Dehydrated corpuses, those capitulating dead flair, encircle the tired mind, lascivious when thinking of boundaries and limitations. Sleek feathered dust mites crawl, carrying an agonizing hubris over a yolky film; eyes a horizon spin an array of explosive shadow and shade through slotted capillaries.
Trapped in a familiar schism.
Vertigo takes over.
No cell is safe.
A rabbit flits between gravestones, leaving behind a trail of noxious fumes. Gashed up and bleeding, Melody’s sour disposition plastered to the tune of clarity. Ready for a show. Climbing the hill. Grasping at straws. Rattle the bars. Tangled lace unfurls. Down. Further. Furthest. The pit is warm and friendly, even a little courageous. In the centre is a red tunnel, she is in the centre. Maybe she had a sister. Maybe she had a mother. Tumbling down naked. Waiting for the rapture.
‘Hey’ she repeatedly flicked open and closed the cap of her zippo lighter, nervous left leg shaking the graze on her knee. ‘It’s been a while’. Looking around to a medley of fleshy pipelines throbbing around her, Melody shuddered. ‘Why is this place alwmays so boring?’ slowly she stood to walk the metal, a clanging reprieve to remind her she was contagious. ‘and though I walk through the valley..’
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Plonk.
Plonk.
Plonk.
Plonk.
Dunk.
Dunk.
Dunk.
Dunk.
A crash of cymbals collapsed at her feet, crumbling bony and frail. Marching memories jagged and frazzled, a corrupted tape reel burns and rises to meet the clouded morning. Joined by echelon, hopping platitudes in a zig-zag pattern ascend sinewy coiled branches buzzing granules over an ice clear lake slowly like powder disintegrating into a curtain fall. Skating graceful, looming perfect, her reflection ushered in a forgiving balance.
‘MELODY!’
She stood up from the muddy ground. ‘Melody, what have you done? Your white dress is ruined’ said her mother.
Melody zipped her eyes up tight, invaded by a swirl of neon orange, pink, blue and green tones.
Falling backward.
‘One too many drinks spun in your direction eh?’ Hair and grit mangled like a scourer, was he Slavoj Zizek? There was a resemblance. An ordeal. Or a struggle? Mascara leaking, collapsed heels, bright pink, walk the atmosphere in an angular flurry. A broken fly expands to pop a button to roll inexorably along to feel the earth between the toes to stop.
There was a child to her right, a boy. Until he got whisked away, he was playing with his hamster.
They took him to the end.
‘There you are’ Melody said.
‘No, I’m not.’ Said the boy
Falling. Haven’t drunk any water for almost 48 hours.
‘It was the hardest decision I have ever had to make’ said her mother. ‘Suffering lasts as long as the idea lays dormant.’ Boxes piled on top of boxes piled on top of plastics, knotted up in fabric was garbage and there was no denying some of it was sentimental but most of it was highly unstable and ready to ricochet like a hammer to a lego masterpiece. ‘Here I am’.
‘It’s not every day you get a brand new pair of shoes, Melody. Be proud.’ said her mother. Melodies toes were itchy but she couldn’t do anything about it. She could wash her hands, though, so she did that instead.
The laser was pointed to the centre. Red. Diffused long.
‘Is it taboo to eat ants?’ said the boy. Melody felt an excruciating longing to save him. All she could do was cringe at the question.
‘It’s like they are crawling into a little volcano. Molten reminds me of squirming.’ A creaking got louder, followed by a cacophony of screeching syllables and vowels stretched blunt, tongued mouths tendril a scroll bound contracted and bent into a snap out of it.
‘Easy does it’ said the main hospital warden, disheveled blond hair sank greasy below his neck, eyes a dirty blue, he could have been a horse. He looked like he had spent most of his life on couchsurfing.com; Melody couldn’t tell why he was there. ‘Oh it’s you, from before.’ She said. ‘Who?’ said the boy.
‘Ants work bottom-up, they don’t have an idea and follow the idea, and they figure it out as they go along.’ said the boy. Clanging down the hall, cut up photographs burst into confetti fractals like dehydrated vegetables swooshing in freshly boiled water. Rent is due.
‘People look at me and they think, god damn, what a potential.’ said Nathan, this guy she knew in high school who never got over being a crust punk dope fiend casino bitch. ‘Live the life you imagine’ said Melody.
‘This is what everyone thinks everyone else thinks.’
‘Sometimes you can pinpoint the source and break off from it but we don’t encourage that kind of behaviour here, makes you prone to djinns’ said the pastor of the church, violently collecting snot in the back of his throat ready to spit out and replace with a stalk of wheat. She used to love going to church before she hit puberty and met Nathan.
‘Check it out’ Nathan said. He had a typical dude voice drawl, those types that are not quite guttural but aiming for it, close enough to have failed in reaching the essence of the bottom of a screw twisted into a thin wooden plank threatened by shears. ‘I can’t be bothered.’ Melody said, clasping and interlinking with the mesh. ‘Thinking of leaving a bowl festering in my bedroom for weeks but only to force a juxtaposition, as in it would be funny if my entire house were immaculate aside from this bowl’.
Frantically searching for anyone on the other side, head tilted over a steel barrier eclipse, oh please god don’t let the last one be Nath-
Fog.
‘..of the shadow of death
Warmth, insects twisting knots inside of a cage. Pounding a tremble down a spine tied back-to-back with another spine. A mutated experiment gone wild,
‘I wear the void on my sleeve. Suffering is cool and sweet but don’t you dare try and remind me of trauma. Trauma is bad; I don’t like to remember who I really am: a traumatized victim of suffering, even though I NEED you to recognize it in me just so that you will hold me but really hold me not hold me like the abusers that made me into the girl who wants to be held by you.’
Streaming ribbons coalesce into a spiraling parade, big band trumpets and drums attest to a woozy riddle made of wonky secrets. Skirt, leg, underwear, youth, all pleated at the seam of a rolling trajectory upward an impossible ride, folding filter-churned impressions silhouetted against a dishonored autumn into her palm.
‘Never stop stretching.’ He said. Timidity prevented this from happening, that’s as far as Melody knew. Unless fabricated, weakness was not an option.
They walked the rope. Was that her inner child winking at her, or are the flickering blurred lines that defined pivotal moments in her life haunting her? The narrative changed from ‘if people didn’t have vices then things would be better' into ‘my entire being is at the mercy of forces I cannot control and therefore I am innocent’.
‘Who was he?’ asked Georgia. ‘Some guy’ said Melody.
‘By the grace of god and the powers that be, let all that is known come forward.’ said her father.
‘Wait, wasn’t Christ a metaphor?’ asked Melody.
‘Christ was a man.’ said her father ‘You won’t absolve yourself that easy, just because you are channeling complex trauma-related idiosyncrasies through a lens filtered by cognitive dissonance does not mean you are a stultified hero'
‘Thanks dad.’
A sporadic and heavy bassline erupted, vibrating the metal beneath her feet, tinkling like convulsive bells in dissipation. Petals from above tatter into view, acrobats on amorphous pedestals flip glossy in stop-motion sync, frozen holy moment by moment. Being on the train as a woman is like knowing and not knowing where you are at the same time. On the one hand, you can feel greasy energies tugging at you from the corners of your eyes, on the other hand your misplacement can be reduced to every compromise you have ever had to make, which gave you the certainty of knowing exactly where you stood when you made your decision.
Angles and cheap glass, smudged fingerprints garnished with phosphorescent buttons press down automatic to whoosh-slide. Melody trammelled down the esplanade. Colours and roller-skates morphing, echoes morphing, lampposts and palm trees and that strange man who sells imported cigarettes from the corner store morphing, all sucked into a vapour wave vortex, all dim voices moaning. Inconsistent. Rhymes knock a lucid fragment out of resolution. Alone. Lime green circle, illuminated. Bold text. A stream of constant tremors convulse the hand. Into the infirmary. Friends or foes? Or just spheres? Endless spheres. The pile of carcasses is infinitely growing.
Image after image after forgetting is lost, there is solace in violence and bath water. Impulse prefers molestation over consent. It’s lagging, he can’t wait, he does it anyway before it loads.
‘Thanks dad.’
‘To be a daughter is to be humiliated.’ said her mother.
‘Never trust a man who listens to The Beatles.’
‘Is every man an abuser?’ asked Melody ‘or just The Beatles?’
Melody is on a pilgrimage, she is a crescent sigh. Her exalted messiah is a hurricane on a platform that writhes in a slow simmer, unbuttoning his skin with celestial claws, worms emerging from the hole, the type of mirage to stop a plane from spitting at the moon. One clear cool act, no harm intended. She had lost interest in disputing with him, drained and content with the notion of an entire nation holding a candlelight vigil to recognise her sacrifice.
‘Where is god in this equation?’ No mistake left unuttered, no repetition imbued beyond the regret of abandoning grace.
Alarm off, alarm on, alarm off, alarm on, alarm off, alarm on. To be fixated with routine is to harbour an obsession with coercion. Rotating the same way each cycle, animals spear power into movement, movement into breadth, breadth into distinguishing features with gaps between vents. Orifices bulge inside of a cradle, a safe space away from the white noise of temptation. Some of us trust our organs to cardboard boxes so recipients can merge with the deceased. Melody never considered needing to update this on her drivers’ license, if only she were Dutch, they have an opt-out law there.
Permutations that had rendered her face a calamity were of no concern. Remaining unspoken, like an embarrassed understanding about something awkward shared between two willing parties that crave harmony. Remaining mute and exuding deft innocence with an expression capable of exposing every yawning polyp to come alive, her beauty was fickle, this much she could come to terms with, as the flashing continued. It was not the burden of succession that troubled her as she let her breath take flight; it was the problem of her irrevocable fate. Melody would never know dedication. Although, one may choose to refute the possibility of a future set in stone by wearing a wiring harness. Bubble-wrapping families to walk over eggshells in fear of the finger is a relatable cure, because it reeks of care. If the sole premise of her life was that of an inevitable battle against loss, if all of her efforts and exertions lead her back over the same places (those of guaranteed possession) all leading to the same conclusion: was she not dedicated to avoiding loss? Was not her whole life a chase? A flirtation with change? A tango with the man himself, the first one to fall from grace?
Where was god in this equation? She could only wish he were a deck of cards so she could chew them up and swallow them and regurgitate them in shreds at passers-by.
'I wish you were a deck of cards so I could slip you between my fingers.’ said Melody
‘OMG’ Said Georgia
‘Yeah, his heart was paraplegic.’ Said Melody
Stumped by footsteps, buried by a garling esophgus, all went limp.
'You are a beautiful charade' He said. 'Sharp enough to let me shrink wrap a dollar.' He left her, behind a bush. 'I am a stultified hero'. He said 'The kind that shoots up a mosque and ends up on the news. The same kind.' He said.
'I fear no evil. Your rod and your staff comfort me, they comfort me..'
Trapped in a familiar schism.
Vertigo takes over.
No cell is safe.
A rabbit flits between gravestones, leaving behind a trail of noxious fumes. Gashed up and bleeding, Melody’s sour disposition plastered to the tune of clarity. Ready for a show. Climbing the hill. Grasping at straws. Rattle the bars. Tangled lace unfurls. Down. Further. Furthest. The pit is warm and friendly, even a little courageous. In the centre is a red tunnel, she is in the centre. Maybe she had a sister. Maybe she had a mother. Tumbling down naked. Waiting for the rapture.
‘Hey’ she repeatedly flicked open and closed the cap of her zippo lighter, nervous left leg shaking the graze on her knee. ‘It’s been a while’. Looking around to a medley of fleshy pipelines throbbing around her, Melody shuddered. ‘Why is this place alwmays so boring?’ slowly she stood to walk the metal, a clanging reprieve to remind her she was contagious. ‘and though I walk through the valley..’
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Plonk.
Plonk.
Plonk.
Plonk.
Dunk.
Dunk.
Dunk.
Dunk.
A crash of cymbals collapsed at her feet, crumbling bony and frail. Marching memories jagged and frazzled, a corrupted tape reel burns and rises to meet the clouded morning. Joined by echelon, hopping platitudes in a zig-zag pattern ascend sinewy coiled branches buzzing granules over an ice clear lake slowly like powder disintegrating into a curtain fall. Skating graceful, looming perfect, her reflection ushered in a forgiving balance.
‘MELODY!’
She stood up from the muddy ground. ‘Melody, what have you done? Your white dress is ruined’ said her mother.
Melody zipped her eyes up tight, invaded by a swirl of neon orange, pink, blue and green tones.
Falling backward.
‘One too many drinks spun in your direction eh?’ Hair and grit mangled like a scourer, was he Slavoj Zizek? There was a resemblance. An ordeal. Or a struggle? Mascara leaking, collapsed heels, bright pink, walk the atmosphere in an angular flurry. A broken fly expands to pop a button to roll inexorably along to feel the earth between the toes to stop.
There was a child to her right, a boy. Until he got whisked away, he was playing with his hamster.
They took him to the end.
‘There you are’ Melody said.
‘No, I’m not.’ Said the boy
Falling. Haven’t drunk any water for almost 48 hours.
‘It was the hardest decision I have ever had to make’ said her mother. ‘Suffering lasts as long as the idea lays dormant.’ Boxes piled on top of boxes piled on top of plastics, knotted up in fabric was garbage and there was no denying some of it was sentimental but most of it was highly unstable and ready to ricochet like a hammer to a lego masterpiece. ‘Here I am’.
‘It’s not every day you get a brand new pair of shoes, Melody. Be proud.’ said her mother. Melodies toes were itchy but she couldn’t do anything about it. She could wash her hands, though, so she did that instead.
The laser was pointed to the centre. Red. Diffused long.
‘Is it taboo to eat ants?’ said the boy. Melody felt an excruciating longing to save him. All she could do was cringe at the question.
‘It’s like they are crawling into a little volcano. Molten reminds me of squirming.’ A creaking got louder, followed by a cacophony of screeching syllables and vowels stretched blunt, tongued mouths tendril a scroll bound contracted and bent into a snap out of it.
‘Easy does it’ said the main hospital warden, disheveled blond hair sank greasy below his neck, eyes a dirty blue, he could have been a horse. He looked like he had spent most of his life on couchsurfing.com; Melody couldn’t tell why he was there. ‘Oh it’s you, from before.’ She said. ‘Who?’ said the boy.
‘Ants work bottom-up, they don’t have an idea and follow the idea, and they figure it out as they go along.’ said the boy. Clanging down the hall, cut up photographs burst into confetti fractals like dehydrated vegetables swooshing in freshly boiled water. Rent is due.
‘People look at me and they think, god damn, what a potential.’ said Nathan, this guy she knew in high school who never got over being a crust punk dope fiend casino bitch. ‘Live the life you imagine’ said Melody.
‘This is what everyone thinks everyone else thinks.’
‘Sometimes you can pinpoint the source and break off from it but we don’t encourage that kind of behaviour here, makes you prone to djinns’ said the pastor of the church, violently collecting snot in the back of his throat ready to spit out and replace with a stalk of wheat. She used to love going to church before she hit puberty and met Nathan.
‘Check it out’ Nathan said. He had a typical dude voice drawl, those types that are not quite guttural but aiming for it, close enough to have failed in reaching the essence of the bottom of a screw twisted into a thin wooden plank threatened by shears. ‘I can’t be bothered.’ Melody said, clasping and interlinking with the mesh. ‘Thinking of leaving a bowl festering in my bedroom for weeks but only to force a juxtaposition, as in it would be funny if my entire house were immaculate aside from this bowl’.
Frantically searching for anyone on the other side, head tilted over a steel barrier eclipse, oh please god don’t let the last one be Nath-
Fog.
‘..of the shadow of death
Warmth, insects twisting knots inside of a cage. Pounding a tremble down a spine tied back-to-back with another spine. A mutated experiment gone wild,
‘I wear the void on my sleeve. Suffering is cool and sweet but don’t you dare try and remind me of trauma. Trauma is bad; I don’t like to remember who I really am: a traumatized victim of suffering, even though I NEED you to recognize it in me just so that you will hold me but really hold me not hold me like the abusers that made me into the girl who wants to be held by you.’
Streaming ribbons coalesce into a spiraling parade, big band trumpets and drums attest to a woozy riddle made of wonky secrets. Skirt, leg, underwear, youth, all pleated at the seam of a rolling trajectory upward an impossible ride, folding filter-churned impressions silhouetted against a dishonored autumn into her palm.
‘Never stop stretching.’ He said. Timidity prevented this from happening, that’s as far as Melody knew. Unless fabricated, weakness was not an option.
They walked the rope. Was that her inner child winking at her, or are the flickering blurred lines that defined pivotal moments in her life haunting her? The narrative changed from ‘if people didn’t have vices then things would be better' into ‘my entire being is at the mercy of forces I cannot control and therefore I am innocent’.
‘Who was he?’ asked Georgia. ‘Some guy’ said Melody.
‘By the grace of god and the powers that be, let all that is known come forward.’ said her father.
‘Wait, wasn’t Christ a metaphor?’ asked Melody.
‘Christ was a man.’ said her father ‘You won’t absolve yourself that easy, just because you are channeling complex trauma-related idiosyncrasies through a lens filtered by cognitive dissonance does not mean you are a stultified hero'
‘Thanks dad.’
A sporadic and heavy bassline erupted, vibrating the metal beneath her feet, tinkling like convulsive bells in dissipation. Petals from above tatter into view, acrobats on amorphous pedestals flip glossy in stop-motion sync, frozen holy moment by moment. Being on the train as a woman is like knowing and not knowing where you are at the same time. On the one hand, you can feel greasy energies tugging at you from the corners of your eyes, on the other hand your misplacement can be reduced to every compromise you have ever had to make, which gave you the certainty of knowing exactly where you stood when you made your decision.
Angles and cheap glass, smudged fingerprints garnished with phosphorescent buttons press down automatic to whoosh-slide. Melody trammelled down the esplanade. Colours and roller-skates morphing, echoes morphing, lampposts and palm trees and that strange man who sells imported cigarettes from the corner store morphing, all sucked into a vapour wave vortex, all dim voices moaning. Inconsistent. Rhymes knock a lucid fragment out of resolution. Alone. Lime green circle, illuminated. Bold text. A stream of constant tremors convulse the hand. Into the infirmary. Friends or foes? Or just spheres? Endless spheres. The pile of carcasses is infinitely growing.
Image after image after forgetting is lost, there is solace in violence and bath water. Impulse prefers molestation over consent. It’s lagging, he can’t wait, he does it anyway before it loads.
‘Thanks dad.’
‘To be a daughter is to be humiliated.’ said her mother.
‘Never trust a man who listens to The Beatles.’
‘Is every man an abuser?’ asked Melody ‘or just The Beatles?’
Melody is on a pilgrimage, she is a crescent sigh. Her exalted messiah is a hurricane on a platform that writhes in a slow simmer, unbuttoning his skin with celestial claws, worms emerging from the hole, the type of mirage to stop a plane from spitting at the moon. One clear cool act, no harm intended. She had lost interest in disputing with him, drained and content with the notion of an entire nation holding a candlelight vigil to recognise her sacrifice.
‘Where is god in this equation?’ No mistake left unuttered, no repetition imbued beyond the regret of abandoning grace.
Alarm off, alarm on, alarm off, alarm on, alarm off, alarm on. To be fixated with routine is to harbour an obsession with coercion. Rotating the same way each cycle, animals spear power into movement, movement into breadth, breadth into distinguishing features with gaps between vents. Orifices bulge inside of a cradle, a safe space away from the white noise of temptation. Some of us trust our organs to cardboard boxes so recipients can merge with the deceased. Melody never considered needing to update this on her drivers’ license, if only she were Dutch, they have an opt-out law there.
Permutations that had rendered her face a calamity were of no concern. Remaining unspoken, like an embarrassed understanding about something awkward shared between two willing parties that crave harmony. Remaining mute and exuding deft innocence with an expression capable of exposing every yawning polyp to come alive, her beauty was fickle, this much she could come to terms with, as the flashing continued. It was not the burden of succession that troubled her as she let her breath take flight; it was the problem of her irrevocable fate. Melody would never know dedication. Although, one may choose to refute the possibility of a future set in stone by wearing a wiring harness. Bubble-wrapping families to walk over eggshells in fear of the finger is a relatable cure, because it reeks of care. If the sole premise of her life was that of an inevitable battle against loss, if all of her efforts and exertions lead her back over the same places (those of guaranteed possession) all leading to the same conclusion: was she not dedicated to avoiding loss? Was not her whole life a chase? A flirtation with change? A tango with the man himself, the first one to fall from grace?
Where was god in this equation? She could only wish he were a deck of cards so she could chew them up and swallow them and regurgitate them in shreds at passers-by.
'I wish you were a deck of cards so I could slip you between my fingers.’ said Melody
‘OMG’ Said Georgia
‘Yeah, his heart was paraplegic.’ Said Melody
Stumped by footsteps, buried by a garling esophgus, all went limp.
'You are a beautiful charade' He said. 'Sharp enough to let me shrink wrap a dollar.' He left her, behind a bush. 'I am a stultified hero'. He said 'The kind that shoots up a mosque and ends up on the news. The same kind.' He said.
'I fear no evil. Your rod and your staff comfort me, they comfort me..'
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