Snake

The rope is knotted in the corner. Dust on the earthen floor. It’s been there since the beginning, since that first house was built, since the first man was made out of spit and semen.

The walls are crumbling around me now, the cracks are growing wider and deeper, dying so slowly. I’ll stay here forever before they turn to sand and memory.

My eyes play tricks on me as the candles dance back and forth.  Yellow and gold scenes emerge from the walls, heroes and monsters are born and fade on the flat surface as the wind bursts though the open windows. The night air smells of sweetness, of smoke and old knowledge.

That rope, I watch as it changes shape.  A snake moves towards me, ready to kiss or bite. I cannot tell.  It slides over my ankles, crawling slowly up my soot covered legs. I see it grow, I see it expand wider and wider, forming hips and breast, scales becoming dewy skin and fine hair.  She is silvery, iridescent like clouds below the moon. She moves. Her chest, feet, hands, all match the rhythm coming from outside.

They are chanting by the fire, around our old tree on the other side of the river.  I can hear them, I can imagine them in the shadow of the mountain as if I was there among them. But I am here, on this simple mattress, among epic battles that never end.

She moves her head towards me. She becomes something more than physical. More than the force of all men, all systems I’ve ever understood or heard of. She takes over my body. I search for descriptions, for the limit, the very edge. I follow, communicating only with my eyes. I watch her breasts rise and fall, then search her eyes for the center.

She will not let me return to the physical, not yet. Not while my body is free. I place my mind in her hands, let her wet hands dissolve my lies.  She takes me up the mountain, one single being in free eager flight.

Anaconda On The Loose

One day the pet Anaconda in Mr. Wagman’s 1st grade class got out of its tank.
The class had forgotten to feed him for a whole year, so he was very, very, hungry.
He slithered behind Mr. Spooner who was mopping up somebody’s spilled milk.
He slithered up the long stairway.
He slithered past the 5th grade classes…
And past the 4th grade classes…
And past the 3rd grade classes…
And right into a second grade class room. Room 22, to be exact.
Nobody saw him wriggle by. Nobody saw him lift the latch with his nose, opening the guinea pig cage.
Nobody saw the guinea pigs leap out past the big snake’s wide open hungry mouth.
They ran right out of room 22 and into room 21 and leaped into the fish tank to hide.
Would you believe that nobody saw them come in?
Would you believe that nobody saw the Anaconda come slithering in either?
He was on his way to drink up all the water and swallow both guinea pigs and all the fish when something better caught his eye.
Cassandra and Olivia were cutting out paper apples.
The Anaconda wrapped himself around both Cassandra’s and Olivia’s chairs and started to SQUEEZE!
Then he swallowed both girls whole.
Elizabeth screamed.
Reem fainted.
Kayla didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
Joshua shouted, “Ms. Robinson, you should get them out like I would get them out!”
“And how is that Joshua?” Ms. Robinson asked, but he didn’t answer so she called the office.
Meanwhile, it was dark inside the Anaconda.
Cassandra thought fast. She still had her scissors so she used them to cut the Anaconda open.
Cassandra and Olivia sprang out of the Anaconda’s belly.
Everybody felt sorry for the big snake so Ms. Robinson sewed him back up just like a surgeon, only she used purple thread.
After that, the Principal, Mrs. Berk, called the zoo and they came to take Mr. Wagman’s Anaconda away.
They put him in a cage and carried him past the 3rd grade classes…
And past the 4th grade classes…
And past the 5th grade classes…
They carried him down the long stairway.
They carried him out behind Mr. Spooner who was mopping up somebody else’s spilled milk.
At last they stopped by room 4 and Mr. Wagman’s first grade class said goodbye to their pet.
The kindergartners poked their heads out of the doors and waved goodbye too.
Now the Anaconda with the purple stitches in his belly lives at the San Francisco Zoo and he is very happy there. The zoo keepers never forget to feed him.

Kava Speaks

What they gave me to love? A man doll, a rag of dirt, a thing in the image of, but not alike to, the lords, the Elohim, the crowd from heaven that sometimes come down to earth. A puppet, a joke, an experiment. A companion. Adam. My Adam. They would scorn me because I loved an angel, loved an angel more than a man, an Adam. Because I have climbed the tree, climbed it and descended it in company they might never hope to have, they would make a scandal of me. Let them scorn. Let them despise me and shut their windows against me and blame all of their woe on me and call my best works a sin. I gave their "good" Adam two sons, I gave them their shepherd. To my angel I gave Cain. To the power and the life of the heavens I gave the earth, the cup, a grail to hold the ecstatic wine of the unknowable. To him, the half brother of your shepherd, the son of an Angel, the grandson of an angel, to him the kingdom belongs.
Upon him I look with admiration, yes, with pride, which is noble though those who are not so would make nobility a curse. Who was jealous of whom? Those whose lives are so tightly knitted to the earth that they are drawn to it like metallic dust to a lodestone, scarcely able to look up from it to blink drowsily at the stars, they have ever feared that which was not so earthbound as they, that which rises far above them, reaching higher and deeper, touching lights and shadows that they would never dare to brave, enslaved as they are to instinct. They would make evil those who are masters, masters of themselves, masters of the word, masters of the illusion that shrouds us like an absurd raiment. Their curse is a blessing. To be shunned by them is the greatest possible honor considering the baseness and vulgarity of that which they prize. They may run the noble born to the ends of the earth with false claims of supremacy, with their shouts that they are the chosen of the one true God. But for those who know better, their stomping and shouting will be laughable. Or at least it would roll like water off of a swan’s back if it weren’t also so wretched with resentment and jealousy, that it burns through the protective oils like acid, and finally sinks that graceful bird that once knew both the depths of the waters and the heights of the sky.
I have known Gods. And I am aquatinted with this God of theirs, who is one, but not the only one. To a jealous God, a jealous and desperate people. This is… they are what the Gods have given me to love, rag children made of dirt, sons and daughters of Adam, of Abel and Seth. Can they help what they are made of? Is it their fault that they have been made only half as good as their brother? Is it their fault that they haven’t enough strength to pull free of the lodestone and fly madly into the abyss as angels fly? I cannot hold them in contempt for their weakness, but nor should I deny the greatness and worth of true strength. I will not hang my head for scaling to the heights and the depths with angels. I defy the people of dirt, I challenge them. Chase my better children to the ends of the world as you are want to do. That is as far as you will be able to pursue them, but they can go farther still and will leave you far behind. Even now, they are dancing madly where you cannot see them, and they will rise and fall beyond the limits of your pale perceptions. To them the kingdom belongs. You are the ivy which eats at the tree. When the tree has fallen under your advance, what will you inherit? More and more dirt. To the noble born goes the kingdom. And to Jehovah go the unwashed.