Opting Out

Looks like MC's writing for the gallows now, not the galleries . . .


Opting Out
It was all pink and blurry at first and the indecipherable chatter blared discordantly from all directions, within being the bitchiest. Moving pink and pushed to emergence, the old round of voices, and something dawning from the crown of being. Chakra they called it. First thought, a label, spiritual mediation. Second thought. Here comes the domination. And all the memories of before poured like acid rain scalding the Amazon. People used to drink from rivers, and he had loved three women in the world before. Three is what he-he?-had drawn from the deck, and the struggle of it ached like a bruised bone that never healed. Healing, third thought. It’s what he was supposed to learn the last time. Remember, he thought. A fourth. And another dawning. Here he was again, again a he. And soon he’d forget, so he burned what he had into the embryonic soul. Chakra, domination, healing, remember. And what for? He’d been, she’d been along this route a thousand times. Fifth thought. A route entrenched by habit, best not taken.

Kaliyuga pervading even the peace of death. These were shitty times. Despair and rumors of despair. Suffering ad nauseum imprinted upon the corpse gowns. Shitty times. But he was being fed through the navel. Couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t decide not to eat, not to be. He was growing, and couldn’t stop it. He’d have to go through bliss and absence again. He had to get it right this time or come back again. In the beginning was nothing, and nothing got bored. In the end was fear, and Nirvana said no.
I’m being pinched. I’m being force fed. The universe spasms and I know what comes next. I’m inside a mother. I’m an I. Goddamnit! Being an I is the problem. I’ll soon forget that boundaries are fiction and that bliss and terror is snake swallowing tail. I’m forgetting already. Soon enough I’ll even forget that mother and I are one. I loved three women once. Last time. The first was teacher, older, but lust’s green slithering made me miss the point. Second was a season of greed. I gorged at her nymphet-body’s buffet and missed the point. Third was shapeshifter, my tender shaman. We became each other’s handler, prison guard, angry magician, and I wasted time and again missed the point. As language comes, force-fed from mother’s singing--Is she pretty?--terror rises. I know what’s coming. The tunnel, the light, the pain, the soothing, the love, the pain again. I try to dam the placental nourishment, and fail. Alive again, another locus of suffering about to burst into the world again. Sucks.

The worst has happened. I distinctly remember (could I have dreamed it?) that the Soul Guardians had agreed to grant my request to be born into an indigenous community. Fucking liars! I’m smack dab in the morass of an omnicidal culture again. I’ve gleaned from all the mommy/daddy babble that we’re living in some cookie-cutter suburb of Detroit. Detroilet for chrissakes! Not like this. What part of the words “natural life” did the Guardians fail to understand. Fucking liars. I hate my baby blanket because I need my baby blanket. Domestication proceeds. I’m stretched on the rack of need, and I’m already addicted to the bottle. Oh what a surprise! And the bliss of breast-feeding was snatched from me after a week. That shit’s like crack, and those fucking withdrawals--Jesus! I need to forget everything in a hurry. Or I need to improvise my way out. It’s been done. I’ve talked to those lofty souls but I forget shit. Again, I’m stupid. How did they do it? They call it crib death. Lucky bastards.

A dream from that other life. Burying my nostrils into her hair of soft nirvana gold, the grace is interrupted by the creaking door and daddy coming to check on me. How I wanted to stay in her turquoise room, that life’s high point. Daddy bent down, his eyes warm and brown behind the glasses, and kissed me. His whiskers tickled. His breath, smoky and sweet. I had been a smoker, I remembered. Ah, to be young and untroubled and expectant of greatness in that turquoise room. Daddy picked at the lint of my blanket. I could see her face, that other-life face. Master and mother, lizard and lover, and turquoise was her favorite color. I giggled as daddy kissed me, and then a name shouted deeply in my head like a tribal gong. Susan. And another word. Fetish. I had fetishized her. Stubbornness. Obsession. And through all that she loved me with a purity that made me ashamed. But why? I recall shame’s turbulent shade but the Guardians won’t allow me to remember why. Daddy makes cooing noises. What a beautiful young man. Bald as I will be. I know that already. He’s careful to leave quietly. He tries in vain to shut the door without its squeaking. Lovely man. I shut my eyes. My body is small and clean. Through the open window I smell lilacs and chant with happy silence Susan’s name till I descend to a curl to sleep.

I grew and remembered more, and mommy went back to breastfeeding me. How I gorged on the richness. Lust is the proper word. And then I remembered that lust had been part of my downfall. A big part. I couldn’t connect all the parts of the tale and make a whole. Part to part to part, I thought. James Joyce, I thought. He was important somehow. My little brain wasn’t ready to see the web through the threads. I suckled. Mommy sang to me. I slept and dreamed of Sasha. Damaged, glorious, angry child-wife Sasha.

Shitty dream with lots of sex, sorrow, and creditor’s threats. At mommy’s breast again. It’s not that mommies are bad, it’s just that mommies are God. God who wants to eat the child and transfers all the fucked up trips of the culture to us. I’m remembering alienation now, and how all mommies fuck up their babies, made more horrible, not less, that it’s not their fault. Alienation. Civilization. We are taught to hate our bodies, our nature, our freedom. We are taught shame and guilt and psychopathological definitions of success that we must strive for or else suffer love’s withdrawal. Mommies (at least one could excuse them on primal relationship grounds) and daddies use violence, physical or psychological, deforming the child’s nature in either case because of shame, their shame that their child has exhibited non-domesticated behavior. Mommy just yelled at me for crying. I have to kill myself now. That’s my life imperative. All I asked for was to be born into a tribal society that honors the feral and the true. Goddamn the Soul Guardians!

Sasha taught me to conflate civilization with violence. Society didn’t love her enough to protect her. I tried, but it was too late. Her daddy plucked the rose. The cops didn’t give a fuck. If I thought it would change the trajectory of society’s death-trip I would grow up and kill those cops. If I thought it would prevent Apocalypse I would grow up and write about it to warn the others. But growing up will subject me to paralyzing despair, and continuous attacks upon my nature. And with my old memory preserved I surely would self-destruct. Death, I need you. Hasten to me.

Rocking on my haunches, soon I’ll be crawling. Soon I’ll be walking and babbling stupid duh duhs and muh muhs, and become a sweet little caged parrot. Maybe I could bite back like a parrot, but I fear that mommy and daddy are old school when it comes to discipline. I might forget all this and become stupid after the beatings and threats to behave or else. I might forget all this and grow a thick neck and play football and persuade the chicks to like me. I might forget all this and become a poet and persuade the chicks to like me. Why couldn’t death be the end? Why can’t energy die and stay dead? Whose dick do I have to suck to insure oblivion’s permanence? Last life I wanted to die half the time. I smoked and drank and worked and loved and still suffered through forty-two years. Hard time. And that brings me to the last love.

Meagan. I want my nipple. Meagan. Addictive comfort, but she wanted too much. If I had the power to unleash my brain’s poisonous geysers upon civilization I would’ve destroyed it all for her to feel free. What she had to go through every day to be sane and safe made me hate, and I say yes to that hate, even though it killed me in the end. Someone new is holding me. Her eyes are dumb and lovely. An aunt, I think. She lets me touch her breasts. I want to suckle them but she won’t let me get close enough. Meagan used pills to grow hers. E is for estrogen she’d say, and do a little dance. The scriptures of beauty’s cult could be read by the agony-flames in her eyes. My need to douse those flames made me a slave. There was too much heat, and neither of us were up to the task of truly helping each other. We were each other’s addiction, but each recognizing this, we couldn’t leave it. No cure came sliding down from heaven on a sunray. Instead, Meagan went to med school. I quit writing and grew bitter on civilization. The addiction held. Finally she met another med student. He wants to take care of me, she said, and security has freed this songbird from her cage. I was freed to be angry alone and my doom-eagerness sprouted fateful wings. I drank and snapped and found a receptive flock at last that never talked back with accusations of too many adverbs. I refer to the pigeons of course. One year to live.

Crib-bound again and getting sleepy. Grey light leaks despair though the window blinds. The need to escape this nightmare aches in groin, in navel, in heart, in forehead. It is winter, my first winter, but the intimation is that it’s been winter forever and always will be. Cold draft on little toes. I’m getting sleepy. I’m weeping silently from my eye slits. I think of mommy and daddy and say bye bye. I would like to see the sun a final time. I would like to feel her amorous heat on my face and feel glad. Ad-libbing songbirds bid their adieus. My eyes close but I can still see a pink film. That is life, a pink film panorama upon which all the drama and teeth, fire and pain pour forth. But my prayer has yielded a secret. I fill the pink film with black Rorschachs. Bye bye Susan, Sasha, Meagan. We gave the best we could of what we had. I stop my breathing. Yes! My tiny pink fist trembles triumphant. My will, fierce and black, devours the pink. May I not return to the chain or the wheel. May the sweat and the blood bind me no more. May I, bye bye.