life cycle of a butterfly or a storm
By a bush, next to a wall which leads the way of its balance act, the footsteps made one before the other. You don’t have to be young to walk along the top cap-stone, but they say it helps. From here, like any wall on its way out of town, it will take you back there; like the left hand which is reached out to touch the face of a wall and know that even this maze will see you free in the end. All that matters, for now at least, is this bush; kept short by the wild of nature, too orderly to attend to the needs of everyday growth and disrepair. In the background for most, it is noticed only when life comes its way. Life today is a rustle, which breaks my eyes from their path and takes me with them into looking at the sound; where it comes from the foot of a dark shape, to crackle out as the finding of some bird in search of whatever may be on offer. Here, looking into the bush, where it is moved as furtive against the set, I am left to feel that so much begins small. I am waiting but for now I leave the bird to fidget its blacks and yellows that I may continue on, following the wall uphill. The sounds are made to disappear underneath the rest; the edge of town, constant in its noise of transit - the smallest garden, no match for the cluttered and overgrown. With a thought, I wish the town good luck and as though I speak some other language, the car unlocks. I open and close, the bulk of the noise left behind with the street, and so I speak a common language. We begin to talk of how good it is to be understood, to find sense in the dysfunction of our own unique identity, how good it is to be touched by darkness.
For a while, nothing really changes, we are the topic, both subject and object. By now it is known and so it is wanted; do I know a place where we could match flesh for flesh. Better able to think now, the only distraction being mine, I fall into feeling about my mind for yet other open doors. Racing out from the walls and the towns, away, from the way of life, the distance long let go of in turn for closed eyes; we make our own way, marking the ride only with the places we can’t. Not a lot of other conversation, apart
from where and when, and no thought for the holes that will soon be. The one now is the depth of unknown. Coming to take it that no sound means yes, the car stops. Eyes move about but watch always on the delicate markings, like animal and animal meeting for the first time; the only first time there has ever been, the only one an animal will ever remember. Do we surprise ever, rising up into nowhere with one who is at the time attracted by the positive, ourselves in the possibility of now. But the taking of air cannot stop and so we continue: lifting cloth as though propelled by the heights alone, as filth which can be retrieved when we surface. The feeling is no one will ever know. We bind like forever has no meaning but that which has come of now. Each surely hurting beneath, yet somehow legs in the form of arms, unfold, as much to uncross and open the gods up to the indecency of their affections. Here for one reason: both needs are to feel what is known. Inside the other, now as good as never before. The roles are there, and gradually they are felt only to accentuate the role of life itself. Each in time, to favour the fullness of imminence, we surge into one as though the root cause of every touch were its only sighted end. These are the lips penetrated by the hand, which takes nowhere in its grasp; each finger, the tendril in receipt of its present as it is laid before them.
Here on the grounds that only the greatest of life begins small, the great unknown, feathers into shades of everywhere we have ever been and man’s flight resumes its ascent with the gargoyles and the grotesques, each perched like demons whose only craving is ecstasy; each rabid of blood and soul. The mere body tolerates any and all companion, be it death or angels, the nearest we are ever to touch any but each other, or ourselves. The rain falls in a field and its surrounds, far as we care to look. The car, a ripened pod, plucked and left to soak its steel skin, which reacts to the heat of body and blood, releasing warmth as mist in the distant eyes of the lustful. Though we are not near anyone, it is also known we are no closer to each other. Coiled side to side in the back seat, we come back to time and being, and uncurl back into the relative comforts of cloth;
not meaning to take liberty or risk the holes of awkward placement. Full bodied and fresh from our return, I look away, toward the steamed window, and envisage the distance as some form of love. The window wipes clear, its residue is water, condensed on the inside, dripping down to the base of the frame. My finger remains moist, I rub away the rest of the condensation, we look once again for the rainfall. Tomorrow is for the mistakes. We begin to talk of the secrets we cannot tell any other, the language is common, but not shared. There are churches somewhere a bit like this, the sanctioning of a great exchange; the fluids and solids of today, sought to recompose as a price to be paid. There are no promises, we each get what we have gave, letter for letter; everything beneath a night sky, save the unicorn or the sleeping swan. As black is burnt into the small eye of great mystery and its small black birds; looks carry out for the day to forgive, for the night to take hold. So as the urge takes us, we await our turn, erecting open forms one after another, to follow dark with night fall.