http://ckboddy.tumblr.com/

http://ckboddy.tumblr.com/

"colossal in tons. unknowing it wants"

the brown, leather-bound, journal - that’s where he kept the secrets of the universe. secured by a single rubber band, he would often quip that when the time came he, “would be the one laughing”. mostly we joked, often at his expense, but he never really cared. truth be told he guarded that thing with the intensity of a hurricane, never letting it leave is side. there was only one day, a wednesday, when he lost it, the journal. god, i still remember it so clearly. the only day it’s ever happened. it was the same day mason told him about the rocks in the quarry. yeah, i know, rocks in a quarry, who cares, right? well, we’ll get to that. but i remember him running, sprinting, faster than i’d ever seen, back to the cove. he said it was there, under a sandcrab, like a paper-weighted piece of him. “thank god it was still there,” i told him. without looking, “god’s got nothing to do with it. the universe. it’s all here. you’ll see.” still so clear after all this time.

you wrote it again.
excuse me?
you wrote it. again.
no, i didn’t.
yeah, you did. right there.
that wasn’t me.
yeah, it was. i watched you do it.
no way, man. wasn’t me.
i god damn watched you, man. i fucking watched you.
it wasn-
yes it was! yes it fucking was! you said you were past it. you said you-
i know what i said! i just- fuck. i didn’t mean it.
yeah, well, you said that last time.
i don’t even remember.
it was five minutes ago.
i don’t remember. it just happened.
man, you need help.
i don’t need help.
you need som-
i said i don’t need help! i just- i just need some time.
three years isn’t enough time?!
you don’t understand.
i don’t understand?
no. you don’t. it’s hard, man. it’s so hard.
i know, man. i kn-
no! you don’t. you really don’t.
i mean, c’mon. you know i’m here for you. but this, this shit right here, it’s gotta stop.
i don’t think i can. i really don’t.
it’s hard. i know. i get it. i’ve been there. right there with you since the beginning. i get it.
i’m sorry. i’m so sorry.
it’s okay. we’ll work at it.
but it’s coming. there’s-
don’t even think about it. there’s time, okay? we’ve got time.
i just- i gotta get outta here.
i know, man. i know. we all need to.


i saw the sun come up over the hill, green spread across the never-ending. this was it, i said. this is all that’s left. it just felt…it felt like the end. like i’d never see them again. i couldn’t even begin to imagine what it’d be like, back then, if i knew that’d be the last sunrise we’d ever see. those words, just words then. just thoughts. a feeling. they meant so much more than i could have imagined. we sat there as it rose, slow at first, but seemed to pick up speed with each passing cloud. time seems to move faster when you don’t want it to, i said, and she agreed. time’s just a made up thing. minutes, hours, none of it’s real. i hate clocks. this, this right here, this is all i really need. i smiled. i patch of clovers opened to the newborn rays and i held her tight, hoping my words were nothing but a feeling.

ssssssssss

i am a single atom particle, you, a death's lock in moonlit skies. shed your skin every few years, become a new being, a new face, a new marker on the spinning orbs. i crawl up an ascending note, claw to the top of peak with no plateau. we look down from the cliff, spin in place, sharing what we now know against what we knew then. shine, what you do best. you shine, and i'll reflect. and somehow we reach the top. just like that. gold and diamonds. you with your glass-blown chalice, me, a rainbow fashioned satchel skull. random assortments of this and that. the plateau is littered with everything. burned away at one point, you say, burned away and restarted fresh, like cosmic fires. the ashes form letters, the letters, in turn, form words. quite the site, i say. darling. showman. carapace. orion. atrium. just a random assortment.

yes, but...

i'll spend a quite night in, tucked away in a blanket somewhere in the den, next to the fire with a scotch and some beat up, ancient copy of asimov's to read through. this is the life i fall asleep into, the landscape of a dream where i am what i wish i were grown to be. peeling away, page by page, the last desire, uncovering a fresh escape: in the clouds of a deserted metropolis, above a fire-filled seafloor, back-to-back with a secret love against the end-all-be-all of villains, motorcar firefight. anywhere and everywhere. part of the ether.

(taken from c. william bunting's journals, originally found aboard the s.s. speakeasy, 1872)
it’s nice today, you think. it’s really nice outside. and so you stay a while longer because the weather is good and the sky is clear and the sounds of passing cars, screeching to a halt at every yellow light, starting and stopping as if this one light were the end of the world, is better than the sounds of self-loathing and regret back home. but, you think, the small fact that it is “nice” outside is hardly a good enough reason, is it? it is, but that doesn’t stop you from thinking of a better, no, scratch that, of an alternative reason. a more fitting reason…perhaps, because in your head, in the deep, dark back where all the little terribles are, there’s always a more interesting, a more comforting, a more dramatic reason…for everything.


what are the dreams of men like us? born into the waking world with never a want nor need to raise any little finger to task. what do men dream of when they already have it all? her shadow grew and fell in perfect tempo upon the bedroom wall. the shifting of bodies, in winter's cold, were all too eager to keep the other warm. this is a night i dreamed of: the triumph of tiny victories that led to this point, the shaking nervousness, the overwhelming excitement and fear, warm skin, warmer heart. the stillness of two upon the down bed. and the dream. the dream of dreams, and the passing thought.

"...half of what i really meant..."

jack turned a year older today. twenty-four to be exact. nothing to be proud about, nothing to sing a song about. and this was it. this was all he could muster. a few choice words, too fabricated to mean a single thing. nothing worth the time and attention of you or anyone else. just another year to add to the collection. it was sad for him, for jack, looking back on all the things that had come and gone, all the people that had once been something, that had once meant something, and all the hearts now left in ruin somewhere deep in the past, all of it too sad and depressing to recall. though, in all truthfulness, beneath all the self-loathing and pity lay the real tragedy of it all: that yet there was more to be made. whether it be in the vein of sorrow or the vanity of elation, all of it still had yet to be set into the reality of the future (this is where it all falls apart. right here. the fiction of it all, the presumptuous, self-serving storytelling that makes for a more pathetic comprehension, finally spills outward toward the masses. this is the truth of it all, what i’ve been really trying to say my entire life: the honesty, the heart-ache, the bittersweet love that never lasts no matter how hard you try, these are the sincerities that i wish were truly real every day of my life. not some half-assed, sorry attempt at a half-truth, but something real, from the heart, unburied and free, under the sun, pulsing, stretching out, becoming me and you and everything that was and will be. this is what it must be, regardless of the consequences, of who may be caught in between. because nothing matters more that the truth of our hearts. nothing matters more.)

woeful beginnings (part 7 of 10)

there was a point in shank’s life where everything seemed to be on a never-ending cycle, as if the universe looked down upon him and took a giant spiral-shaped shit and said, “this, young shank, this will be your life. enjoy it, bitch.” and even though the universe cannot speak (not physically at least. numerous tests have been run and although the science is still out on whether the universe can communicate in an indirect manner say, like, subconsciously or spiritually, the scientific community is in a majority agreement that it cannot, in fact, speak) shank felt, in that certain, special “fuck you” way, that it was speaking to him. yelling, in fact, with mouth agape and saliva aloft, spraying shank with a relentless stream of heartache and disappointment.

streammm

my mother bore a fickle little sent of cucumber and apricot. a small, incessant scent of form and frugality. this was the way it was. always and without warning. and though i wrote without hindrance or regret, still the numbering of forgetful thought made the madness stick with each passing dream. softly and violently, all at the same, like waves shifting upon forming beams of passing matter and distance. i loved her, like small, tiny pieces of me, never existing without the minute sense of her, though still, i loved her. always and always. no fading blackness could take that. never would there be a challenge that could raise up against our love.

free

colin thought about this before. thought it a few times, but mostly that was all it was. a thought. then it’d disappear like so many other things in, what he now described as, “his aborted, afterthought of a life”. that’s really all it ever was. no one agreed with him. there was the all-knowing, life-loving chorus of supporters and wretched self-servers that funneled into colin’s little brain compliment after undeserved compliment. a self-satisfaction the unholy choir of no-nothings that spoke to colin only as if their “kind” words earned them some small, little accolade that they would later, hopefully collect in what, colin assumed, was their sad idea of an afterlife. afterbirth. really it was all the same. the only person that saw it the same way colin did, or at least found his notion of the matter somewhat entertaining enough to humor him, was simon. simon had been around long enough, around this world mind you, not colin, that he possessed the same shit-sniffing, “fraudulaic” (simon’s word, not colin’s. he always had the capacity for creative expression though being around simon he never really had the need to use it) power that allowed the two of them to hone in on those other pathetic excuses for “rational thought” and single them out for the phonies they truly were. “excise them from the world, the whole lot of ‘em!” he’d often say, or something to the same effect. with simon you could always count on his mettle, even if he showed it in a different manner every time.

i wrote to remember

the morning reflected it, and i certainly remember dreaming it, that the outsides of the spheres were like miniature globes floating in space, though confined like a bedroom, but with stars around the walls and on the ceiling and the floor, everywhere you could see. and the television screens hung down from nothing. the professors and news people talked about the problems they were having, the issues that arose from trying to understand and control “metaquasars” and “hypnogravity” and “dynamic range ballistics” - the ideas that they had in regards to hyper-space travel, intersecting wormholes and the like - i couldn’t quite comprehend. my attention was focused on the immediate problem of keeping the two halves of the sphere from connecting to each other. that problem, of course, became an immediate disaster, however inevitable, and the two pieces game together. the faux ceilings and earth faded into the space and where there was matter was nothing but space. a metallic rectangle floated out ahead of me but trying to “fly” toward it proved to be a greater problem than keeping the two halves apart. it’s very near impossible to get any sort of grip or traction or sense of direction towards anything in deep space. will is your only weapon, your only means of doing. it took all i had to make it to the platform and still maintain my grip on the orb. meanwhile i had figured the solution to this problem - destroy the orb and reset space back to a normal environment, maybe return the earth to where it belongs, at least anything to resemble that. but i had made it to the platform. that was a start. and so i tried to stand on the wobbling piece of substance, trying to steady myself under the weightlessness of an empty void, position myself in a way to give me the best opportunity to destroy the orb. and then there was another metal thing, a shelf that had grown out from a wall in the side of the original piece of metal. things becoming more things. getting bigger. so i took the opportunity. smashed the metal sphere with my hand. shattered it into tiny molecules. the earth came back. the lights came back. the monitors came back. as if nothing ever happened. all reset. and in the inside of the sphere, a tiny wire, like a plug, with a light on the end. i pulled it out from its place and swung it above my head, lassoed a metal railing on the opposite side of the field, and swung down to the stars below me.

we're working toward something here...

Matthew T. Jenson died in his sleep on Christmas morning. His remains lay wrapped in Egyptian cloth and silk upon a rosewood divan. The doctor, upon examining his limp frame, would later conclude that his passing was the result of “severe bronchial hemorrhaging brought upon by a globular roving blood clot,” though none of us really knew what that meant. Up until his sudden death Matthew’s medical records were seldom visited – he had made it of utmost priority that his health be top notch, his physical condition be of a “most superior upkeep”. The fact that Matthew was, at least to us, in peak physical condition made the circumstances of his demise that much more peculiar. We all had our own theories on the matter - Timothy believed his death to be the cause of excessive and blunt force trauma, though there were no bruises or other indications to support this (Timothy was always slightly behind the rest of us as far as smarts went, or as Margaret put it, he seemed to have “one foot off the merry-go-round,” however most of us were convinced she never really had the proper grasp of that saying) but mostly we left the speculation to the physician.

I was in the downstairs dining room when the doctor first approached me regarding Matthew. He had with him a leather briefcase which carried his tools and other items a doctor would employ. It rested against makeshift hand-cart, fashioned out of rusted metal and designed specifically for him. The disruptive clanking of the crude thing coming down the staircase preceded his aberrance. The doctor himself was dressed to toe in a peach colored lab coat, a stethoscope around his neck being the only conventional thing about him. As he entered the dining room to greet me he set his case against an antique dresser beside the table and checked the watch in his side pocket. He sneezed quite rapidly, three times, as if out of no where and I said, bless you.
“My dear boy,” he said, “my thanks to you.” I nodded and told him he was welcome. “Your manners, I must say, in a time of great dismay catch my heart with a warmth and generosity. Though surely this must be, for you, a trying thing, take comfort that it is the way of living things.”
“I appreciate your concern, doctor,” I stumbled, caught off guard at the melodic manner in which he spoke.