Rainbow Bones
Agitation
Posted by Paul Ricciardi (Rock Hill, United States) on 17 January 2007 in People & Portrait.
It is winter. Ten days after the pigeon disintegrated in his headlong pursuit of the Pale Man. You and he return to the rented room where the first ritual of life began for him. You were there when a single, white crow crashed through the window of the thirtieth story room in the nineteen story skyscraper. You were there, alone, naked in your clothes, when the bird came with wings whip-crack snapping against the turbulent air above the city.
He tumbled through the yellow tinted glass of the sealed shut window, opening the wall to the man-made cavern of blue buildings below. The crow bounced off of the mirror, cracking it. Bad luck for seven years as the wicked, white, crow catapulted into the careening ceiling fan, unbalanced. He remained there for six hours, suspended in time and in space. Wings flapping ferverently against the gale-force winds generated by the fan. He hung there, dangling from a thread of breath and poetry, convulsing on the wire of wisdom.
And his eye snapped open suddenly. The fragments of the mirror finally fell from orbit and hurtled to the floor at Herculean speeds. In his eyes you saw a man, naked, and curled like an infant, you saw the seas, the same striking seas of cerulean that the Pale Man sees when he loves you. And when he does not. It is not often that he does not love you, only when the lightning crashes against the silver oak tree and three Wednesdays fall within the same week will he not love you. It has only happened once, but it was once enough.
And, then, standing there gazing out of those sea blue eyes, a mist formed, a mist sea spun and ocean sung, and a blur. The Pale Man was born. The first ritual was complete, here, in this room, a year ago today this 20-somethingth of January.
The two of you collapse on the bed. It is time for sleep, dreams.
Sleep-
Death's little sister.
Shall we sleep tonight?
or ever?
is there a field of poppies as bright and lovely
as you?
Shall I ever know,
but no,
all I know is that I dream
of unreality.
Or, perhaps, I dream and enter reality.
And then wake, and enter a dream.
Is it so, my brown haired girl?
Is sleep to death what death is to life?
We all die, but none are ever dead-
shall the third ritual claim you?
