Ouroboros, Forgone

Ethan Kinsella

What did they see? They saw—

—The atrophied junk and mold and piss and trash and wasted time and too many commands and too much time and the hated people and the deathwish of the argonauts and the arrival of pain and destruction and the path of a demon who was kept, perpetually sustained by chains and maintained by twenty-three little elves, and the cache of value which he kept under lock and key, twenty times and twenty more so not to open it up and allow others to notice the meaning he kept inside,

and the way he would coat his words in ambiguity so to strip down any meaning so that the chances that something would go awry would be lessened,

and he wished to be Anteros and for Anteros to see him and he wanted love, but not for love, rather for any sort of meaningful companionship so he assumed the best and assumed the worst,

and the way his hair fell carelessly on his speckled face that went without joy,

and the way that he smoothed over the folds of his brain with junctions of tele-vision and hyperlink cinema,

and the way that his feet went one before the other one before the other one before the other one before the other one before the other one before the other one until he arrived and then they stopped and he had no say in it,

and the way that he carried his carrying pack by its strap over one shoulder or over both shoulders or in his hands and walked without looking around,

and the way that a smile would present itself and his mouth would apologize when he walked into someone else in the hallway,

and all the times he said “thanks” and “sorry” and “go ahead” and nothing more,

and all the value he placed on aesthetics for everyone but himself.

And not the occasional rain of belated Gods that would belt his cheeks but would go unnoticed,

and not all the times he wished his pleas were heard, so he would pronounce himself louder just to be considered,

and not the times he was an annoyance just so that he could see some sort of stimulation in others, so that he knew that he had some impact; and he could cherish knowing that he mattered if only for an instant,

and not the three four five six seven eight nine ten times he would yell alone just to know that he could be heard,

and not the amount that he considered those he was close to and those who he had barely spoken to but wished to befriend,

and not the toil he went through when picking to whom and when and why and how to speak,

and not the microcircles within nanocircles that his entire brain would blend into when he saw L or G or A or M or D or T or Y or anyone else he knew or the whole damn alphabet,

and not the post-hyperbolic poetry he would write, dedicated to others who would never learn of its existence,

and not the way he wished that someone would be passionate about anything even if he found it uninteresting,

and not the way that he would be happy for a day two days maybe three when someone would engage him rather than the opposite,

and not the way that he would switch the chairs so that they could be comfortable and how he would hug them in his mind but never would go forward with his mouth and eyes,

and not the ringing of the bells in his ears that propelled him forth,

and not the clouded vision that undulated infinitely into the abyss and proved his own stagnant desire for warmth,

and not the kicking and screaming child behind his cortex and above his ear that called for a sheet of paper to write on for design and a chisel for labor and the mold of a fellow being to work on,

and not the green and red lights that alternated every time his eyes set upon one and the other and the other and the other and the other and the other and the other,

and not the Dead Flag Blues,

and not the tape which he could not remove from his eyelids and mouth,

and not the false lives he wished to be living that would present themselves on his screen,

and not the habit he had of prioritizing the dreaded bloodmoon over the repeated dramatis personæ he would see blasting their shadow on the star-studded conscious of the dreamer,

and not the harsh fists of pure napalm that bombarded the shelter of a prison of a fortress of a barrack of an overarching plot of a mind that he constructed for himself in infancy,

and not the infinite eons in which he pushed the boulder up the hill or ate his own tail or staked out on a mount of Moriah,

and not the way that he lost all fulfillment with material goods once his subscription from the planet of Pluto came bounding among his many dropped keys and fortunes,

and not the way that the little yellow book in his pocket rejected the yellow light of the sun but accepted all the rest and the same went for his evil and prosperous heart with which he blotted the sun to himself,

and not the dream of the imminent collision with the center of Kepler’s in which he strengthened his resolve and finally said his mind to others,

and not the subatomic alpha waves which he grabbed and stretched and pronounced over and over into the heart and mind of infinity,

and not the one, her, Demeter, who told him of life and death and the reasons for it all and how his mind was blown into bits and restructured daily by the bits of worms that crawled in through his eyes when he was not looking,

and not the ones he did communicate with who lacked real form at least through his perfection,

and not the gondola which carried him through the body of Lilith and taught him of cheating and lying and perfection and what it all was,

and not his fourth third persona which was the inverse,

and not the black lagoon from which the creatures of his mind would come to invade and not the gray black orange green blue show which perpetually conceived a child and that child was named Adam and he cared for it until it grew too old and it was named Oedipus and he feared the spinning nonsense eternity inferno great white shark orangutan hypergloss and he was devolving into cursèd little words and rhymes until the eternity Übermensch seized control and whispered that it would be okay and then he was performing again this time on the stage and there was no audience because, this time, it was completely real and he stabbed himself in the side for sustenance and his ankle for strength and sunk from his weaknesses and viewed the Greenhound which stomped on his arms and legs and tore him limb from limb despite his regenerative power of mindful necessitation and the shapely gun torn black parasynapsal interim heads of Dadaist antipolice who served both of his ears and eyes for dinner to the eternal Gods of integral machinery and high caliber postings for black and black and black and he drowned in melody nightly and this was for the better and then the end of his frown when his face was repealed and then the innerworkings of clockwork were shown underneath and his eyes could not blink and he was forced to stare forward and his head was torn off by the Aidos who pointed it at himself and he saw his own machinery and was forced to perform mercurial surgery on himself which changed in design from the beginning to the end until he had been shaped by himself and himself alone and the abandoned sea squirming underneath the stagnant fish and “hey ho!” and “farewell” and Cowboy and negative underlings would come back and put his face back together in a disjointed order but he looked depressingly normal and so he tore it all apart again and had fun with it this time,

and now he was ready to rejoin society, but then the Spear was torn out of his side and he was just left to rot standing straight up with no face and his arms straight out held down by Gulliver’s henchmen and with a sledgehammer he demolished the infinite factories of love which he almost seemed to breed and he took his sledgehammer and he cracked it through the space of one too many Dreamless Ones and for now he was almost satisfied but the floor fell out and he fell with it and now he was in gaol with the terse concision of a pilot and it had all overflown into his beginner’s luck for the conquering of the Mughazis and now he had only seized a part of himself and his persona was perceived and his self was not and others cared not for his true desires because they were never made known because of his failure to communicate and he pronounced words but his lips refused to move, kept under lock and key by a Lilin Demon, and so he took the sledgehammer to his desires too but he could never entirely squelch them in the same way as the Dreamless Ones but they were left brutalized and obscured and it was all the fault of perception and his malice seeped through the holes in his teeth that were created by the underlined bosses of his tired carrion jockey.

And thus he loved his self and hated his persona.