Cogwheels

I’ll stifle your. I’ll embroider your. I’ll stab your. I’ll take your. These aren’t, this isn’t, you aren’t a curi­ous mind. I’m against this argu­ment and I don’t have its reins any­more. I’m against this wall and I can’t feel my back anymore.

You say brick­work, I say stone. You say win­dow, I say cel­lar. You say inno­cent, I say I know you bet­ter than that. You say pur­pose, I say noth­ing. We both speak of dreams, but then I bring yours into being and push cot­ton candy into your gul­let until you choke spumes of sugar. I form your body into a star­ted spread-eagle so I can watch your insens­ible grin and your final ran­cid rattle. I take your teeth, one by one, and give them a new reason to chew. Your mouth can no longer form words, even breathe, but this rough-hewn cog will fit snugly against unre­mark­able and obed­i­ent wheels to ease my pas­sage from sperm to ash, from bawl­ing babe to drib­bling dotage.

I run the water hot­ter than I can stand. I scrub myself dirtier than I’m fit for and tie myself tighter than a body bag. I dash and dot ima­gin­ary codes against my skin so that I can be the book of someone’s choos­ing. Your escap­ist fantasy, his magical real­ism or her lin­guistic fire escape. I scratch import­ant phone num­bers into my scalp while wish­ing my hair was longer so that no one can call them.

I want to be taken in the morn­ing, against the rain and against the sky­line, while cocooned in blurred vis­ion and mis­ted breath win­dows. You can inter­pret that state­ment in whatever way you wish, because that is why we’re here. That is why we’re all here.

Sprain and pinch

If you are a mangled organ, pierced, then this is how you dance. Twist over, unravel and bleed through my shirt. I have worn red for such a spe­cial occa­sion (I remembered to put on clean under­wear, too). I have sixty thou­sand miles of ves­sels to spread among the popu­lace in the hope that they can reuse them for frivol­ous dec­or­a­tion “because it’s how he’d want to be remembered”. I have writ­ten clear instruc­tions on my Donor Card to this effect. I have asked, too, for my eyes to be placed in a match­box and given to a small child who thinks there are mon­sters in the cel­lar. (There are mon­sters in the cel­lar, make no mis­take, but they’re often friend­lier than the humans.) I have fur­ther instruc­ted that my clenched fists should be stripped of their remain­ing skin, hav­ing defen­ded me so well dur­ing the less than eleg­ant scuffles, and shoved onto the rust­ing prongs of metal rail­ings, ideally at a site of immense his­tor­ical import­ance and national pride; some­where where the sound of my decay­ing bones frac­tur­ing then fad­ing into dust on the breeze will at least not seem too futile as final ges­tures go. And lastly — lastly — peel off my cereb­ral cor­tex, which I insist must retain every single con­scious and uncon­scious thought I’ve ever had, every memory and word pre­cisely cata­logued and stored, and force it down my killer’s throat. Make it stick. Make them choke.

Three prayers, then silence

We pray to the west shore.

This being — your god, we don’t know his name — this being eats through the sand and gets between your toes. He wraps him­self in skin foil, in body-bags and debris. He does not accept pray­ers before sun­rise, no mat­ter how earn­est or plead­ing they might be. He looks down and observes the crawl­ing souls, but doesn’t extend a hand to scoop them up because his fin­gers are wrapped tight around an archive of words, all the verses and mur­mured pray­ers he com­mis­sioned from the greatest minds alive, and he has become too pro­tect­ive of them, too guarded. He refuses to let even a syl­lable fall from his grasp in exchange for sav­ing a single soiled nat­ive from the oncom­ing tide.

We pray to the east shore.

Here, your god is dead. The skin foil has long ago been shred­ded, the body-bags unzipped and emp­tied of their walk­ing bones. The debris has been fash­ioned into statues of lust, pleas­ing to the eye and to the caress­ing touch. Feb­rile minds, drunk on blustery air car­ried in on the waves, can eas­ily ima­gine these shapely forms being open and com­pli­ant. Rape is the price of such pro­gress, such dis­eased ima­gin­a­tions, and under their inva­sions these child-bearing hips of con­crete and metal will, if impreg­nated, give birth to the future. The beach­combers dream of nat­ives who won’t crawl in the mud, but will instead run into the sea and wash them­selves until they’re adults, bled clean and ready to breed for the first time. Words, mean­while, are his­tory, washed away in the murky brine.

Behind our massed ranks of name­less, num­ber­less sol­diers — the eager, war­mon­ger­ing front line, then the unpro­tec­ted can­non fod­der, fol­lowed by the scared to shiv­er­ing rear gun­ners — north clings des­per­ately to gravity’s embrace. She wants to believe in the earth in all its roots, stones and cor­puscles, and she prays fer­vently to be held forever and ever, amen.

We look south.
We bow our heads.
We pray to no one.