nick of time
17 June 2006 17:17![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skonen_bladesThis morning on the way to work I was treated to some dance. A mother was walking her daughter to dance lessons in front of me. She was fourteenish and very recently stretched out. She had striped stockings, a pink tutu, a white T shirt and bright red converse shoes. For an entire block while I walked a ways behind them, the girl did ballet beside her mother while walking. Skittering awkward pavement pirouettes. It was awesome.
This morning on the way to work I saw a homeless gentleman wearing a shirt that said "take me to bed or lose me forever."
I encroach upon her borders. I look down upon her landing strip. She looks up at me from that pale and sparse patch of land. A speck with folded arms looking up, jaw set and defiant, hair being tugged and tossed in the wind. I circle and circle and circle.
I wait until I see someone else land and then I’m off. I’m not even interested in the result.
This is the dream I keep having ever since you died.
Your eyes trapped an intense intelligence and focused it into twin beams that stabbed out and drank what was in front of them. To be looked at by you was to be held, weighed, defined, absorbed, and drained.
“It’s not enough to be regal,” you once said to me, “You have to be god like. People respect what they’re afraid of. Fools do not and must be made an example of. We have to set up our own microcosm here and the life forms under my rule have to learn that I am Fire. I am Lighting. I am Earthquake. I possess the same lack of mercy. However, I am conscious and if my laws are followed, my people will survive. I need to earn their trust but their respect is more quickly gained by making examples of the ones who dare to speak out against me. I will run a harsh but fair regime”
These are the words that haunt me still. Echoes of platitudes you told me years ago. Where is your empire now? I walk through the ruins of what used to be your city and remember your face, so different from the crow-pecked meat that dresses the skeleton hanging in the courtyard I’m walking through.
You wanted to be nature. Well, nature had something to say about that, didn’t she? You couldn’t save them from the plague so they hung you during the chaos. Then they too succumbed. I left far before that.
I remember your power. I ache at its absence. I watch what remains of you twist in the wind on the makeshift gallows. The grey sky cries a little. It cries half heartedly like a child that only needs his attention diverted to forget what he was upset about.
I back away and turn to start the long journey back home.
tags
This morning on the way to work I saw a homeless gentleman wearing a shirt that said "take me to bed or lose me forever."
I encroach upon her borders. I look down upon her landing strip. She looks up at me from that pale and sparse patch of land. A speck with folded arms looking up, jaw set and defiant, hair being tugged and tossed in the wind. I circle and circle and circle.
I wait until I see someone else land and then I’m off. I’m not even interested in the result.
This is the dream I keep having ever since you died.
Your eyes trapped an intense intelligence and focused it into twin beams that stabbed out and drank what was in front of them. To be looked at by you was to be held, weighed, defined, absorbed, and drained.
“It’s not enough to be regal,” you once said to me, “You have to be god like. People respect what they’re afraid of. Fools do not and must be made an example of. We have to set up our own microcosm here and the life forms under my rule have to learn that I am Fire. I am Lighting. I am Earthquake. I possess the same lack of mercy. However, I am conscious and if my laws are followed, my people will survive. I need to earn their trust but their respect is more quickly gained by making examples of the ones who dare to speak out against me. I will run a harsh but fair regime”
These are the words that haunt me still. Echoes of platitudes you told me years ago. Where is your empire now? I walk through the ruins of what used to be your city and remember your face, so different from the crow-pecked meat that dresses the skeleton hanging in the courtyard I’m walking through.
You wanted to be nature. Well, nature had something to say about that, didn’t she? You couldn’t save them from the plague so they hung you during the chaos. Then they too succumbed. I left far before that.
I remember your power. I ache at its absence. I watch what remains of you twist in the wind on the makeshift gallows. The grey sky cries a little. It cries half heartedly like a child that only needs his attention diverted to forget what he was upset about.
I back away and turn to start the long journey back home.
tags