More

By Ernest Hardy

I.
I know what this is
Sharp corners and dull edges
Slow press against the floor
Until lungs are crushed
And eyes explode from sockets
A way is usually made
But it usually isn’t easy

II.
These are war-torn sites
The lives being lived around me
Ordinary folks in ordinary bodies
Going to and from
Work
School
Halfhearted lovers’ liaisons
Wherever …
Brutality assimilated
Into every aspect
Of their existences

You step over bodies
Including your own
Empathy is rationed
Even for yourself
You don’t bother dodging shrapnel anymore
It was easier to just lose the fear
Of blood and scarring
You walk headlong toward slow bullets
Press yourself onto them
Absorb them and push them deeper
With a forefinger

III.
He got dressed slowly
A forced smile
Tentatively playing
On his thick, cracked lips
“I might not be the prettiest muthafucka
You ever fucked with,” he said.
A strained attempt at self-deprecation
“But I know I’m the ugliest.”
He chuckled halfheartedly
“No,” I said quietly. “You’re not.”

I wouldn’t give him what he instinctively knew
To be his and true
That I’d only sucked his dick
And lay on my stomach for him
Because he was so hideous
And I’d struggled to keep from vomiting
The entire time

He softly closed the door behind him
I got up and changed the sheets
And slept on the sofa anyway

IV.
We pulled scrims down
In front of Mother Nature’s turbulent landscape
Across which hummed straightforward spiritual mandates
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Love (it is a verb/commandment)
And we projected feeble images onto the screen
Then called this play of shadows & light “reality”
We created Gods and religions
To cosign our limited imaginations
and vindictive beliefs
Political systems
Movements, countermovements, manifestos
Ologies and isms
That battle(d) one another
Each claiming to be true
Truth standing in opposition
To the others

The brain goes into meltdown trying to keep track
Of subsets and spin-offs
Of the various schools and their disciples
Wielding shepherds’ staffs

Theories, arguments and countertheses
All stir academic reveries
But are either impotent or disastrous in real life
Real-time
Human nature cracks their pavement
Grows through and around them
Like weeds

All that flurried activity
Centuries of blood flowing
Across borders
Across revolutions waged
In the names of competing projections
Competing distractions
Half truths and bald lies

Elements behind the scrim
Call out to elements behind our skin
A beacon and beckoning from home
We are mercury and dust
We are brutal and benign
Starlight and drought
Healing waters and violent storms

Love thy brother …
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
All day, every day
Everyone …

This article was originally published in Slake No. 3 To read all of the stories from that issue, purchase or subscribe at shop.slake.la.