STRIKE/CHANT
A rising hand.
Flat.
Upright.
Then brought down in a line.
Strike.
The limb brought down low.
Watch as I split the world before me.
So too am I mirrored, with a skunk on one shoulder and a screaming void on the other.
In my hands I shape a rat around a piece of us long gone. He looks up and sees me. I set him down and he wanders into a life.
The worlds merged when I wasn't looking, so
A rising hand.
Strike.
Brought low.
Watch as I split the world before me.
One eye for each, that you might see both
A half world
Someone I play
Gender slides for safety
Some version of me thousands of strangers meet
Who lacks any real friends or life
And lies rumpled with a work uniform in the corner each night.
A half world
A realer me
You all have met
Is your friend
Your poet, your writer, your lover
Whatever gender makes you happier to see me.
Maybe falser than I'd like, so
Rising hand.
Strike.
Brought low.
Watch as I crack the self before me.
To be imperceptible, multitudinous, many, genderless, formless, something beyond, not tied to flesh, not tied to hardware, Godhood would be nice but it feels like selling the desire short, a need to be infinite stuck in terrifyingly finite thing, we cannot comprehend Infinity but we can reckon at the shape of it
As a human thing I will always both exceed and fall short of your expectations, with random Precision but never perfection
A rising hand
Strike
Brought low.
Watch as this chant builds within me
It may be that I have other skills, other proficiencies, uses, meanings, masteries
But I know only the art of bending words, soaking them in water like strands for basket weaving and shaping them into something
Raising them like blades and tools and sloughing and cutting and shaping chunks of nothingness into somethingness
My armaments against the uncaringness of the universe
Watch me wield them, as I
Rising hand.
Strike.
Brought low.
Watch as I sing the body eclectic
This house of flesh is home to many but one but several
This I-beam ossified bears the load of Ceres, a sum of parts far greater than the whole
Creaking aching joints hold us up from soil and dissolution
Rising hand.
Strike.
Brought low.
Watch as I lose my breath.
The Madness of writing is slowly leaving me in parts. I cannot sustain. One last push to
Rise.
Strike.
Brought low.
Watch as I bruise my hand upon the railing.