Missing Words

How many times will I dig through the mud to find those missing words?  Hands cupped, probing the thick dark folds of silken sludge, I move with the instincts of an animal, all seeing in the darkness. Through the buried remains of world and beast I move, finding remnants which in them contain entire galaxies, though I see them as tiny bits of stone and meadow grasses.

Those words, I released them in an undulating pattern of body convulsions, clicking, and rocking spasms. I sent them up into the air with warm breath and panting and so much fire.
There is still more in me. Deep in the caves guarded by secret mistresses in black hooded robes and pierced pink nipples, hidden in such dark places it might take years or lifetimes to find. There the sound swirls, a deep well of red hot amber, swelling and irrepressible.
Palpitating and prepared for all the fingers of every god who can make the journey. Every beast. Every mountain man covered in fur and curls, white powder on his heels. 
If they walk the thousand steps, slay the thousand dragons, enchant the guardians, they will find it there, swimming through the thick pools of combined water and earth, stone and plant.

Those missing words released in a momentary fluttering, they are tucked into small ponds with tiny golden fish, red and yellow stripes along their bellies. Bubbles and little waves sometimes push them to the surface where I can scoop them up and swallow them whole. There are none left for the wild dogs on the days I wade into the waters, naked and just slightly stiff in the cold air.
Always a bitter wind will sweep down off the mountains, rushing towards me, an avalanche of sound and roaring desperation.  How can it tell?  Finding my body as it moves, coming towards me gracefully as a large-winged bird. It covers me in a frozen embrace and races towards the great ice caps of the north.

I dropped my clothes long ago in the meadow. I walk with red painted toes and black stripes marking my breasts and ribs, barely breaking a blade of grass with my weight. My breathing, smooth and shallow, just enough to keep me alive as I search the waters. There are bees darting and iridescent songbirds and cicadas drowning out the noise of other living creatures, creating an undulating drone which corresponds to the water ripples slapping against my white skin.
Do they react to my rushing heat or do we move together? Desire and bubbles and fish and lost words pushing against each other, naked and sweat covered and moving without language.

Thin purple petals are covered in dew, they sparkle in the brilliant light. The wind keeps racing over and past me and my heart runs after it, a high pitched scream following our decent into the caverns below the sea of time. The ache inside bursts out, swelling outwards towards the sea. 

Gripping the wind for comfort, deep and voluminous snakes emerge from the holes in the ground, from my ears, out my mouth. Overcome by scales and hissing, I finally sink to my knees. They suck on the tiny beads of sweat below my breasts and coil around me, bringing me back into time. Where things happen, where words are formed.

The Mask

How long had he sat there? A part of him wondered, the part with the brain and the logic and the rules he had been taught as a child. He should have been warm, fed, in bed with a beautiful wife and anticipating the coming of another work day. He should have had all that, and his parents still believed it was possible. They shook their heads with sorrow everyday when his name came up and the vision of their son, lonely and without children, came to their minds.
He should have been all that they had taught him to be, but he was not. He sat nearly naked in the dark night except for shoes covering his feet and a simple paper-mache black mask on his face.
On the dark fall night, the winds blew past him like the names of old lovers, coming and twisting their way around him until they had seen every inch of him, and then they drifted down the hill, towards other trees and bushes, and perhaps other men like him, lonely and childless, waiting naked under the moonlight.
How long had he sat? His stubborn mind wondered. He was used to that mind with all its trickery, its firm grasp on his body throwing rusty old thoughts into his meditation, reminding him of his poor parents waiting for grandchildren. That mind constantly adding some stones to the soup, but it had to come along on whatever journey he chose. So there he was, sitting on top of the hill, exposed but for his feet and face, with his brain nearly intact.
He had stopped feeling his skin hours ago. His toes, despite their humble covering, had lost their feeling before the sun even set. Perhaps they were purple now. He didn’t dare look, he would not move. He didn’t want to see what the moon and night had done to him, what harm his own insistence would cause to his vulnerable body. He had accepted that his body might be a casualty, there must always be a sacrifice, and maybe the fleshy body would have to suffer a bit more.
He had decided to come to the hill against all logic, against any impulse his body still had for survival. The instinct was dwindling each day, for there were other concerns. He had come, without clothes, food, water, no weapons or blanket to shelter him from the bitter cold. Here, dark was not only the absence of light, but the eye of fear. His own fear. The night was the place where doors were opened and all that he had thought about and heard and dreamed were there, ready, waiting for one close look before he would surely go mad.
He had brought one thing, the one thing he needed for protection against the night demons and the tunnels that came pouring out of him, wriggling free from his ears and heart, dripping from the open wounds in his anus and penis. The fears dripped out like dancing eels, finding their way into the black night and then twisting back, infecting him once again with the same thoughts and worries, the recognizable monstrosities he had come to know, for they were him as much as his fingers, as much as his skin. They showed themselves with a rancid smile, grinning, exposing their razor teeth and black tongues.
He had brought his mask, his one defense. It was firmly on his face, covering his nose, cheeks and forehead like a lover’s strong hand. And though he sat and saw his own fears spilling forth in the night, he was protected from them, just barely, with just a whisper of fabric.
Under the moon, protected now, he could be who he was not. He could be stronger than the man he knew by daylight. He could be a man without cowardice, facing death not with a beggar’s plea, but staring into the eyes of the void, searching for the gnosis he felt glittering. With the mask, he could be the king with his sword, he could find the inner will to sit straight through cold and pain, looking into the shattered gifts of generations.
He knew the power of the mask, and with this new face, he looked up at the moon, spitting on all that would laugh him into the river. He sat, alone in the cold of a black evening, wearing nothing but shoes and another face, and he could be what he was, and what he did not allow himself to be. He could be this now, for now he was the other. He was the man with hidden eyes and a forgotten nose. He was the man in the mask.