Tautological Transposition: As Do I by FalloutPanda, literature
Literature
Tautological Transposition: As Do I
When will the will be willing
The mind, like an arrow, goes forth
But strays from its path
Only when true will it happen, peerless, the will
Being fickle and unpredictable, choosing its own path
The path of affectation and the willed path, the duality of man
The nature of it
All contradictions that define
A man of two minds, desire and the desired
All things being equal but different:
I can breathe, yet I do not.
I am existence, yet existence is without me
Arrows fly, dulled points stray
They do not connect.
The great between
Oh the will of it all, the one and of the one
No two exist, separate but connected vessals
I wan
Every swooning blade of grass vindicated.
The deep blue silence of a turning wheel.
A precise number of fireflies in the apples.
The coiled jealousy of all reptiles.
The palsy of a prisoner's first sob.
A tranquil sorrow in a dog's ribcage.
All faces obliterated from the moon.
Nirvana observed among smooth pebbles.
The slough of mountain summits in decline.
Every planet reprieved of its orbit.
The ecstasy within a mandala.
The space between spaces.
Honing the blade by passing through it.
I.
We whispered prayers into the corridors
while I spoke into your ribcage,
telling lies to our skeletons
to help you understand.
you said they loved
watching me wax poetic
while I dripped candlelight into your hands.
we watched the dust motes
cover our skin
while I taught you how to fly.
(you were always too afraid to fall
and too afraid to land).
II.
It wasn't lovesongs we sang;
it was half-forgotten hymns.
we never wanted to believe
but you said ghosts exist
without compassion,
and without sins.
I told the doctor
his medication clipped your wings.
III.
I fed you sweet words
tucked in between
candy-canes
and licori
fatalism stalks me.
its chalky finger-bones
scrabble at my windows,
greedy to pry panes
and rend gaps—
mouth agape
to vent its algid breath.
conjured,
like a voodoo zombie
of the bayou,
by pious disciples
to the temple of matter.
they strain to evade
the burden of their choices,
worrying at the knots of destiny
and scattering dust
to fill in our footprints.
in a sly reversal of legerdemain,
they entice hands from rudders,
with their relentless mantra:
"free will is illusion!"
but illusion is smoke,
and stars still burn in my chest.
not nebulae, but hard points and brilliant.
I pass through them,
burning the fog
Feeding Time at the Sultan's Menagerie
My mother is a hyena
and when the men come to feed us
she makes a terrible noise that I can hear
even from across the zoo,
but they think it is laughter
and they don't know that it is her
saying the same thing she always does:
"More, more! Why isn't there more?"
She cannot help herself;
She is a scavenger.
When I was born, she picked me up
in jaws that can crush an elephant femur
and for a second, the keepers that watched her
held their breath, thinking she was
about to eat me.
Somehow I was spared
and even the poison of her saliva,
the festering bacteria that kills days later,
only
because magicians are the best by attraversyamo, literature
Literature
because magicians are the best
So, when Magnus Schitz vanished inexplicably
mid-performance, center-stage
she was the one
who found him in her backyard
hanging like a kite against the thorns
upset and unsure
of what went wrong out of ordinary routine tricks.
"You might need a new suit and, umm, I can't find your hat," her opening sentence ping-pong'ed off his tattered self while he dusted himself in a fashionable wave and said,
"That's because it's on your head."
This is a story about April who had the grace to look flattered and ashamed with an unexpected hat on her head.
This is a story about April except
that's not her name at all.
"Hi,
doctors pure as angels, white as chefs
peruse menus on clipboards,
their exhaustion mouthed in metric
from a graveyard shift cuisine
measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
adhering to rules, to rules, to rules-
hospital smocks' mocking exposure
to cold air and latex
the way fatigue sets in when
bilious walls deaden,
bringing on the drone of
fluorescent blood-suckers
as a hypo plunges deep into
a fat vein, pliant and compliant,
to siphon me through the
emptiness outside the box-
a distant voice is counting backwards...
I smell bread baking
A toenail is gone, and now that it is,
I don't miss it, but my body does
and doing its duty,
tries to grow it back.
I sigh for the energy wasted
in its struggle.
I wish it would listen; how I
don't need the nail anymore,
and would rather it not try, as
one season leaves, and I fail another.