The body jerks, leaves shaken

The body jerks. Leaves shaken. A breath of hot anger exhales, turns into a sigh, turns into a wondering -- what’s it gonna take? This time? The eyes gleam to an empty ceiling, turn to two smiles, peak to love and, flowers on concrete, fall again into broad, hail confusion. Do near misses with Death make you want to die? The way near misses with success make you want to? The way near misses with Love make you want to die? A wise person once said, I’ll take an idiot’s pain to this anyday. What the wise person chooses to forego, the idiot gets to at least enjoy before the suffering sets in. It is better, the wise person thinks, to have loved and lost and never to love again. At least the idiot gets to go on losing.

                     And so, we lose to live. The body jerks, with movement’s memory, a trembling, a rupture, a break. Do you remember, long ago, when you dropped that baby? Innocently screaming, eating, waiting to be clean, it fell from the chair and to the ground, where it landed in a basket of dirty linens and gazed up at no one there.

      If a snake sheds itself, why can’t we? Why do we beg for a skin to return to? Why do we consider some space golden, the dust in the air gold and still? Because, the wise person says to the fool, because.

    In a hot tub once, I sucked on someone’s sleek clean toes. Ever since then I’ve struggled to feel my own, and can’t feel them at all right now, even when the body so violently shivers. The head turns to thick helium gas, filled with futures inexplicable, textures unreliable, ineffable. Still, the eyes swell with desire and well with what’s left of the water, from a hot tub, and the mouth retains its sense, tongue crazed, shouting if they can hear, what’s it gonna take?

        The stomach revolts, or so it would seem, no telling hallucination from reality now. Food hasn’t come in days. Too picky. Too sure it’s refined. Someone is out there, chewing on a pickled strawberry, freely dealing with the slippery seeds, not knowing perhaps that it will be their last. The body loses control. It screams from its core. Revolting.

            “Look Alive!”

        There’s a joke. How could one, after being brought to this? This was a life before too many voices spoke, and was then transformed into something 1) “Less,” the idiot says. 2) The wise person said more. Said n said n said. This was a life spinning, rising in circles, spiraling into the coronal eyes and tumbling in the leaves. This was a life not two days ago doing. Simply. Fine. Even with less to bite, this was a life whipping through the fruit preserves, a heart in stable but serious condition. But stable. Who kicked the cast, the plastic encasing, the shell around the ruptured thing that had been so happily forgotten and healing? Who tossed this heart from the hospital window, please? Confess. Who wasn’t there to look upon it now?

        Do you see? There’s no such thing as providence. There is no one watching.

            There is no evidence. And you can’t prove a thing.

          Can you eat a toe without tasting the heart? Your foods are touching. Better run, dripping, drenched, in the rain we more often beg for than receive.

                                                        She shivered and said, I caught a chill. Don’t you love it when that happens? The body jerks. Only one eye smiles. The other has gone straight faced. And says, this is what you asked for, to be brought here. This is what you get. If there’s anywhere you can hide yourself, it’s where no one will ever see. But there you were, running, and jumping in the leaves.

                                                                                                                           Close, eye. We want fun in our dying days. But who could honestly go out fucking? Who could so smile at the end of all things? So the other eye begins to close. Life so rarely calls for seriousness.

                                                                                                                                       “Look Alive.”

There’s a joke. I won’t apologize for being in this very place. Nor for knowing my truer things. And please don’t ask me if I can feel my feet. We put our own bodies on the line now. So have we kept or lost our heads? 1) “Lost,” the idiot says. 2) The wise person said kept.

                                                                                                        What is to lose or keep?

                                                                                                         What is to lose or keep? The body quakes as it melts down to everything. What is there to take, or be given? What is there to be withdrawn? Ourselves and ourselves only. An interesting creature once said to me, “I will take your life now.” And I must admit, I didn’t know what that meant. In fact. I went along with it, thinking it right to do. And then added, “in order to best live mine.”

Why will these eyes not close?

                                              “Look Alive!”

                                                  The body does not know how or how not to. The body jerks. 1) “A great storm!” the wise person says. 2) The idiot said just a small twitch. The eyes gleam to an empty ceiling, and the basket tips into hot water.