THREADCOUNT

Some Hill

There has been light from the beginning. Lightning that frequently strikes the high veld. Sites that have not been walked on in thousands of years. Finger marks in the mortar that chinked the walls, grooves in bedrock made by sharpening flint blades. Red potsherds in the dirt. No one’s from here; no one’s left here. Running any distance on the savanna would have caused heat exhaustion. Look at those muscles and bones, he says softly. They have found very big human bones. The skulls are all missing. Someone came and took them. The position of the eyes, semi-protected in the case of the skull close to the brain. A dirt oval found in almost every village, yet no evidence of what they practiced survived within the circle. If not for the dead, who was it for? Others argue charred animal bones found at sites are simply traces of naturally occurring flames. You don’t seem to be able to turn away from it. There are stories of people who drive past here, their cars break down, and they can’t leave. They have to live here. How many others are there now… Human eyes that work so well during the day are of little use in this world. Veil or membrane. An eye, or eyes, or something similar. You look up into the darkness then down into deeper blackness. Everything crosses everything else; palm leaves folded like crosses on doors, a shred of bark lies across the path in front of us. This is universal language in the jungle, he whispers. It means ‘Stay out. Go no further.’ If you could look one in the eyes, you wouldn’t want to. This new Hominid. Slowly migrated out of the canyon, tireless gait toward a distant horizon, the backbone of the world. Faint galactic light. Its steady glow. Fantasy figures for the family children to sketch. Under fluorescents. To take their place. Time’s passed on the oldest street in town. Rows of palm trees planted in the medians, in the stranded median strip tall trees, reddish fur. Rows of stone flat-faced idols being watched in boxes. Words that flash on and off in arbitrary sequences. You haven’t seen the films. You know how they end. What’s left to say. Find us a high place, some hill.

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The Bright Time

Dead heat. It was wavy between us. Horizontal, like you’re lying down. And it seemed to be the wrong kind of light. Beyond lights. Continuous spectrum. Pitch-lightness. Flaring. Lights where you gave up when you saw them, that yellow in your palm. You just let it go and it goes. There were no shadows. Bulbs reflecting back on themselves. Where you were when there was nothing else there. Red. It was a sky with tentacles. And you burn through yourself. It’s at the skin it cracks. Under the sun it cracks. Inside you it cracks. Inside it it cracks. In every room it cracks. In every country it cracks. Long time prior to exploding. How it looks out is black. On the other side of the drop off. After the bright time. And you get into colors so deep they’re not even colors anymore.

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Last Testament

It was sliding toward midnight. How we were in this suburban tropical sky. He had come to find us deep in the pages’ aftermath. Who knew what he wanted. What did you think I had in my hand for you? Waterproof pages to fill your bible. Lines one by one you cut out of where the spine met them… a minor setback when the New York Times reprints them. Shortly after, they wash out to sea too. Skin slides further south to meet the devil at last. Inside the devil but which one. The normal hotspots. Water masses grow when we turn our backs. Eclipses ran rampant. Things are dated close to expiration now, as if everyone knew what’s coming, like looking through a stone that’s clear to the other side. Back setting fire to fat unoccupied buildings doesn’t bring the old relief. Animals come walking out, you can’t ignore them. You wanted them then and now. But not like this. They lead to the edge, back to where they came from, the face that holds water. The edge of the rest of the world but you can’t see it yet, until there’s nothing left but you, standing around the fire with a dim memory of ice blue aural haze floating up the ocean severally. Things are moving by themselves. Fugitiveness. It’s what can be divided in your consciousness too. They say there is no such thing as the perfect crime, but you’ve never seen that blue tint on anything but that ice. It starts moving away, becoming a smaller and smaller dot. Before the end of this sentence you could be gone. Tense shifts around with the heat. Animal bones, time zones. All these objects can do is reflect the light that hits them. You don’t expect to sleep through the night. You played the numbers and lost. Greenland’s ice was 10 story buildings. Icing. Iced. All bets are off. You’re a quantum fluctuation away from nothing. The solar flares. Trees lifted out. You had no idea. You have to ask how much further. Going going gone. Necklaces of human bone would have shown up in the pictures later if anyone could have taken them. Collecting the collected. Who you were in the last life. It will be on your head. Because it comes down to this: Someone will write the last words ever read. Too late to toss a coin to see who goes. After all, the devil walked lightly, really, his color is bad, everything was covered by a heavy layer of sand but they will ask What did you know and when did you know it. When the sun crosses the line you’ll want words but so much of the story that could prove who’s right and who’s wrong is gone. Even stars scream when sucked into a black hole. It’s going to go on with or without you. Governments who kept it quiet. Blare of CNN runs out empty over the water, a flat round Vegas fountain whose petals scratch the surface of the last chlorine sea. Until you fish them out for copper in pennies to get a bus ticket North. You can get around the danger but you can’t get around the death. Everyone takes off, speaking in tongues, and are found later at sea. Or not. It’s true what they say about how when a body fills with air it waves goodbye.