An Amazing Defeat

The volcano was again making noise. Again the farmers who worked its' slopes could hear the deep rumbling of the boiling within the cauldron, the liquid rock moving to music only it could hear. Again those who dared to look at the sky could see the hot, orange-red coloring in the clouds. Again noses wrinkled at the acrid stench of sulfer, at the release of cavern gases into the once-fresh air. It came and went, this movement, this activity, this display. To the gods it was merely a shifting image on a marble tapestry, drifting aimlessly through space. To the mortals it was a force to be feared. And to those who dreamed of finding that transcendental realm in-between the gods and the mortals, it was the fierce flow of blood. A hot, illumed nighttime cry. A reminder of passions not quite dead, yet the beating of a dying heart.

The girl looked around her room at her plastic collections, at her shiny baubles of yesterday, heard the distant echo of every former afternoon spent soaking in the sun and music, and found his face behind closed eyes. He was always there, just as she knew he'd be. Sometimes a comfort, sometimes a distraction, it was not a perfect desire, it was not quite a burden, it was not quite reality, it was not quite lost to dream. It just was. "Love just is," her friend often said. "Love is distant headlights and love is memories of perfect stares shared in some foreign afternoon." She sighed; it was always this way. She wanted her own foreign stares to litter her mind; all she had were mascara, celluloid images and sly avoidance of the camera. She wanted to confront him! Now! He owes me, she thought. He took what he could, and ran when the wind became too strong. She was not afraid to follow, she smirked bittersweetly. He was afraid to lead.

Miles and continents away, her friend created volcano sculptures out of ice, out of non-existant opportunity, out of sheer necessity. She is within, he felt. She is Venus in the morning sky, beckoning all who long to live their dreams awake to the curvature that never begins, yet still arcs gloriously into the distance, like a rainbow promising melody, tender skin, and soft smiles. God, when he closed his eyes he felt faint. Lightness of soul, perhaps. He knew Love, he was her pupil. He studied her everyday. How pathetic, he knew, he was an expert. An expert with no experience, but he had cataloged her every grace, her every pull, her every lash, her every liquid embrace. He knew her.

Some people reeked of Love, he thought. It was like patchouli in an unexpected place, the sterile became musk and quiet appreciation became lust. What was he talking about? He was so base today! Haha, what glory is this? Why does desire feel so criminal? "The pedestals of art are not so high today," he remarked. Too much talk. Too many words. Not enough sweat.

He knew the volcano was glowing somewhere over the horizon. Somewhere, right now, feet were being burned on the steaming ground. Somewhere, right now, timeless cries were being carried to souls who could not, who dared not, remember receiving the same message, remember bathing in the same scream. It was this way yesterday, today and tomorrow. He felt his sister's pain. He had no clue how it would end, for his own dreams or for hers.

Love, he thought. What an amazing defeat. Why do we even bother to play?

glass

We chase our dreams of inherent disaster, professing ability to handle or blindly ingoring the human touch, seeking that ephemeral stroke, that cosmic kiss, that fucking eternal high that does not exist. We find a face, a name, a form, and bless it with our bitterest yearnings. It is the page the fallen book always opens to. The worry stone worn smooth by inattentive and constant caresses. Shackled in chains of our own manufacture, we spin our silky threads of passion, tasting the rancid aftermath of a mark just missed. "Glory be to God in the Highest" I sang with indoctrination, with repetitive folly, not knowing the pit I was digging underneath my own prone form. That tender boy with the bald testicles never found his adult voice, never startled the world with basso-profundo glee. He merely fell behind, tripping over a loose shoelace, worn, and dirty from springtime mud, shunned by his peers, absorbing the living world around him. The glass, thick, remains unbroken.

Puzzled

Sentiment is fleeting today, he felt. What phantom of youth would be the first to return and grace him with inspiration this day? Or tomorrow? Or ever at all? Funny how the desire to comment and create came and went in an all-or-nothing feast. It's a rare day anymore/anyway when the time is enough, when the clouds part to reveal some path, shining or not. Is it all just an exercise? Screaming for recognition, he felt suffocated by the increasing commitments. Is this what it is like to have your dreams come true, he wondered? Just another set of problems? Idiot, too idealistic to adapt. Or perhaps it was just that time was not limitless. Time was a cheetah running at full speed, shedding ideas in the slipstream wind until thought was carved into a common denomenator of infinite nothingness.

The wife wakes up and offers some common reminder that the garbage needs to be put out this morning. "We're interrupted by the telephone, we didn't think they were invented then." Damn, Steve Kilbey's lyrics were the text to his life. Ethereal emeralds haunting with their perfect "let the listener interpret their own meaning" vagueness. And that's the deal, he didn't want telephones ringing to interrupt his momentum. That creative plain where the world makes sense and all desire seems possible was hard enough to find and slip into some days. God forbid that fools want to stay there forever; it's a drug, after all, you know, some eternal screaming in joy from delirious lungs and synapses.

And there's the crux, isn't it? At least to those practical ones who claim we are dreamers and we are lost. Are we artists gifted in our ability to attain some special, fleeting nirvana that so very few understand and we could never explain except through our vague art and our earnest, smirking, tender references? Or are we fools refusing to accept and embrace reality? Or both? It's tragically hard to put the whole picture together, isn't it?

Well, he felt, maybe I am getting closer to finishing the borders of this puzzle, establishing the framework of how I work and where I fit in. He could hardly contemplate the pile of multi-colored internal pieces laying off to the side, in the future, unfathomed.