The seed of a tornado was planted in her belly on the day she was conceived and now the whipping, whirling winds had come to a head around her. Her feet moved in precise measures, her rhythm strong and confident. These steps had been written into her history before she was even born and now she felt powerfully drawn. A tidal surge breaks over the dam walls of her consciousness and rushes in with a fury that inundates her with memories of shop windows and pretty, useless trinkets, desires and meaningless meanings that were spoken in loving whispers and broken in cawing cries. Thoughts had crowded her life-force and teased her with suggestions of the entire redundancy of it all. The dark-eyed one had faltered leaving gaping holes ripped in the underskirts of hope; dreams raped by reality and left bruised and withering in the demolition yard of life for all we feel is the product of the slaughter; the slaughter of our souls, our youth. Hearts, damned beasts of burden shackled in abattoir yards where they await, wretched and resigned for the beautiful butcher to step forward and strike.
The rhythm of her foot-falls quicken; she is only a peak-hour rite lacking in population and pluck. Her heels hit rock and gravel and the sharp irregularities twist and bite at her ankles as she presses on but she is unconcerned. She is done with her bones, let them be dashed and broken to bits and mixed with the grave gravel beneath her, let them splinter and stick at the hands of the undertaker. The cyclonic wind changes, it is sudden and sharp. Where they had once pressed against her breast, a firm hand of retention and revelation, they now hurry her step and fall in-line, in collusion with the grand plan. They have listened to her thoughts and they have been won over by the weight of her voice – a calm and thoughtful clarity that lulls their whistling mayhem. The winds, they orate now on a soapbox in the corner. They speak on her behalf, they hold her on their shoulders and parade her for all to see. Hurry, we must hurry before she turns around before the plan is changed, we must all hurry forward and show them what we can do.
As the landscape dies away and plateaus, lusciousness is lost and she is now transiting a desolate plane that has spilled right out of her gut and eaten away the gardens that were tended by men of the day. The end is in her sight. The end is where life falls away into an ocean of invisibility, death falls away into a cycle of reinvention but take me without me. Take my body and leave me out of it all because I don’t want any more of this. Her arms flail around her as if scooping up the chattels of eternity and then her toes reach out and meet it; the edge, the oblivion, the release. The tips of her shoes slide forward, giving birth to the birds of rock, born from the cliff and ejected into a downward flight, too heavy to soar, spinning and spinning and spinning, arcing out the path that her bones will soon follow but as her toes slip forward, she feels pressure in the high arches of feet, her bones constrict. Her bones are powerful brakes, bone grinds on bone, the smoke of her fury rises and evaporates and she is stopped, toes dipped into oblivion but a soul too warm to submerge. She is now the mist. The sharp cold blast ascends and is left wanting without her. In the distance she has seen the son, a small burning glimmer that melts through her blindness and promises her one more day; just one more day here on earth and I will show you why you will not leave us today. Her toes curl backwards, shifting her centre of gravity and also the centre of the world. The ground beneath her quakes and she falls backward, spine to the ground, eyes to the heavens, heart soft and aching and horribly, horribly sad because she must now go on.
Copyright 2020 Sonny Clarke
The rhythm of her foot-falls quicken; she is only a peak-hour rite lacking in population and pluck. Her heels hit rock and gravel and the sharp irregularities twist and bite at her ankles as she presses on but she is unconcerned. She is done with her bones, let them be dashed and broken to bits and mixed with the grave gravel beneath her, let them splinter and stick at the hands of the undertaker. The cyclonic wind changes, it is sudden and sharp. Where they had once pressed against her breast, a firm hand of retention and revelation, they now hurry her step and fall in-line, in collusion with the grand plan. They have listened to her thoughts and they have been won over by the weight of her voice – a calm and thoughtful clarity that lulls their whistling mayhem. The winds, they orate now on a soapbox in the corner. They speak on her behalf, they hold her on their shoulders and parade her for all to see. Hurry, we must hurry before she turns around before the plan is changed, we must all hurry forward and show them what we can do.
As the landscape dies away and plateaus, lusciousness is lost and she is now transiting a desolate plane that has spilled right out of her gut and eaten away the gardens that were tended by men of the day. The end is in her sight. The end is where life falls away into an ocean of invisibility, death falls away into a cycle of reinvention but take me without me. Take my body and leave me out of it all because I don’t want any more of this. Her arms flail around her as if scooping up the chattels of eternity and then her toes reach out and meet it; the edge, the oblivion, the release. The tips of her shoes slide forward, giving birth to the birds of rock, born from the cliff and ejected into a downward flight, too heavy to soar, spinning and spinning and spinning, arcing out the path that her bones will soon follow but as her toes slip forward, she feels pressure in the high arches of feet, her bones constrict. Her bones are powerful brakes, bone grinds on bone, the smoke of her fury rises and evaporates and she is stopped, toes dipped into oblivion but a soul too warm to submerge. She is now the mist. The sharp cold blast ascends and is left wanting without her. In the distance she has seen the son, a small burning glimmer that melts through her blindness and promises her one more day; just one more day here on earth and I will show you why you will not leave us today. Her toes curl backwards, shifting her centre of gravity and also the centre of the world. The ground beneath her quakes and she falls backward, spine to the ground, eyes to the heavens, heart soft and aching and horribly, horribly sad because she must now go on.
Copyright 2020 Sonny Clarke