I am dead. I am lying here and I am dead.
I’ve spent this entire day being as unproductive as possible. Flipping through books, writing terrible poetry on cheap wood paneling, watching the tops of trees outside my window bewildered by their immortality, thinking of all the bad decisions I made to get here. Today I watched a woman who was probably beautiful thirty years ago screaming at a man that probably died thirty years ago. I watched their lips, their arms, how they fluttered - I wanted to pretend they might be something prosthetic like chalk like dandruff like lip gloss. Is this their dream or mine? It all seems so weird and silly. I get into moods. Those moods provide proper self destruction for me. I brood on reality, subjective nonsense, on loneliness, the motion of consciousness, am I a dream of fish heads dancing with caterpillars and seaweed? Do monkeys dream of being human? Am I only here because a starfish fucked an ocean pebble?
But I am here.
Climbing clouds made of infinite pleasures. Growing fingernails. I have an entire garden of them. One grew to be a man. I grew you from compost and lovely whispers, I told him when he was old enough to know the truth. He didn't believe me. He had a hard time grasping concepts of existence. One day he dived back into the soil. Sometimes he dreamed he was a carrot or a stalk of corn. He closed his eyes and complained all he saw were colors of reds so deep they were black. He pressed his fingers inside his eyes. It's just blood, he whispered.
I put my arms around him. No, I said, it's the ocean.
I like to pretend the women in the movies are in love with me. Sometimes these lovers in movies ... they tell me beautiful things in French. They tell me they love me. Or, that's what I imagine it sounds like when someone says they love you in French. I don't know. I don't speak French. But all of us are bound to be movies. Some of us will live for thirty thousands years. We will witness god being born. Back when it was a field of dandelions. Even then, in this moment, we will pretend to understand all of it. And, right now, I want to pretend this is something beautiful and prophetic … but I’m sure it means nothing.
In the grocery stores I am amused by the glow of Redbox machines with faces of men and women who may or may not be fixtures of my imagination. Billboards sweep through the aisles with people with perfect teeth, perfect symmetric faces, fingernails that are groomed and coated with fictions. They are the most beautiful people I ever witnessed. They tell me which products and brands suit me best. Try the yellow yummies in aisle four, friend. They’re to die for. They laugh and they have beautiful laughs, perfect motions that beg me to be like them. I want to be like them. I am like them. I will spend whatever money I have to be like them. I want to be beautiful too.
Announcers bullwhip images and words and unknown languages in my head. Around me the entire world stands. They must think this is a dream too because they start shoving the pieces down their children’s throats. Some of them walk hand inside hand into burning fires. No one speaks of them again.
At home. I smoke a cigarette and pretend it's my last. I drink a beer and pretend it’s my last. I drink a bottle of wine tell myself it’s the last time. I pop another pill, breathe, pop a pill, breathe, turn on the television. It’s optimistic glow wraps me warmly and strangles me with it’s artificial optimism. This is the last time, I promise. I can hear the pending pauses of household machinery, neighbors being horrible to one another, a fly slapping at the window, I can hear god because he lives in the bottom drawer of my refrigerator.
Scratching at my door. Who could that be? I open up my door and the cats are there to welcome me. They tell me: It’s time. They file out into the yard. Months ago I started feeding a few of the stray cats. Every month more would return so I fed those too. Now hundreds of stray cats come to my house daily. They told me this day would come. I remove my clothing. I smear cat food all over my arms, legs, chest, neck, face. I grab handfuls of food in each hand and walk outside to my front yard where they all wait for me. When they see me they move out of the way and make a path to the center of the yard. As I walk they look at me with strange eyes and whisper of the following generations. I drop the food around my legs. They all approach, licking, eating the food. They start biting at my legs, at first small bites, and then they rip large chunks of meat and skin off my body. They tear into my chest, eyes, limbs and devour me until there is nothing but bones left. They circle around my bones and leave one by one, two by two, six by six. Years later they return. They sniff at the dust that was once bones.
They whisper to their children: This is him. The god of stray cats.
Submitted July 08, 2017 at 10:11PM by cultureboxes http://ift.tt/2tB21Hd r4r
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