The nature of shadowy egress, secret in crosses gilded
By the blood of wolves and sacred promise, by the caste of hungry breath
And adorned silhouette, the shackles of branded birth, by
Mark, by the raspberry stain of a simple
Eloquence and a delirium in ambiance,
By nuance and naive constructs of beauty,
By ebony hues and darkness in migrant rivers
Of consciousness, a yielded confluence of rejoicing
Distance, allayed in faraway
Horizons.
I had been dying to stroll through those dark tunnels of green
and black night. Isabella wanted it too. We met up upon the dirt path behind
the abandoned shack on the outskirts of the forest. It was black and the
wind was a voice blown down from the forest hills between the thick
Redwoods.
I wanted to say things. To charm her, anything. When she came up
around the bend of the shack I could already see the color of her movement
before her pale face shone in the moonlight. It was crimson, pure velvet
crimson. Then she came. She stretched out her hand and laced her cool
fingers between mine. From a flash smile she led me, barefoot, out and up
into the darkness tunnel.
We moved beat by beat.
“Out here,” she whispered a hush of rustling leaves, “your own
heartbeat is an echo.” Up above the trees covered us, arching out a tunnel
of spinning green and black.
No one has secrets out here, I thought. It was impossible to
keep the old ones since it was here all the new ones were born.
“Let’s stop here,” she said, kneeling before a hollowed trunk of
an old growth.
Then she brought out a bottle. The cold black liquid swirled
inside and she uncapped it and the metal rang. Twigs broke and creatures
purred as the first of our drinks went down. I could feel the moist dirt
between my fingertips. With dizziness our lips met and the moon somewhere
above shone bright and through the ceiling of the trees were cast white
slivers. Satyrs began to creep along the perimeter and the taste of the
liquid was a wet kiss between our mouths. I slipped my fingers through her
long wisps of hair and cupped her aquiline neck and she brought me back and
stared. I felt no taste off her lips. Her eyes were empty and sheen. I was
kissing a ghost. I could see right through her. She traced a silhouette
smile.
“There’s nothing,” I said
She nestled on her front paws, arched and asked me:
“What else did you expect?”
To this I laid back into the tendrils of pines that had fallen
that day and the days before. The smoke from my cigarette slithered its way
up and up and the stars behind the curtain of tree limbs hung delightful
like radiant pieces of a broken up god and in the cool of the night all I
could think about was the velvet crimson and I knew that all of us up here
in these great old woods away from the land and sea of memory, cut from the
body of society and lost perhaps forever in this lush green forest, had been
bent too close to the electric wire, wanting the tremor, the buzz that
slipped into our half-dull slits, hungry for the dirt, thirsty for the sea.
Isabella then clutched the muddy soil on her knees, her claws
digging in, pulling out the roots from the belly of the Earth. She was above
me now and her eyes became globes of fire and her smile a white sliver of
the reflected moon.
“My name is not Isabella.” Her wicked skin shone off the fire of
her eyes. Behind her the still shadows began to quake and laugh.
“I know,” I said. “I know.”
Is it Angels that make men see their fears? A sort of Jesus
passage? Or is it fear that makes men see Angels?
Or ghosts in forests? Or love in the shadows?
“Stop thinking,” she laid her body onto mine. Now covered by her
mist, I inhaled her into my nostrils, feeling the burn, down into my throat,
into my lungs and with a tight hold I kept her there in my stomach. I would
keep her there for a very long time. And then I was alone again, at the foot
of the old growth redwood, back in the layered wood, alone with nothing but
the crickets and the green and black infinite.
Yahtzee is a fun game to play after your face has been jizzed all over.
Maybe the jizz was good luck, or maybe you won because you ran up to your
bedroom to get your lucky red dice even though he didn’t want you to. You
got 317 points and he got 264. When he shook the Yahtzee he did it too
loudly and you told him it hurt your ears. He filled your wine glass.
You guys talked about bugs from Arizona. No, he talked about bugs from
Arizona and you google imaged them as he was describing to you. Vinegaroon.
Gila Monster. Scary bugs. You hoped you wouldn’t dream of them tonight. You
hoped he wouldn’t sleep over.
He wears matching Adidas socks and a hat. You wear hot pink plaid knee high
socks under your jeans. You are both wearing jeans. You are mimicking one
anothers body movements. You read somewhere that this means you have good
chemistry. You know now that that is a crock of shit.
He is smart and can tell you where McDonalds and Coca-cola came from. He can
articulate San Francisco. He can teach you how to play Yahtzee and he knows
a lot about everything, especially Arizona. Especially bugs.
He can come on your face and open a wine bottle. He can come on your face
and let himself out.
You can sleep soundly. You can wake up and you can wash your face with
proactive, brush your teeth and go to work. You can throw up in your work
bathroom.
For some strange reason I thought about buying one of those dolls.
Those silicon, real life dolls.
I could sit it in my front room
and dress it up a bit.
If anybody came around.
Hi there
have you met my wife.
Say hello darling
we have guests.
I wonder whether they are good company
Apart from the obvious that is.
I guess you could even put lipstick on them
and a bit of rouge as well.
The main drawback I think
is that they are quite expensive.
But the skin is like that of a real woman’s they say.
The trouble is
they could not bring you a cup of tea
or clean the kitchen though.
I don’t suppose they say much either
but that could be a good thing I guess.
What do you think love
About this or that.
Come on
don’t give me the silent treatment.
What have you got to say on the matter?
Come on out with it.
No
I guess that they are not too warm either
unless the silicon warms up as you get close to it
and maybe practice some exercise on it.
Maybe some karate moves.
Ow yah.
Pretend she is one of the girls from kill bill.
No you can’t beat the real thing they say
All woman
Ivan loved them all and I loved Ivan.
The birds, their black wings beating against the dead current of winter
air, mark the spot in their circling. Moving beneath them we see the
redbloodblack smear stretched out along the pocked pavement and the
artifacts, the remnants of what must have happened. A fireman without a
helmet, works a hose to force the road clean so that no one will see, so
that no one will learn what the crows know: that we are alone.
This piece previously appeared in Dogzplot here.