cosmic causeries

by glenn fang

cosmic causeries
writings in consciousness
by glenn fang messagestoanonymous.tumblr.com twitter: @cloudstains

2013

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Singapore License (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 SG)

somnolent bones tuck into the blanket that is your skin: it falls asleep, while the tessellation of stardust in you stays up through the night with me. we toyed with our imaginations, and ended up with dreams that in the morning, after you leftmaterialized only as words.

a journey along your spine

tracing your scoliotic spine, hoping that i dont lose you to the alternating hollow recesses, while meandering, navigating. a one lane. a two way. only two ends in sight. to your head or your hips? or to both, and also to the universe in between? not all destinations show. no cartographer has mapped this plentiful expanse in you. i humbly attempt your moon. craters spell revelation doom.

break away
we expend our oxygen tanks as crude propulsion in an attempt to reach the moon, but we fall short of the Krmn line, and below critically low levels. the auroras over Pite are an electric chaos that we have no part in; a breath-taking daze as we watch the lissom hues slither with refulgent grace. there are astronauts with a grandstand view freely snapping away. there are astronauts outside cutting their tethers. we all want to float, we all want to drift away slowly, but we're falling back down (again)-

hurry
every morning i walk my terrier through a winding half-mile, but i think he's the one walking me: he's always in a sprightly haste. i don't know how many tail wags i miss in between slow, drowsy blinks. elsewhere, the earth is walking her moon, both zipping around their own usual orbit. in the city, the suited adults manoeuvre sidewalks, dispensing brief greetings, sparse on chatter. punctuality is a battle through suitcase-wielding phalanxes. overlooking the bustling crossroads, a greyed man sits, stoned from cigar compounding existing inertia. limbs in inactivity, mind far from monotony, slowly drifting towards a familiar wraith in a different hurry: the one for reunion. i think about us and wish the same.

distant
every meteor shower calls you for a night outdoors, and every shooting star gets a wish from you. consequently waylaid by a universes worth, who wants you to wish on them. this is some starry business, and everyone wants a part of the lucre. the stars are let in on more secrets than i am while i empty every last drop of my heart online, to strangers on the other side of the globe. i guess we feel more comfortable when things are distant, where we're safe from the immediate aftermath; and i tell myself it's the simple reason as to why we've grown so far apart.

astronomers
everyone talks about the splay of freckles across the bridges of noses and likening them to constellations we've past that stage early. here we are, way after the jaw-dropping first glimpses familiar skins comfortably taut like accustomed paint drying on walls. we commune about our most obscure celestial objects: the specks of caf au lait spots scattered around our bodies, like the one shaded under your left breast, and the faint five around my thigh that form the points of a star. our perusals are unfolding lessons; knowledge bandwagons and pours from the soft Braille of goose bumps, divulging our innermost impressions. we are astronomers in our own right, answering the questions of our own universe.

afterlife
post-bloom corpus withers and curls tightly around the scythe: not by choice, but in adherence to various physical laws surrounding contortion; the rules of the game. bleeding, life waning to pallidity. an egalitarian lover picks it up and presses it between an abundance of life, thriving in the microcosm of prose. as an inhabitant, she breathes immortality through its vascular bundle while delicately tracing the worn contours of each dried petal. and i want to believe in the same afterlife.

altruistic moon
dusk, and the moon gets to work after putting everyone to sleep. dormir, dormir, dormir. the transverse of moonlight rouses waves, slithering up on to gentle shores the shore of every one reposed. swash electric serenades, backwash blankets from bodies. bare are these vessels so weathered; the cratered moon plasters with kisses; bleeding excessive silver dust wont kill.

destruction
send me an escadrille of airplanes filled with your ink as ordnance; messengers-cum-hesitant kamikazes. they circle in a holding pattern until they're all but just fragmented ballistic patterns on my palms. the only intact remnant is a black box recording of everything we've said to each other: from the laconic shy greetings to the obligatory verbose apologies to complete silence. the stars are searching for another to fall destructively and irrevocably in love with: never able or wanting to break off, and having to drift alone in boundlessness ever again. this is the persistence of universe we don't have. we drift apart from the epicentre of destruction.

wake
leave me to wander across the continents of my mind, performing a grim cartography of tragedies. trace an isopleth with contour intervals indicated for the piles of expended mistakes. i've no aerial view to do a good job; I'm still discovering the wreck as i go, but at least i'm trying to organize my mess rather than simply glorifying them as abstract art. it takes a sadist to pluck beauty from disasters.

quixotic
the frigid air is a mix of cobalt and black. some are calmed for repose, while othersus are hysteric, clinging to the transitory ardour of the amber evening sun. fluorescence from the right words ricochet off flimsy tinsels; we continue raving. our promises were carved on melting glaciers. calefaction from carnal gymnastics will water them down completely, and we won't even get to drown.

solitary musings
i ramble offhand about every passing and lingering thought; the xeric silver moon listens to me just to purloin the vapour laced in my exhales; the eroded kisses on her cratered curvature mirrors mine. my shadow in abeyance: he builds a bridge to a lightless cave hole under the tree and creeps away from me, into it; settling in for a comfortable, prolonged slumber. daybreak will not come anytime soon. soporific lantern lines of words lulls the universe to sleep. i spend my nights awake, pondering, trying to answer the questions you left with your absence. thoughts are fractals, and darkness can get darker.

eclipses
lustful apparitions coast in the depths of an oceanic night. arcane desires occult the dim glow of twilight tungsten, plunging into Cimmerian totality an alignment to behold. individuated by vanishing horizons and under a perfect guise, sails flutter freely in rousing storms; spines hold out through rough kisses and rind, from the claws of taloned fingers until ships founder.

growing up (apart)
the delicate morning breeze disentangles a kite, caught on the tree for monthssomething even the strongest storms couldn't do. a butterfly waltzes with it, diffracting sunlight through stained glass wings, ruffled dried leaves joining in; reminiscent of a dilapidated playground and the frolicking kids who've since grown up. they play with bills, not blocks, and cut deeper scars. smoothened rocks lay reposed on the shore of the sea we shouted all our burdens and promises to. they've begun to crack, and i wonder if our words have since drowned. moving out and away by ourselves to places beyond where our fathers used to drive us is the true transition to adulthood. we echo goodbyes from diametric ends of our new worlds. they brush shoulders midway and crumble to naught.

esteem
you chained your insecurities to a sturdy tree and threw the key out of its reach. standing at a distance, you watched relieved, and slightly smug as it tries in vain to get back into your head. left to die, you went for a shower in the lonely oceans whose contents you wholly loved; emerging with dripping wet summer gold hair, but you couldn't care less. heart strings tugged, drawing wide, deceptive seines. examining your haul; newfound expectations sifts out the bad catch of which I'm a part of; you threw me back, tangled to your primal words.

our warmth on greedy conductors

cold finds its way and slithers up from under sleeves for embrace. it argues with the poised air underneath insulating layers, but bickering wears down to a unifying equilibrium. our overlapping legs, slotted bodies; steadfast with dulcet words, hesitant with actions. ardent bulbs singe the algid air, while veins threaten to snap like frozen twigs. we put our fingers over torch lights skin illuminated red tracing round contours with pilfered warmth, dither evident. we squandered our own on the wrong people.

self
i no longer have to wake up to the garish incandescence from the toilet at 3 a.m. in the morning; nor do i have to sleep with blankets on. i am no longer a slave of the tolls of distance, spending our time apart trying to bring us closer using all (im)possible means. there's a sweetness that is quite like yours from tying fresh cherry knots with my tongue. i still get the same little scrapes. electric hums are as rhythmic as your reposed heartbeats, and my ears become accustomed, too. Decembers spent supine on cold duvets; my descending winter exhales are quite like your detached breaths. i've grown to love only the touch of my own hand on my skin. a healthier addiction: more sufficient, less dependent.