Praying to the Mountains
On the outer edge of a nascent something blossom down and near indeed to a very previously rain-encouraged dark, potent, appetizing mouthful of mystery-composition earth, there finally again exists a bee. To this landscape I wish I could deeply bow my head, to the bug I wish I could supplicate low enough, but I can’t keep my eyes off the world, and with as friendly and soft a guise as I can gently muster, I just stare and stare upright and my breath is caught and my body dissolves not from disuse but negligence about its corporality, which is to say I wander harder than I think to eat. I pray that these hazards, these drinks, fumes, climbs, don’t shed from my spirit its casual slip into my favorite congestion, my reverent headache. I could eat a little healthier. I could eat a little healthier and that could be my sacrifice to maintain this slippage. I consider the bee, the architect dancer, and having not come up with flowers myself I am trying to conceive of something just as good or better to present to the chairmen of the hive. Each warmer weekend stringing along behind it another assembly of manslaughter charges. Good God your honor I was praying to the mountains! What do you expect me to do, pray with one hand? On every corner people leaving out their shipping pallets free! On every branch a million insects your honor, they plant their trees so close to the wheel, I could reach out and grab them! Gone and done is the winter of masturbation poetry, the pronoun eyepatch, the blind spot hidden behind the size of the mirrors in winter, entire lakes frozen over like silver, empty gulches and choirs of echoing snowmen. Lustful and eager to live comes rollicking in and pouring over the spring and it’s vibrating musical skeletons for whom I shall write down words like she and her and we and us and you. You enable my fantasies. In my dreams you restitch and massage my wings into readiness. You peel away every consecutive mask I received in the obscurer orbital period. On this foundation of warm wind and bare feet, in this Appalachian living room of midnight exposure, I will be filling everything with the light I am sure to find. In favor of the sweet selfless sun I retract my metabolism. Here are the prayers I scream a thousand times over at vernal dusk on the golden freeway before the day people get tucked in: thank oh thank you ancient mountains, bless oh bless you seeking breezes, how fantastic myriad insects, how relentless beasts of prey, how peculiar crows and vultures, oh how sulfurous swamps and mires, bless oh bless you cumulative planet, thank oh thank you stuff of reality your beauty is a kindness that leaves me speechless and insane. Yes, I think I’ll quit my job and start eating healthier. The bees take me to meet their field of daisies. I exchange information with the field, and shake its hand.
Pollock
Pollock made a similar move. In his prime, he was thrusting color into whatness in the same manner as I put pallor into my likeness. For example, I arrive at your door, and I’m white as ice, as daisy petals, as bright light from beyond. Because there is this I have to tell you: I’m confused. I mean, how the hell can we navigate this archipelago, from above it’s the edge of a mean splatter, from within it’s just total mystery, total infinite obscurity and groping air and stumbling into blank artifacts; the screen is black but we hear banter, aloofness, ignorance, collision, see spirals and laugh track guffaws. Pollock shook my meager hand, opened up his studio to my unkeen unkind eye. What is this mess? It’s just stuff, you’re just putting down stuff and calling it history. No, I like it, I actually like it and you, Pollock, you endear me don’t you? That spotless scalp, that circling of the prostrate canvas some stalking feline some salivary gland incarnate anticipating holy shit, centrality, I mean whatness itself, thingness hovering in the very midst of your work. I don’t dream anymore. Back in the day it was half the business, nightmares. Endless, levitating stuff in the boonies of R-E-M. We’d jolt up out of whole galaxies, complete with dark forces and kind comrades. Nowadays, no nowadays I don’t know here from nothing. One continuous streak of loveless soup night. One insubstantial course in feeling little and then vanishing like things into space. Try getting that back after it’s been pumped dryly volatile into vacuous ancient water. Put me in that studio, position me lengthwise on the fingerless giving plate and have Pollock wander around stroking sheer blue onto my terraces and gulfs and porous goose flesh and when I flex, tendons and when I don’t, a stagnant image. Prussian, Cerulean, Indanthrone. Envision me fitting into the splintered sky.
Fairy Tale
the cow… was a tentive black (gray) and Ahab couldn’t see or hear or smell or feel or walk but he wanted it and one must have what one wants; the cow… was a silent, docile, kickless milker until you reached your finger down into her ear as far as you could; it was eaten; the whale… took some time; a whale that big feeds families for months, to the point where at the edge of town there is a boy who never heard about the whale scooping wheaties from blubber milk; and maybe it’s hard for you to understand but the rays were terrified of the whale, and with the whale gone, the kids wade out to the sandbar and are consumed by rays; my aunt packed me a cheese sandwich and a boiled egg; i lay them afloat their paper vessel in the shallowest murmur of the tide; i observe like ants to sweetness rays absorb the savory raft; nothing defends it; I look on in wonder, as I can picture God the same over Ahab’s fight; I look on in wonder at other things too; at people, at tetherball, at foliage, at snow, at luminescent things, at tar, at gravity and texture; the whale is led by a rope to a well in the desert; the well is dry; the shepherd wipes his brow and abandons his catch for a lighter load; the whale sings in crusting, shriveling midwesterm ultrabaritone; one hour; the meat falls away; this was not a sea, not even a prairie; this whale was led here by its master and abandoned to die; sea-skeleton bone black and unbleachable having spent such time so deep; a carbonized puzzle and inkblot in stone enormous; a shelter for travelers; a pool of rainwater has begun to gather in the skull; a daisy has begun to sprout from the pool; a bee has begun to hunt for the daisy; a hive has begun to dangle from the spine; a bear has begun to swat at the honey; a crow has begun to laugh at the bear; a vagrant has begun to chase the crow; a girl has begun to beckon the vagrant; a man has begun to chastise the girl; a man has begun to drink and drink; a girl and a vagrant go off together; ride bears like horses; fly crows like kites; sip honey from hives; cradle bees upon fingers; cram daisies ‘hind ears; guzzle puddles from skulls; lay supine in the cavernous cage remote and ultimate galaxy evenings cool and good and hidden; the cow… was sick with one of those prions; replicated God knows how many copies in my colon and then my mind; they began as a puddle begins to pool in my skull, only the daisy was madness and the bee stung, in the sense that i cracked and i slaughtered my lover; oh, well i’m mad now i whisper; i wander again a vagrant alone now crazy; i come to a shack in the desert and knock for water; a man comes bottle in hand; eyes aflame in the doorway; behind him dust rides his house’s stale current in the line of the window light; he tells me something about his daughter; no, water, i say again, water; he screams in my face and shakes his fist at me redder than any other thing, again something about his daughter; water, i say again; i am shot.
Cole Fiscus is a poet and artist living in Cumberland, Maryland. He has a self-published book, Earthworm Sonnets, and often shares writings and drawings on his instagram under the username “colefiscus”. He enjoys all forms of creative activity and includes reading, watching movies, running, and drinking hot cocoa as contributory instigators of a better creative headspace.