hot grey day, a cold water smile

The truth, like all immense things, is shattering. It plucks worlds away. It stymies, and it bucks. 1. I have been putting the truth together for a while now. 2. I have been trying to make a truth. 3. I have been trying to make my truth loudly. I can't exactly say, why there is a broken traffic light sitting in my bones, that has this life slamming through, scathing, in abandon.

There is a small bird. There is a whole fucking sea of birds, and sky of birds, and wracking flight—LEATHER. SEIZURE. NOISE. The small bird is still there, and it is still pretty, and I could still be sad for hours about it.

Why can't I make truth? It is there, but remains haunted by rot and shoe string, these things you have loved falling under water and never coming back to you. The way that violence makes my mouth drop, my teeth all bared like an animal all gun-shot through.

And yet some kind of happiness—the way you count your words, the way the curves taste, the repulsion of remembering, the smear across the earth.

The truth fills me uncontrollably, violent, loud. And it empties—cold toes, vacant eyes. The truth is an orgasm of my years. (Convulsion, hand in mouth, sank biting into blood, and the small of death.)

Ian William L.