LITERAL REMAINS

Carte et Tierce

‘Carte et Tierce’

“Me jam nec faemina” – Horace. Translated: “Nor maid nor youth delights me now.”

Time is telescoping. I am a cowboy out for the last round-up a noose around my neck. I am the leaf falling from the tree a natural suicide and if you have to go a natural way is best way. There is no one else here. The others aren’t even ghosts god how I wish they were but they are memories and that is worse. Much worse for the wear. It is the embrace of my lover, foreign kisses…that is what I remember because we’ve all had the BIG ONE despite the perversion of the passion or because of it.

My Dark Lady Breel walked in through the door because I am Zacharias and I am William depending on the company. Breel. “The complete intercourse of one’s heart’s desires.” We’re not looking for a fight except our own contentions. The Beast is here, like Robert said it would be, naked and hunched in the desert eating its own heart because it is good and because it is bitter. My Dark Lady Breel says to me later, “If every night could be like this, you know, just us,” then trails off and I inhale.

Poison comes in varying forms.

You right there, you reading this, you don’t know me as much as you think you do. You don’t know so much. Sure, you’ve known me several days, many days from then until this one right now but these years have shown a lot.

As Miss Ambrosia once said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere, Rabjohns?”

I am Jack The Ripper, ne John and William in a fury over Zacharias.

The Abomination has no real identity except that which will pass for the present time depending on the company. The real identity of The Abomination is unidentifiable. There yet misplaced. Seen yet invisible. Standing in the center of the room while hiding in the fifth corner. Jack has always been a good boy with bad intentions and vice versa. Accentuate the vice.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere, Mr. Zacharias?”

Don’t I know those features? Haven’t I seen them before in photographs of pretended smile? I’ve seen you at the shows, at the exhibitions? Did you like this year’s leather wear? It was all marvelous in its time.

“Few are ashamed of having loved when they love no longer,” Rouchefoucault whispered to me last night.

It is Breel. I know that now. It is Breel who did me in. I said take the fork because I’m busy spooning out a heart digging my grave. Some say there are special corners in Hell reserved.

Say that word one more time and I’ll almost believe it. There is no devotion in turning over your soul. We are empty hollow things. We prostitute ourselves is all, nothing more than whores. The great, the mighty, the sane and the christian, all whores fucking the dregs after a wonderful dinner. The Great Whore of Babylon to suckle us each in turn or a hundred at a time.

I know you. I know you all the time. The Abomination is different people. All those identities are one self, a different facet ready when the need arises to show his face. If this is Greece then I am not free. If this is freedom then I have failed.

I know Miss Ambrosia but I play ignorant and don’t recognize her when I see her for the fourth time. “I’m sorry,” I say, “you must have me confused with someone else.”

We’re all different sometimes. We’re all who we’re not.

It must have started with Katet. She is the corrupter, not the Great Corrupter, but a Corrupter nonetheless. She first defeated me. I was full until her, then she emptied me. It would become a pattern after Katet. She is two different people, both of them occupying a specific muscle in my heart a room I don’t linger in for very long.

Don’t misunderstand me, I have believed. I was once a true believer. Starry eyed I like to call it and I still have recurrences of it. A foolish optimism. A hopeless romanticism. A lunacy. A mania.

There’s a constant feeling in my stomach that feels like I’m falling. Lunging [Carte et Tierce]; my sword is uncorked and dangerous and my opponent is a shadow. Sneaking in the corner of my eye. Never a full attack. Picking away little by little.

“In early life there is a moment–perhaps of all the enchantments of Love, it is the one which is never renewed–when passion, unacknowledged to ourselves, imparts greater delight than any after-stage of that ever progressive sentiment. We neither wish nor expect–A new joy has risen like the sun upon our lives; and we rejoice in the radiance of the morning, without adverting to the moon & twilight that is to follow.”

Augusta Leigh

Ambiguous Breel walked in through the door because I was Zacharias. Those are times past. Breel walked in through the door to ye Old Parties and there is more I’m not mentioning of beauty you can only know by seeing it first hand like a falling star or a meteor shower. There is a certain beauty that is an eyewitness account. A look, a blush, a word hesitated and a statement half spoken. That was Breel. Sincere, modest, shy, considerate…you don’t really think of those when you conjure evil do you?

Don’t get me wrong I used to be a believer.

Breel walked in through the door to the night swimming to the passions to the play to a game not lost on any of you. I’m not falling on deaf ears we all know the meaner passions the manias “…few are ashamed….”

I was there with a smile a shoulder to rest on. This is a night like any other. There was a dance that lead to a dance. Lips, a kiss. And Breel returned the favor with: “I love you.”

Somehow we’re still dancing. Falling dancing I’d rather puke than cry. I’d rather piss against the wind than lie down in that bed again. There’s a lie somewhere in here I’ve crossed the lines more than once since then. Most likely out of my own spite. Determination not to inevitably becomes a conscious/unconscious/subconscious will to.

Sometimes you’re not your own. Admission to be inserted here. There is a force or there are forces that compel you. They compel me too. They send us forth. I don’t know if it’s good or evil I have a feeling everything is beyond that at least the things that matter most. There is always a point just beyond.

Katet walked in through the door and I wish I had shot them dead. Literally of course but I’m only speaking hypothetically.

Breel walked in through the door to Circe’s Palace to Armida’s Bower to Jerusalem liberated. Forgetfulness is easier and there are temples such as this built to honor lapses of memory of reason. If I had to reason I would choose anatural way. But reasoning even rationalizing is for the faint.

Autumn evening the fall THE FALL. Dying glows of light. In fields I almost read a prophecy. There is blood buried beneath this soil. Sweat. To avoid a cliché I will not say tears. We have buried here in this land. My heart is the sacrifice its ashes cast over these briars.

This is a flickering newsreel of old hollywood. By-gone days of woebegone nights. No boats no lake shores. No watching you walk out of the water. No hearing you laugh. No misty eyes.

Time elapse in slow motion this is my EXTREME CLOSE UP. I cannot look at stars without….

A little bit about Katet?

The cliché: What is there to say really? I cannot breathe without thinking of her. Pardon me while I say, “You bitch.” But you know I don’t mean it, and in the intention of joking you know its true. That’s from me.

I’ll hang myself from a tree for solidarity. “…but a whisper of your former self….” The Academy is in Peril.

She was so beautiful I knew not to love her. I could be a fool but a fool wouldn’t know any better. I saw her later in the Free City. I saw her after everything had gone wrong and she didn’t even acknowledge me and I knew that our time together before when it was “us” was just the prelude to the end Calamity. Maybe everything is the Prelude to the Finite.

This is Breel: “They don’t know what causes spontaneous combustion. What if I’m driving down the highway and I just burst into flames? Or if I wake up one morning and I’m toasted. What if half the city burns down because I’m a human inferno?”

“That’s how I feel sometimes when I’m near you. My heart beats too fast, I feel like I’m burning from the inside out because you’re beside me. And I think sometimes I’ll go up into flames and consume both of us. And if it consumes both of us, shouldn’t it take out half the town, if not the whole town, as well?”

These are Preludes. There are millions of them. Endless. First kiss to the last. First touch to the wave good-bye. “Hello,” becomes “We need to talk.” The first is always outweighed by the last.

An empty landscape. These things are no more. Lust is Redemption and Love is Syphilis. Romance is a mass hysteria. Nihilistic. A Fatalist’s dream.

Katet: “We need to talk.”

Breel doesn’t wave. Breel simply says, “I’ll see you later.”

I have cried on shoulders. Felt and been moved. Devotions and reciprocation. The soft machines are fragile and indestructible. Feed in the data and it never comes out the same way twice. The formula for seduction is still being “worked out.” Statistics and Probability. Ratios and Compatibility. Geometry. If Breel leaves the Hunting Grounds traveling at 60 miles per hour and Katet leaves Murfreesboro by the time I get to Phoenix traveling at the speed of light, what are the chances we’ll have an orgy by New Year’s?

“I’m having trouble with the language.”

“English?”

“No, Human.”

Am I invisible or are you just ignoring me?

It’s dark on stage. Exuent Zacharias Stage Right. No sweeping exit. Turn and go. I hear the whispers from the pit. There were a few times, a few nights to say the least, that it seemed we were actually right. Correct in correspondence.

William and Zacharias walked in through the door to Circe’s Palace to Armida’s Bower to Katet’s Isolation to Breel’s Bedroom. To Life and to Melancholy. There are portions of me that remain there. Splinters. Fragments.

Breel? Have faith and go night swimming. Then you’ll know.

The Abomination is indefinable. Guilty and guilt free.

This is no Paradise. The heart is not a home.

“If every night could be like this, you know, just us….”

the_novacula