Cocteau did not let life breathe. He forgot to sleep for twelve whole days. His body, eventually, gave way to paradox. The fruit flies dimmed around his brow, and he grew ashen. So ashen. I sometimes imagine the very moment my body sheds its anima, and we are alone with the vision of what our bodies would feel like if we were completely weightless. My chestbox would release itself out of your hands, and I would float as if my limbs were in water. Or I would be as stricken and stiff as a hollow bird— taxidermied token of was.
Cocteau didn’t know how to fly, I am afraid. He was more interested in the theater, the mere thought of taking flight. And the accident of tears that set their sights for the cheekbones, chiseling themselves into warm flesh. This is a sketch of one’s mortal nausea. The freeing of ugliness, as it were.
Sometimes I get seduced by accidental wounds. How deep is too deep? How do they know when to stop? How and when to turn a burnt red, stiffen, or bleed endlessly? I want to see you as this ointment on my skin, but I will never let it settle. Forever open to exsanguination. Imagine the endless wave of rivers, losing feathers and clumps of bloated flesh. Cocteau didn’t know how to ask for a lifeline. He was a scarecrow of a man. Addicted to opium and sex. A man of vices and surrealistic dreams. I do not blame him. No. He was martyred in the dust, and reborn as a soldier.
I am craving something that slowly edges itself around my feet, places me in a sketch of kohl dust. Black and ominous. A crude fragrance of coal billowing around me. And you release the doves with their boisterous whites into the skyline, where they violently flicker with life.
