Putty Venus

I dream about being submerged under luxurious azure waters. I am weightless. I am unknown. As far as my eyes dare to see is the shapeless expanse of ocean blue. I feel nothing except all the weight of the water splaying my limbs to fit it's fancies. There's something so damning about that dream, about that feeling. Feeling lost and vulnerable but feeling nothing in between, feeling apathetic. I'm the ocean's now. I can float here forever if it let's me.

The other me is a concept I think about almost exclusively. The other me is different slightly, less fanatical, less artistic, stoic, kind, happy. She is simple, my God she actually laughs and means it and she loiters around the world on two sure feet and parades into buildings and she doesn't think about death or the inherent short sightedness of the universe and our future here in it. She believes life is genuine and she loves earnestly. She is not wholly honest, but she is wholesomely honest, holy honest. She seizes the day without ever realizing the context of carpe diem. She is I without the cares I carry around in this world.

I look down at the smudged pen ink on the crescent of my hand and wonder if the design will tell me I’m psychotic like a nuanced ink blot test. I wonder if Poe thought the same thing when he spilled his ink all over the desk because his quill quivered so and I wonder if he smashed the ink bottle, wearily eyeing his reflection in the shards of glass that lay strewn and stuck in the wood floor. Did it matter that he was drunk? Did it matter that his heart had died and was buried underneath the floor? Did nothing matter now that there was a mess that needed to be cleaned?

I fainted before the statue of David once. I had a vision of Michelangelo, slaving over the cold marble that burned his flesh and the callouses on his hands from chipping away so adamantly. Did he weep when at times he could not find a succinct depth for the subtle vein? Did he kick and destroy chunks of uninspired marble until they shattered and he couldn’t walk an inch without feeling the unholy crunch of rock under his sandals--because that’s all marble is in the end, it’s just rock, cold, unfeeling rock. Does Michelangelo wish his statues nay the world was as moldable and as accessible as putty?

I once heard a woman in a coffee shop tell her friend that birthmarks symbolized the way you died in a past life. She wrapped her shawl around her as she spoke this intimate truth, as if a chill of righteousness had passed through her at that exact moment. I thought about this the whole day. I myself have a highlight in my hair that has rained down upon my shoulders with each aging growth of my locks, a mere spot at birth now a thick, sharp line of white lightning. What was my death? I fantasize--a sword to the skull, was I a martyr like Joan? An arrow to the brain, a love lost princess? Most likely I think it was a rock to the scalp that I obtained from a misstep. I believe life has symbols, life has themes, and my theme is the mighty misstep.

I scream to who? I scream about everything and my throat burns like I’m choking, choking on the exhilaration that is waking up every morning joyful to be breathing another minute. I’m alone in my dreams and throughout the day I pass so many, many who are cognizant of loneliness but never give it the time of day.

My eyes drip and melt and scorch before the absent computer screen, screen so bright that my lids cook like fried eggs that the compact disc drive collects as a bounty or an offering or something in between. The screen is too bright and the lights are too dull and they blink blink blink then shutter then falter then shine and I cannot take this insanity anymore will someone move, will someone think?? Will someone call out to me and tell me unabashedly that I've gone to hell and here's the pamphlet?

Long ago we sacrificed our corporal selves to the gods almighty and now we look upon this, noses upturned, sun melting the thick dried coating on our sunglasses and think how preposterous it all was. But we do the same today.

We sacrifice so many things to the Gods of the new world, we sacrifice pounds of meaty flesh and salty sweat and shards of bone and excessive blood to appease technology, to appease media, and those few and far between. Betwixt my fingers I can slice a wound that can ignite an entirely new branch of old money. We serve ourselves upon silver platters because nothing matters as long we nary wear tatters, or we’re better batters or our stomachs are flatter and we disillusion ourselves until the resistance causes such a clatter that never again will there be any chatter amongst the din of corporate compliance and I think I may go blind, I think I may go deaf because this silence slays me over open fire can’t any of you breath this universe wants something I do not have, or that has since been gone, and it keeps demanding more and more and please just stop because I'm wasting away or something of the same ilk and I think I may falter at any given moment and please oh please God make the earth stop rotating for one singularly moment so I can think.

I think about you every night. This is the only time I can, the only time I’m free. I know our collective subconscious disallows us from freely considering others who feel as deeply and as adversely as I, but maybe I think that you think about me because you’ll be damned if another figurehead tells you how to think and how to feel, because this is your life and our world and we may choose to imagine the tangible and the believable rather than dream. I know you don’t. I know you think lightly then sleep heavily. And I know that I can never sleep anymore.

Venus de Milo cannot speak nor sing but she whispers her wild wonders to those with delicate lungs. She steals their breath and they can never rest until they find their own Venus in the wild.