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The Invisible Cities New verssion

The Invisible Cities
Submitted by quillsveinback on Sat, 2018-12-15 09:43
We had met in the Invisible Cities, the subterranean janus mask that miserabilist civilization hides. The dawn's chambers rouged our cheeks and a room key lit from a homeless man, giving us coins from his drooping hound lids, watering with the River Styx's restless current.
"Your face is an unfolding doormat of oblong midnight", she said.
In the library's dark I saw the occult numbers wind in the neon catacomb rooms lit dimly, filled with silk vellum monographs. "The other door!," a hunched man hanging from a circus lasso and tattoed with the Dewey Decimal System's endless index. "Poverty is the last thing they can do to you", she whispered, "other than that they aren't safe from our marvels. Babel is abandoned and the due dates are growing nearer there."
"Yes!" She cackled as silk eared pigs with brass wings fell dead on the floor. A laughing spell rang from her insides, and all her Bellmer spider legs spun in an old Western's circle. "The Codex I S B N: The Shalalee's Seraphic Diviner". The reading room's dawn was locked in crypts of flooded porches, haunted trick hall mirrors with bruised starfish panels, and apparitions she seemed to have traced when I was by the river. I held her arms and they grew till six or seven golden serpent scales crushing my arms, and her eyes flipped in spinning borders of white star matter. The jackpin light points shone in a nautilus chamber of carnival stars, her birthmark a slick calypso in a concentric symmetry.
The morning's steamed dawn illustrated itself in the spreading diction of an andromedary star, and she traced auroral silk as Arnim's blue spiders fell from her slowly, the deaf gloss of our reflections ringing with her consensualities, our past lives blotting from within the glossy half mirror of our Home and Gardens magazine, and the peeled corners of kitsch Balinese decal apparitions ringing in the mirror.
Her lunar tears fell in venetian scales of pastel diamond, pink and yellow, her flooding black eyes rolled into mine, shedding in lacquer scales, the magic calendar's voodoo skin fell in alchemical texts, spastically strumming in bald mania, a cubed plastic organ, the cake ruin of the notes accompanied by her moonlit silk doll with cut breath, the super somnia of this house leaking the mirrors' colloidal spill...

We had met in the Invisible Cities, the subterranean janus mask the miserabilist civilization hides. We had felt the dawn's chambers rouge our cheeks with jade grafts, as if the sun itself was scarred tissue meant only to pass in combed insterices rippling in transits of shadow. She handed, in corked amphibian intercourse, a room key lit from by a homeless man given silk swallowing swords aflame for a moment, giving us coins from his lids watering with the River Styx's restless current to live nicely for awhile.

In the dark I saw the number illumine; the cheap plastic burned away as she sang in a roulette whisper, each voluble grazing the acrylic darkness like the stiletto she'd had to bargain away at Goodwill.
"Poverty is the last thing they can do to you", she whispered, "other than that they aren't safe from our marvels."
The dawn was locked in a crypt of watery porches, hall mirrors, and apparitions she seemed to have traced when I was by the river. As she drowned, I held her arms and they multiplied till there were six or seven golden scales crushing my arms, and her eyes flipped as bruised white star . This lattice, gold rust bordered carousel lit up her small hand in crooked radial increments, slathering light points in a nautilus order of carnival stars, her birthmark a slick calypso in a concentric symmetry.
The morning's yolk illustrated itself in the spreading diction of an andromedary star, and she traced auroral silk as Arnim's spider silk fell from her slowly, the deaf gloss of our reflections ringing with her consensualities and our past lives blotting from within the glossy half mirror of our Home and Gardens magazine, and the hushed corners of kitsch Balinese
decal apparitions ringing in the mirror.
I laughed and she laughed at the slathering pallor the moon's triple hue drew across
Her lunar tears fell in tears of pastel diamond, yellow and pink, and her geisha's black eyes rolled into mine, breaking in diamond larvae slivers, the voodoo skin of a magic calendar fell in alchemical tropes in the fish tank, spastically strumming in bald mania, a cubed plastic organ, the cake ruin of the notes accompanied by her moonpsalm, the super somnia of this house leaking the mirrors' colloidal spill....

Editing stage: 

Comments

I drifted from word to word not knowing what I was reading as in a lunar subconscious treasure trove of imagery and loved this sensual cruel scape; gorgeous!

friend!

JTA

author comment

Yes I think we are friends I certainly admire your ways of expression, so dark and sensual
You have a wonderful gift with language; so out of the box Your work is for those among us who feel a certain voluptuous twinge, who adore flowers of blood and who thrive conceptually and aesthetically on the sensuality of horror as we both do. So when you write, I get excited, moved, your language cascading through me So palpable

Best Z

Geisha black eyes ,,,stunning line among many ...As I read through this piece and others I'm struck by the obsessive thread of focus on form, its disintegrative process (always a voluptuous horror) and in some cases the transformation towards the ethereal numinous, as in this piece.
I think I also sense where you write from so Ill go out on a limb and if I'm wrong you can always tell me to go fuck myself :) ...and that is the palpability of inner ache for a dark sensuality an erotic fetishy lucidity that most shun, veil, don't understand because well they are dull or perhaps ironically dead to it
I detect it has to do with women more than men This of course is me assuming from projecting and reflecting as I'm the lens through which your work passes as the reader
Motive is important Obsession evokes great art and that my friend it what is missing in the souls of so many would be writers There to fucking middle class, vanilla, faux goodie 2 shoes, appropriate ie they keep their own darkness from themselves and don't know that it is from the dark that the light emerges, and your darkness love is incandescent

DREAM OF SHAME

when i was three
i dreamt myself naked
on stage
before a great audience laughing
in the glare of star dust lights

i was horrified

no doubt the beginning
of a need to cover-up

thus
the birth of a liar
my soul and destiny
a terminating lotus bud
nocturnal pulse
a tarnished soul
shuddering in a cave

what i do
a veiled secret

am i despicable ?
being what i should not be
loving what i should not love
wanting what i should not want
and then i discovered you
disguised

will you come out
and be who you shouldn't be
but are
take what you shouldn't want
but crave
and love what you shouldn't love
but die without

im here
frightened and exposed
aghast and in love
waiting for you

Best Z

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