Forty Six 03.30.10

For most of my life I have been worried raw with hurry sickness. A cancerous growth, this impatience spread through my blood and into all my vital organs. But you left my side and I have blossomed into a kind of reckoning with time. I have come to see that the future is not something I should hurtle towards on jackrabbit feet. But rather, I should make each moment mine and savor its beauty. I am learning now more than ever that the words of my witch doctor ring true, the future is not something that should loom over me with uncertainty, it should bloom on the horizon as the sweetest of sunrises staining my eyes with its blush.

My witch doctor has been teaching me so many valuable skills, how to listen, when to speak, how to capitalize on my time and throw off the weighty bonds of anxiety. For these reasons, she gave her blessing to our tortoise and hare romance. In the beginning we were all flash and blinding sparkle, burning like a pillar of fire. We raged and stormed like thunderclaps and lightening bolts mating in the air which sizzled with the hum of static. We sought shelter from the violent tremors which shook the earth in each others arms and fled to the safety of a dry but darkened cave. Once a hovel home, it became a prison, because the only animals that would draw near to the cave were the rabbits of worry and speed. Chasing after them, they represented our hopes and dreams and with clutching fingers we grasped for each one as they slipped from our outstretched hands and into the gloom of the cave.

Receding, I snatched them up in the dark, using only my baser instincts and wrung their necks like crackling dish towels in my frightened hands. I needed to feed us, because I felt as though we were starving, but I didn't know yet what for. Each night we sat alone together in this catacomb of isolated love, you growing more silent and withdrawn and I growing more impatient with the hunger pangs of my now wan and feeble form. I wanted with everything in me for change, but I had grown convinced there wasn't a way out of this cave and through the storm to safety and tranquility. The wind howled through the opening to the cave which we had shrunk from, but life beckoned you to the light outside.

You slipped from my grasp one night as we lay sleeping on the cold sands and disappeared at the sunlight's first breaking. When I woke I was frightened, terror ripping through me like it must have each time my fingers wound around those rabbits' hammering pulse. You were gone, and without you I saw the naked sunlight pour through the yawning mouth of this cave of despair and pessimism. It stung my eyes and I cried for weeks. But I found I grew rapidly claustrophobic in its mouth and like a fish breaks free of fishing line I snapped the last of my bounds and slowly crawled out into the world.

I learned to hunt and forage for myself, and grew strong. I shed the anxieties of my past like the winter coat off a grizzled bear. I learned a taste for any meat other than rabbits. I sampled the fine feathered thighs of wild pheasant and tucked their tail feathers into my hair. I marveled at the variety of ways frogs and toads could be cooked up in all the stages of their metamorphosis: from tadpoles like meaty guppies, to knobby kneed adults strewn across my spitfire, to caviar like eggs housing black specks which wriggled with potential. Moths and butterflies became garnishes for my dandelion and wildflower salads, their wings coating everything in fine rainbow shimmer of their wings. Their antennae were always becoming stuck in my teeth after sampling the delicate chalk like flavors of their brilliant markings.

Around my neck I bore the skull of a felled vulture, I had killed it one day when I was curious for the taste of a fellow predator. It was a challenge to catch it, it took long hours and patience. This was not a scrambling chase after march hares and nimble footed dwarfs I had become used to. I had to exercise all my cunning, hone all my instincts, and bait this precious bone collector to come to its doom. It fed me on its wrinkled sagging skin wrapped form for 3 days. I bleached the bones in the sun and when I had punched a hole through it's skull and drained it of its putrid carrion obsessed mind, I made a necklace of its skeleton. I threw its macabre and lustful stomach into the frying pan and swallowed every last feather to prove I would never choke on the bones of white feathered rabbits again.

Now I hungered for sport with more gameness. I salivated for that all life had to offer, away from caves and warrens buried deep underground. I was a seasoned hunter, a strong solitary being, but I stumbled into the midst of a strange tribe one day. At first I only observed them, they were wondrous to my eyes and twitching ears. The sounds they made, the way they moved their bodies, all revealed the things they kept inside their minds like a cascade of hurricane winds waiting to be unleashed at any moment.

I slipped from the tree line made of my shyness and approached a few of them. Grasping hands and looking into their eyes I said it as plainly as I could without the utterance, "convert me," I pleaded. They taught me their ways, and I began to see, I was one of them. I had always been one of them, but now I learned the calls and snaps of their language. I grew to don myself in the beads of precious knowledge they divested on me. I became versed in the symbols of their warpaint and smeared it on my face. Their prayers and invocations revealed each layer of mythos to my hungry mind, they were each of them a storyteller, each of them a shaman to their own muse gods. Slowly I was becoming more like one of them, and my vulture skull tapped my chest with its pointed beak each time we danced around the bonfire together late into the night.


They never ate rabbits, but they wore their feet and ears upon their clothing sometimes and twitched their noses in mock indignation at the overwrought spirit of the beast. I still would hop and stammer my feet upon the ground from time to time, still detoxing from the effects of so much fur and not enough scales and feathers. They saw to it to lure me away from the damp smell of clinging root filled ceilings just by singing me the sweet songs of their native tongue: poetry. I was infected with it, each day filled with the lines of their genius circulating my in head. It brought me inspiration and my mind blossomed with it. I was becoming civilized, indoctrinated, learning the sound of my own voice. Imagine the shock that ran through me on the day that I should stumble upon you while I was looking for somewhere quiet in the forest to practice my singing voice.

You came to me, like a person approaches a wild animal, slowly and speaking in soothing tones. I did not run or bolt, but rather stood my ground. Still I sniffed warily, because I thought I could smell the scent of love coming off you like perfume. Was this my twitching nose lying to me through the wishful thinking of a poet's mind or were you really touching me lightly, smoothing my brow, and inviting me to visit the caravan of zingaras you had run off with? I followed, curious to see what tribe you now belonged to, but never forsaking my own I donned my finest feathers and smeared my warpaint heavy on my skin.

The bonfires within your circled wagons were large and roaring, much like those of my tribe. But the flame pits we jump carry with them the scent of driftwood, blood, and cedar smoke. Our guttering torches mysteriously mark the entrance to our temples. You must enter wearing bones or teeth upon your naked flesh. You must disrobe and carry only feathers in your heart and painted eyes before your brethren before you can speak the invocation of twisted tongues to call forth Gods and conjure spirits. Only this way can you hope to possess others with the elements we summon. Our tribes ways are no set of esoteric secrets, but they must be learned with an open and willing heart.

And so it was that I wandered with my hand in yours into the midst of the group of vagabonds you had been traveling with. Your band of bohemian brothers and sisters did not channel ghosts but they read the bones that hung around my neck. They traced the lines upon my palms and foretold of new adventures that would come to fill my days in the future as they stared at me through the flickering light of your camp. Your gypsy camp fires and twinkling lanterns blazed with the smells of pine needles, mulled wine, and strange herbs I could not name by heart but knew I recognized from far off times. The group of rogues and wenches you called cousin danced in wheeling circles that were familial to my tribes pagan two steps.

And at least, with legs shaking from our laughter, we sat round the fire and we broke our bread together. I had brought a sack of meats to offer when I first arrived, and before I set to dance and mirth with your kin I set up a large pot and filled it with my ingredients and water from the spring nearby your encampment. For hours it had simmered slowly, over the glowing coals. And your troupe of bards and verbal acrobats swayed closely, sniffing with puzzled nostrils that flared and twitched in a way that made me laugh out loud over the sheer irony of it. Strange smells for your friends, but I saw them lip their lips eyes glistening over the aromas they would soon sample sliding down their throats. And so we sat at last and I filled cracked wooden bowls and tin cups with the hearty mixture.

I watched your eyes look warily as the ladle dipped out of view into my steaming pot and drawing it out deposited its magical elixir into a waiting bowl for your inspection. No doubt, you must have started, expecting to see the main course of our cave dwelling times together. But I stretched out my hands to you to offer you the new fair of my current days. Back then I had filled our stomachs with the sickening taste of too much rabbit stew. But now I turned to watch you sample the first spoonful of the light and subtle flavors of my turtle soup. The flavors woke your palate and your eyes sparkled over the rim of the bowl as you licked the dregs free. Round the table the sounds of smacking lips and choked burps came free from your companions and I smiled warmly, feathers dancing above my ear in the breeze.

That night I fell asleep underneath your wagon. For I could not stand the comfort of a warm bed that wasn't made to smell richly of spilt ale and wood smoke as my hammock back at home with my tribe did. I tried at first in vain to sleep with you on the downy pad of hay and sheets that smelled of muslin, amber, and incense. But I soon rose, visions of tarot cards flashing through my eyes as I stumbled out the curved door of your wagon into the night air. It was balmy, sweat clung in unobtrusive pathways to my ivory skin and welcomed gentle breezes to come kissing at my collar bones and nipping at my nipples. I found a cool bed upon the grass beneath your wagon and listened as the wind sighed through its spoke rimmed wheels. The horses stamped and nickered and I fell into a listless kind of slumber.

When I dreamt, I saw us back in that cave, in a time when I could loved you better. A monster growled at the rear of the cramped tunnel but I did not quake with fear. My eyes shone at the back of the cave and using my fearless words I conjured the spirit of my poet ancestors. It lunged into the back of the cave and dragged the culprit out. At first, it looked like an innocent rabbit, but crouching closer I saw it for what it really was. Its black eyes oozed pools of wasted ink and an emaciated form bent each vertebrae crooked shooting from what should have been its spine through stretched tight skin. No fur graced its charcoal withered skin and its feet were anything but lucky. I shook my bones and stamped my feet at it, bellowing chants of my clan towards its cowering form. It shrunk fast as shooting stars to almost nothing but a pin prick. I grasped it up, watching it trying to snap at me wildly with its fearful jaws. My laughter rose as I took the strange beast my phobias had given birth to and gingerly I dropped it through the hole in my vulture skull to remain imprisoned forever.

I woke smiling as your hand graced my face, and heard my necklace rattle. Pressing my lips to yours, I pulled you down beneath your wagon and made love to you until we fell asleep entangled in each others arms again. This time, as I dreamt, I had visions of my future with you. You were a muse for my poet soul and with a full heart and painted skin that sparkled in the sunlight I walked sure to the beat of my rattle covered heart.