or dishcover the riddle?”

  The rhythmic verse of bubbles floats to the surface. Their tempo is slowing now. He is slightly envious of them, and doesn’t know why. Bubbles speaking her breath exhale on the layer of film between two worlds, and then in momentary interlude, cease. His arms and hands are still extended in frozen time, from the moment he let her body roll off by a mere open-armed gesture of release. She was looking in his eyes and he in hers. Both spoke of different measure, but both implied release. The boat and ocean are spinning now, the vortex pulling him down. His black hole has opened and is swallowing him whole. And as he screams in terror, head to the heavens, breath seized in throat, he is unable to notice that the world for everyone else is perfectly still, and surrounding passengers on surrounding boats turn quickly to see what has broken their paragon.

  The paragon

  The nameless man holds his nameless five-year old daughter’s hand to the floor. She doesn’t know why he’s grasped it so very hard, squeezing it to pulsing while he cries, and she starts to feel fear without knowing why. The soldier stands over him, yelling expletives and building tension, as if the fire needs to be lit to exploit the deed. The father lists over his daughter in a collapsing loss of self, and is butted in the back by the rebel’s rifle. He tries to tell his daughter in this last decidedly empty but desperate moment that everything will be alright, don’t cry, baby, daddy’s here… but the moment is cut short as the machete comes down and hacks off her hand. An empty sound exits her mouth, and her eyes are frozen in time.

  Phoenix

  The woman stares at the diamond on the ring on her hand. It’s the light of it; she smiles and extends her arm, admiring its stature and reverence. She is transfixed by the inward movement the light reflects from outside. She watches as the images reflected into it spills into refracted colors, and splits and scatters through each facet, all revolving within it. And it seems that no matter how she looks at this, it is infinite. This suddenly puzzles her. Now she can’t seem to take her eyes off of it. She knows it means something. She can’t tell what. Now she thinks it’s playing with her, mocking her questioning, or perhaps that’s her own reflection.

  There’s something about its clarity

  and the way it seems to reveal a simple secret of joy, a riddle from a child’s storybook…

  she hears a playing child outside…

  laugh…

  and looks up in astonishment, and promptly back down to the diamond. Suddenly she skips out of time. She is no longer aware of any difference between her and the diamond. An empty sound exits her mouth…

  Unfolding

  Argent opens his door. Alice mirrors his reflection. She moves in and around the perimeter of the room, checking each element to confirm what’s new of him. He sits in his chair observing her, aware of her every shift and breath, each drift into his eventfulness, each discovered place her face registering an expression of adoration.

  They are one event, separated only by a slowly closing gravity.

  Their individual natures begin to recede to enfold into a single birth. She is almost choked from this rushing new creature, this created Tulpa growing rapidly in its confine. <
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  She hangs motionless on the air unable to retrieve her sense of weightedness.

  Now within this arousing breath, this gaining heart, Alice unites with this building force of momentum.

  She faces Argent. She is carried toward him.

  She straddles his lap. His hands wrap gently on the small scoop of her lower back. She glues her response to his and both ascend a pattern of breathing, each degree struck like steel against flint, the heat moving in scale.

  He draws his hand just away from the surface of her skin and traces slowly the line of her spine; the energy between sends her arching her back, the trace utterance of an exhale of depth parting her lips … his tongue meets its space. She recoils, and grips his thighs, clinging to the seams of his jeans in momentary ecstatic desperation from falling fast. He echoes her starting motion, sliding her body forward and back, and repeats and repeats mirroring a deeper metronome in timing … Clothing between is a skin of contention, and remains only until they become a forgotten consequence… Then sequentially fleshed away, their souls congeal, metamorphosing to an ancient blueprint supplying a readied bank of strange attractors … feeding from the material back to molecular space …

  Neither is more now than one open-ended moment. Senses are exchanging and converting. Smell is electric. Taste is perception. Hearing is touch. Seeing is taste. This plateau remains.

  Enfolding

  The boy picks up the rock and rolls it in the square of his hand. It has become a part of his being. His purpose has been justified and consecrated by elders. A “God” is his escort. His heart begins to escalate with every breath he deliberates. The flush in his brain has been tempered by arousal. This is the same arousal now by which he masturbates from smooth magazine pages with voided bodies. He picks up speed with impunity of anger, and skipping in force ascends the inflection of voices in his brain, and upon reaching empty meaning, recoils his arm and follows the event, letting the rock that has become himself, go. All others around him tightly laugh in shattered pressure. Some have an erection. Feverishly searching for more rocks anywhere, and frightened to loose this piercing high, they wind to and fro, in amongst themselves waiting for the next level of blood rush. This plateau remains in context only, context being enough to let it linger.

  Shadowtails

  The squirrel stands ready. The thin dirt shoulder traces a starting line between this side of the road and the other, wide enough to give some skid space for abrupt alteration. He’s small. When observed by humans in parks the exchange promptly establishes a marveling of his miniature disposition, and a vague sense of a resembling nature, although not objectified.

  He waits - for the exacting moment - between large rushing geometric projectiles - to dart out into the road… midway recognizing the same large approaching shapes - in opposite bearing - have no relief in timing - enough to calculate continuing -

  and so he retreats.

  He waits on the side of the road. He shoots out - in between masses - stops suddenly under and amid blurring heaps - confused by speeds and jumbled by passing shadows, then – none ... and quickly he retreats once more (although already three-quarters of the way across).

  This time he hesitates at the start line indiscriminately, prostrated and edgy in his footing now, and manic in his discernment. Original nature adapted for potential and now complacent in its command. A resembling nature of experience – a reiteration - a forced convergence of unity of being with overwhelming odds of driven technology.

  The cars have not slowed.

  Once again he moves out in line, once again reaches directly mid-car, mid-wheels; now completely indecisive, chooses exertion through the maze, tackling openings and closings, speeding actions and blurs, decides to bolt to destination - turns rapidly now to change his mind -

  Tires roll over him.

  He squirms.

  More tires roll over him.

  He explodes out the sides of his skin.

  Traffic rolls.

  He is flat now.

  He no longer exists.

  But for outcome

  he never did exist.

  grace

  Grace opens the door. The light streams in, and holds its place on shapes cut with shadow.

  The sensation of a soft air brush sweeps through her, and she wants to laugh, but instead

  abruptly inhales in a gasp,

  in a forgotten moment of having to breathe.

  The air is filled with engulfing luminous presence.

  She stands motionless, unable to move, held fast in its love, powerless to stop the flow of tears it gives birth to…

  In a moment that appears carried by history, she is moving towards the bed. She sets the box on the nightstand, and wraps her tender hand around the lamp neck, pushing the light switch quietly through. Shifting her vision to adjust she looks downward to her son. His hair is swept incidentally across his open eyes.

  She feels him like an echo through her soul.

  And she looks down at his face once again. With the back of her hand she strokes the top of his head… and speaks soft words to match this euphony that pummels and peaks her senses.

  His hands are cradled together over his heart.

  She leans over and gently tilts them up from his chest.

  Lifting the torn lid of the shoebox and softly moving the tissue paper aside, Grace lowers her thumb and forefinger into the space between and, in deliverance, removes the baby shoes. She straightens the small frills of lace surrounding their openings, and glides them across the expanse of time to rest in Charlie’s hands over Charlie’s heart.

  TWO

  matrix

  Two bodies today, no time to write…

  Morpheus has lain awake for close to two hours now. He stares long at the ceiling. He wonders why the light produces such strange dances, and revels in his attempts at interpreting them. He listens to the wind through the series of bells he has hanging from his window. He recognizes a pattern, albeit deeply delicate and representational, as if an echo back.

  He hasn’t seen it quite this busy in awhile. One only needing a quick fixer-upper, for family view, then on to cremation tomorrow. He perceives the family’s needs have no strings attached. The son has entered life quietly and left quietly. His life has been full.

  Gravity holds fast our substance of presence.

  Charlie has lived his time as an experience of presence.

  Morpheus finds it particularly touching that, when they wheeled the gurney in, tightly held within Charlie’s hands are baby shoes. He understands the message.

  He takes extra time this time, the pressing of the suit, the slight suggestion of blush on his brow and cheeks, the upturned lock of hair, and light lifting and ever so slight shift of the cradling of hands, faithfully replacing the shoes. He knows the second he’s done, and on that moment he stands quietly beside in awe. In that moment his breath is abandoned. He is no more. And then a wave moves through him, and he returns. He wheels Charlie to the viewing room and sits down next to him. Quietly under his breath he talks with him, telling him he knows, while nodding in ascent.

  He has dubbed him “The Metaphor.”

  The sixteen-year-old girl has drowned. The police officer arrives simultaneous to her body. She has been sexually assaulted, beaten with fists on the head until the whites of her eyes were red, then thrown over the edge of the sailboat. Morpheus signs the Coroner’s transfer forms while the policeman, standing stationed beside the body, drifts through idle conversation to disassociate.

  …I see the perpetrator sitting in the belting rain on the prow of his boat when we approach him from the mooring. He’s staring into the water, from the storm. I yell his name, but the drumming of the torrent consumes everything…

  Then suddenly, as if by witness, it stops.

  A damped-down silence plugs everything up.

  I call his name again. At first he mumbles incoherently… then he’s absently raising himself to a wavering stand,
pulls a pistol from his windbreaker, and crams his mouth full with the barrel…

  he starts to cry uncontrollably…

  I can hear the barrel rattling against his teeth….

  The crowd has gathered by then, as usual, and as crowds always do, they grow double-quick and thick by curiosity. Before you know it they’re bringing coffees and sandwiches down, and a few have their kids on their shoulders so they could tell the parents what’s happening. One guy kept yelling ‘Pull the Trigger!’ until backup dragged him away.

  …Goddamn momentous occasion for their scrapbook…

  And all the time I’m standing there all I can think of is how that steel must taste…

 

  He stares at the body bag, his eyes fixed empty, his mind suspended, his life on hold.

  flavor of the moment

  Harry pushes the crushed napkin aside, and looks into the bottom remains of his coffee to his reflection. He sees his fluid face rippling back, and for a moment he is himself again.

  He most always sits at the counter. He finds the waitresses accessible in that human sort of way. He likes to laugh with them. They provide the comfort to a lonely stretch. He’s spent the last four nights on the road, this being the first time he’s indulged in human contact. It lasts as long as a coffee. His refill he takes back to the truck.

  He crawls into the back of the cab, and turns on the nightlight.

  The walls are covered in lingerie clad women. Polaroids, posters, and commercials all neatly arranged for best viewing while lying down. He sits leaning back against the wall, arms strapped around his knees, hands locked, thumb playing with each others’ tip, while he shifts vision from one picture to the next with intense conviction. He unbuttons his jeans, grips the zipper tongue, and emphatically unzips one tooth at a time, listening intently to the heightened click each slip down to the next tooth makes. A surge and upwelling swells in his chest and shoots quickly up to his throat and he swallows to catch the lump of sensation, sending the swelling back down to his groin. He deliberates with the pace of his mind, advancing as it reacts, feeding back into the loop. Reaching the bottom of the zipper, he accentuates the synchronized movement of both hands up to each side of the opening, and between fingers and thumbs grasps tightly each seams’ edges, slowly opening both in unison. Emphatically the dark shadow recedes between, replaced by the hot glare of deep pink and stiff frill lace. Sliding his thumbs around the side of his pants now, he pushes down in one final epiphanic movement, revealing women’s bikini panties, his balls bulging to be contained in the crosspiece. A smile illuminates his face, pushing up his ears in the extension. A glint in his eye reveals accord from comparison with the pictures. Joyously he pushes his pants off with his feet, and sliding down the side of the truck wall, he reaches recline, and lay only for an exemplary moment, then, backing his arm over his head he hits the light switch.