on being gwyneth

every time i look at a mushroom i’m aware that the knowledge that i can eat it – knowledge which i can only take for granted in the case of those brown fleck caps and stems enticingly stacked before me in the market – is marked by the act of a potential victim – perhaps a crippled, aged and expendable member of the tribe, perhaps a particularly courageous or foolhardy alchemist, perhaps just a very hungry farmer caught in the rain far from his fields and herds – who didn’t die when they ate this one, whose breathing didn’t lurch to a halt as he doubled over from pain like an iron claw pulling his guts out through his throat, black agony racing up his nerves like acid to shroud his mind, shocked, terrified, pleading and finally silent.

in that brief moment of lucid peace he looked up, and the creature – a hissing gantry of black armor and springsteel – leaned down almost gently, almost with frank curiosity, smiled its gleaming double smile, and took a core sample of his skull.

his heart got the message four beats later, and he went down still pumping meaty curds and flecks of bone in a thick flood across his back.

my skirt is going to inflate.
i’m going to float away.
the last montgolfier sister.

without my addictions i am nothing.
without my desires i am utterly detached.
without my compulsions i achieve nothing.
without my appetites i am empty.
without need, i feel nothing.
without seeking, i am not here.

grey air the faintest hint of green.
no shadows anywhere, no reflected color,
only the soft silver halo of everything.
that which shines, looks polished.
signs and lights hang in the stillness,
bright and cold.
the halogen lamps of the cars in the street
are like diamonds.

linen paper
light, suffuse
moving shadow
billowed sleeve, lace trimmed
glass quill, silver tipped
glass inkwell, dipped
midnight ink
trace the feathered script
of a poem

fallen hair
gold in fine and long
sunlit still water falling forever still
across the page

fallen gaze
grey in thought and far
heart-light cool the burning
the yearning
still the passion questing forever still
across the page

paper, candle, quill
the poem written
still
her shadow slides
across the page

softly dark
thoughts, diffuse
still forever falling

what does it say about us, that so much of the interface is horror? a mind has fixed paths. the eye sees only what it can – the angstroms of color, the parallax of space. and vaster things intrude, and are reduced… symbols and metaphors and sometimes we see the flock of psychopomps ascending, fluttering darkness.

so much is horror at the interface. purposes beyond mind, minds beyond knowing strike eddies in our spacetime, shimmering mirages of matter and fearful aspect.

what does it say about us?

remember flatland?

darkened minds and animal hearts. all luminance filtered through the fact of our meatbeing, our nerves and veins and skeins of skin trapping, sifting, extruding the interface into petty terror, simple and terrible pain.

what is the experience of sex? what is its sense in time?

is it a measured dance, a pavane of glancing eyes, twining fingers, the slow fall of an unlaced garment? singular moments strung together like precious beads to be touched over and savored, each a memory of your body, of your breath, of your movement as your lover places their hand, there… their face, there. expectations and events, rising and falling on the slow waves of desire.

or is it a dark flashing collage all motion and smell, creak of leather and taste of sweat and the wet vanishing of one body into another all together in a great heaving gasp? a rush of moments all made one in the forge of lust, limb and face and hair and sex fused, a primal body of heat with hungry lips that devour its own tongues, convulsing as it enters itself?

or is it yet again a moment out of time, an electric suspension like mozart’s note hung in the space of your nerves, your breath forever deep, your back forever arched, the brilliant instant of your body focused forever on that fire between your legs? your arms lifting outward towards heaven, drawing the light down with your breath, exhaling magic with your release forever.

let me show you how to dance. let us move not as one but as two, pacing through the long night. a waltz perhaps… a minuet. our hands reach toward each other as the next step is prepared, a wrist tilts upward, then…

twilight dancers twined
thigh to thigh
breast to spine
sleeping fingers clasped
her breath the air that moves
her lover’s hair
fine, dark
gently at her neck