The Third Day, Pebble
Between you and me, sun, stands this marble I rock in my pinch.
I roll it towards the flesh of my thumb and ribbons of cobalt-blazing blue clatter and bounce chaos on cornea, or if I roll it back the other way, a gobble of orange-peel richness shuttles through the frame of one closed eye between you and me, sun.
I see you. I see you there, and your incessant desire to cauterize us into weakness and sleepness and steepness and flashpoint. I understand your duty — don’t take out the casserole until it’s done! — and the devotion you spare for duty.
I know because I put you there, with these two eyes, I bore you unto sun. Indeed, there were epochs of eyes that have gazed unshaded or unmarbled at you in your diamondine brilliance, only to be left gauzed and ruptured in your finest hour, but they did not see you as I see you. My vantage point is unique and peculiar. Because I was drawn into this world by gluey hands and umbral sprites, incubus cherubim who rushed behind as they flushed me out, a uterine discharge coaxed to fruition with agony and sweat.
Was it really beautiful, mother? Or was it just like every other hand being chopped off, because the streets are full of beggars and beginners, pederasts and poverty? But every fist stump is full of blood, either from punching or behanding. Why did I ever go digital? Why did I ever go born?
Through the kaleidoscopic eclipse of the aggie, I know you’re watching me too in between the pulses, mother. To keep half an eye on everything I do. Bobbing in the liquid of the primordial sea, fermenting the cabbage of a restless nap. What a feast you and I shall sup, mother! The sweet nectar of emotion dribbling down each of our chins, salty as the dune’s air.
I know you were crying at the onset, and I always presumed it was the wail of renting flesh clawed out of my entrance. That your hemorrhage was my obligation and burden to bear. It didn’t occur to me until it was all over, and all on the line, that you could cherish the wound for it reminded you of me, even when we were separated. That you could experience the anti-septic rush-letting of all existence while loving what had been wrought in the pain’s forge.
That I was sent to bandage the world.
With nothing more than this agate.
Nothing more than these profound grains of glass and vibrating color that I can roll between the thick of my fingers.
I will bandage this world.
I will repair the damage, whether by juggling so quickly that the circle of infinity solidifies, or by binding the feet of the Mad Mistress and force-feeding her pebbles of compressed sediment until her bladder bursts, or by diving directly into the elusion and coming out the other side of Me again.
I promise that I will stop the painful march of Time.
However I do it, this time will be different. And the message will no longer be ‘Mercy,’ it will be ‘Forgiveness.’
Trust me.
Trust me.
Trust me, or I will pop this cyanide pill, and pop! goes the weasel, and hop! goes the warden, and mop! goes the sailorman, and chop! goes the lumberjack, and cop! goes the dead man in the alley cadaver-stiff finger pointing to the graffiti tag, and top! goes the dreidel, and slop! goes the poison peddler, and whop! goes the mermaid sunning her tail, stop! goes Plato in this Cave.
No.
No.
The Cave.
I’m still here. I haven’t actually awoken yet. I thought I felt the mattress bend of the hard pea stashed a hundred beds below. It’s now between my fingers, and I want to lift it up, I want to be able to lift my arm to hold it up to see what it looks like against the sun.
Well, rosary clutched in his hand
He died with tubes up his nose
And a cabal of angels with finger cymbals
Chanted his name in code
We shook our fists at the punishing rain
And we called upon the author to explain
— Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, We Call Upon the Author
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