elusivities

[elusivities]

Prospective chick deceased

an 18 year old swings his fists into the hardwood floor because the yolk of his genius doesn’t ooze out when he slams it into drywall.

his seams are tearing, the fibrils of his sanity: his cognizance is seeping, rotting and reeking, heaving and weeping.

the digital document flickers, wires crossed and sizzling—his milky shell fissuring.

electric cobalt blue.

because words are fickle and stubborn, more tried and terrified than

a prodigy breaking down,

yet for whom princeton bids, the Prospective chick deceased!

[elusivities]

prodigals, prodigies

i’ve been having white-hot visions of them

bright in the mind, dull in the heart,

geniuses erected into pop culture, immortalized as hellenistic statues,

teenaged mathematicians staying up deep into early morning with spades in their palms and algorithms at their hands,

sleeping through their lectures and obsessing over their problem sets, crazed and brilliant and so high above everyone else, like daisy, silver, safe, and proud above the hot struggles of the poor—

the socially bankrupt, the rsi rejects, and those wannabes whose sweethearts grieve in their respective harvard-born laboratories

cool winds assault them in the eighteen-storied inferno—them! with their raven hair, their dim eyes crusted shut, the crust thawing with marked periodicity,

awaking in the hours called limbo where the world slumbers while their minds click and buzz, stock tickers in the night, foreign (are they founding wealth overseas, beyond boston harbor, beyond the atmosphere pierced by the three body problem?)

dynamical systems, sensitive, stellar

they arise from stained sofas and toil at their whiteboards,

a blue light flickering overhead, set notation scrawled in long-dried expo markers, an alien language undecipherable and exclusive

so, so special that i arrive to load my laundry and when i gaze up at that board, i see only my reflection

i cast a glance and sense no bite, no nod, no acknowledgement, so i spill out the light from my eyes, eager and desperate for grandeur, for that which is grander

than shot-in-the-dark hypotheses, manual labor, cell culture

i can’t read the writing on the wall they scribble before retiring to that couch,

wise and wired, withered and weathered,

holy, untouchable, wholly unattainable,

revelation awaiting their whim,

revelation awaiting their wake.

[elusivities]

squeals of children from across the street behind vibrant trees like days of dew flaunting their youth to the cynic doused in lassitude at the top of the hill, tired eyes betraying her, cars rolling by steady and constant like the merciless water wheel of time, birds in front behind aside, spawning and skulking and screeching and singing and speaking and squacking in occult tongues and inside jokes, scent-laden breeze, bustling bumbling bumble bees clumsily knocking out petals and leaves and buzzing away with impunity, weeping howling keening dogs, shrieks of blood of terror of desperation for her mama

constant buzz of machinery constant clutz of society another lexus triumphant and gray

[elusivities]

summer/entropy

where the air is hot and humid and heady, languid and lethargic

when the ambience saturates with water, becomes aqueous, so we can for a transient moment wade betwixt anemone

the sun becomes a little dimmer, a little less harsh, leaping into nascent leaves,

when color becomes meshed and congruous

the clamour deafens, and sounds become a faint, dampened echo of what once was

from blaring alarms to an ethereal, melodic howl from—the welkin or distant lands

the streetlights wane aquamarine

the head is heavy and elevated and bobs with the ebbing tide

the string of an acoustic guitar acclimates to the frequency of nature, sways by the bidding of sage, patriarchal oaks

everyone is soothingly suffocated and tranquilized

anxiety is quelled, frenetic movement subsides, paranoia recedes

summer reinvigorates an agonized earth in a dreamy haze:

the heat death of the universe

in the winter, the sun vaults abruptly from icy pavement, affronting our pupils miotic in the murk

heat diffuses away to every surface we touch, every surface we don’t

tell me what cruel force sets us back in motion? that excites every particle but left me static, helplessly moored in an angry, undulating ocean?

[elusivities]

there is no sympathy for the living soul

instead of remedy we condense ourselves in corners and crawlspaces, knees to our protrusive ribs,

with souls society starves and parches, souls that hunger so excrutiatingly, emaciated yet so woefully ineffectual

eyeing the nearest void with an unbearable longing for

something better

we retain this state of “living,” and he who lives suffers indelibly and indefinitely

it’s fight or flight, but i freeze

the world is too bright, loud, pungent, filthy,

and i’m always so ill and fragile and stupefied

[elusivities]

On the bus ride home, I see flickering sunlight creeping through the canopies and over the surfaces of leaves in a nauseating yellow, stupefying—like it could paralyze you as stone—gruelling, and unrelenting as the suffering each dreary day casts upon me. I see glitter and pinpoints of white, I see the sun, and I see its emanation on the flimsy, gritty school bus benches. I see it in slim vertical stripes and strips and distorted blots that linger in my vision. I see it as butterfly wings and radio waves and turbulent flow and magnetic fields of iron shards. It haunts me in shadows, steals around the dark side of the moon, and ricochets to stab my back, deflecting off the floor and reappearing as malignant globs on a century-old rug. I see it in the last leaf of a dormant tree, destined down to the earth, and I see it in my reflection, snaking from behind the mirror into my eyes, drilling through my teeth and into my mind. I know no life beyond it. I’m blind without it. I remain moored by it, suffocating a bit with each violent wave. I implore the snare of its undulations to rock me to sleep. Let the lulling ripples gently sweep my throbbing forehead like a mother’s sanctifying hand.

[elusivities]

Phantasmagoria

Glossy tiles slick with morning rain under a bright blue sky, tiles off which streaks of sun like those upon the tranquil lake reflect, stray ominous clouds layered deeply float above it like the shadowy omnipresent guilt of a crime scene smeared by a culprit and slathered like mud over our collective conscience, manifesting itself like the concealed horrified tone of alarm barely perceptible in my Spanish teacher’s subtle reprimand—some switch had been clicked one degree to the right, one degree truly, unsettlingly wrong, the wrong settling and welling and swelling in my stomach, awkward and off-putting, out-of-place and sickening, bile seeping into my blood like honey-like overripe dew from soggy, diseased oak boughs, plopping onto dead, waterlogged leaves like my own finger-pricked blood onto a microscope slide to unveil so intimately my nature, a specimen in a high school intro bio class, gruesome and morbid and wince-inducing in my peers.

[elusivities]

a romance cast away

to undulate unspoken

will settle one day

and solidify like clay

into sculpted agapé

[elusivities]

suffocating me and resuscitating me with weeping, withered lips,

a lifeguard to my lifeless sea, he lies and loves amiss

[elusivities]

I'm sure I have some kind of anxiety because I'm always clinging to life the moment I think I'll lose it like tears spilling down my cheeks when the school’s lockdown doors fell. Today, the house alarm went off, and, while my dad screams to an ADT worker through his phone, I sit in my room, trudging through hundreds of pages of condensed biology with premonition pervading my mind. My chin feels irritated and I nauseated; my body is producing all these placebic symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. I tiptoed past the front door with a surge in my pulse, my blank stare to the malignant abyss beyond its window. I'm surely superstitious too (so much for logical thinking), but I consider it hopefulness. I consume media about God, sob, shower, and am reborn from the steam a new woman, so God tells me to cherish this new life, for it's precious even if ignominious and solitary.

[elusivities]

a shameful pond

We are not the picture of God and are at best a reflection; we’re a face peering back at Him from pond water, smudged and distorted by ripples and vortices and sullied by particles of dirt and other organic matter with a stupefied, indignant (as if we perceive ourselves betrayed) expression, jaw slightly open and tearful, fearful eyes wide, and one could not distinguish a tear from a bubble expelled from our boiling, malignant, sinful nature gliding freely along the water’s surface.

[elusivities]

i regret that i could never shield a book from life,

for its pages are fated to be torn and bled upon,

its spine broken and body consequently paralyzed

i can try to hide it beneath gritty fingers,

only to smother it with sweat-soaked palms

or smudge it with a thumbprint of Montblanc ink

i can stroke its cover like the head of an infant,

but i can’t shade it from the eyes of malice

or protect it from a perilous high school hallway

must one who carries a life within them

suffer a life all the same?

[elusivities]

launch yourself into ecstasy

time is leaping away like skipping stones

[elusivities]

your eyes are burning, and my heart is inflamed,

but tears trace our cheeks just the same