Raz
Bluelighter
I burned all my clothes last night; I found a drum, rusted and thin, and the insides slick with something black. It took me some time to get it home in my borrowed shopping trolley, and I took some cynical pleasure in thinking that it looked like a giant cannon rattling down Brunswick's lonely streets.
The insides caught fire easily, singed my eyebrows and momentarily my spirit; I wondered if I was doing the right thing, shucking the past like this. But impulse calls as impulse does and I undressed in the warm Spring evening with the stars glimmering nervously above. I think the stars knew what was coming better than I did (I guess billions of years of watching dirt collect in balls big enough to name, of watching mites crawl out of dirt and pretend to be evolved will give you that clarity).
The dog from next door howled while I disrobed and I thought about that some; I wondered if it smelled the burning dead things in the bottom of that barrel that I only imagined were there. I wondered if that dog knew what was coming better than I did (I guess when every scent carried on the breeze carries more information than every human sense combined knows to look for, you have that clarity).
I was naked and warmed by the burning of my history as a man and a boy; I danced with some kind of giddy stupidity around our unkept backyard. The soles of my feet delighted in chill blades of grass underfoot, a single ladybird and several hungry mosquitoes found my skin (and at times my blood). I felt positively pagan, giving up every learned comfort to be myself under the round full moon.
I danced all night and sat and touched the trees and the air around me all night; I felt like myself in a way I had not felt like myself for some time. I knew now what it was like underneath all those layers, those layers of artifice that kept me in line and shuttered. I knew who I really was, when I cast off the false layers of civility and self-repression that we all cloak ourselves in daily and nightly.
The fire faded.
...
I became cold and I relished this at first; I was cold, but I was cold as me. Not as a man dressed to inform other men, but as the true me underneath that facade. My nipples grew hard with cold and my dick shrivelled and goosebumps found my flesh easily. But still the stars seemed marginally less uncomfortable and the dog had stopped howling.
I think I was really part of the world.
The night grew colder and I realised; I could not survive like this. I longed for my clothes, I longed for something to protect me from this nauseous exposure. I scrambled amongst the ashes, and I grew blisters and cuts as I found rags. I coated myself in ashes. I coated myself in rags.
I slept in rags and ashes.
...
I found myself waking in the sunlight, curled up below the empty shade of a tree that didn't like me so much; my skin was dotted in bruises from the kisses of insects and painted in the soot of what used to be me. It was red and sore from the searing glare of the one star close enough to teach me a lesson.
A lesson was learned that night; I became myself without my fake hide, and I could not live that way.
But once you burn your clothes, you can only be dressed in rags and ashes.
Rags and ashes.
...
The insides caught fire easily, singed my eyebrows and momentarily my spirit; I wondered if I was doing the right thing, shucking the past like this. But impulse calls as impulse does and I undressed in the warm Spring evening with the stars glimmering nervously above. I think the stars knew what was coming better than I did (I guess billions of years of watching dirt collect in balls big enough to name, of watching mites crawl out of dirt and pretend to be evolved will give you that clarity).
The dog from next door howled while I disrobed and I thought about that some; I wondered if it smelled the burning dead things in the bottom of that barrel that I only imagined were there. I wondered if that dog knew what was coming better than I did (I guess when every scent carried on the breeze carries more information than every human sense combined knows to look for, you have that clarity).
I was naked and warmed by the burning of my history as a man and a boy; I danced with some kind of giddy stupidity around our unkept backyard. The soles of my feet delighted in chill blades of grass underfoot, a single ladybird and several hungry mosquitoes found my skin (and at times my blood). I felt positively pagan, giving up every learned comfort to be myself under the round full moon.
I danced all night and sat and touched the trees and the air around me all night; I felt like myself in a way I had not felt like myself for some time. I knew now what it was like underneath all those layers, those layers of artifice that kept me in line and shuttered. I knew who I really was, when I cast off the false layers of civility and self-repression that we all cloak ourselves in daily and nightly.
The fire faded.
...
I became cold and I relished this at first; I was cold, but I was cold as me. Not as a man dressed to inform other men, but as the true me underneath that facade. My nipples grew hard with cold and my dick shrivelled and goosebumps found my flesh easily. But still the stars seemed marginally less uncomfortable and the dog had stopped howling.
I think I was really part of the world.
The night grew colder and I realised; I could not survive like this. I longed for my clothes, I longed for something to protect me from this nauseous exposure. I scrambled amongst the ashes, and I grew blisters and cuts as I found rags. I coated myself in ashes. I coated myself in rags.
I slept in rags and ashes.
...
I found myself waking in the sunlight, curled up below the empty shade of a tree that didn't like me so much; my skin was dotted in bruises from the kisses of insects and painted in the soot of what used to be me. It was red and sore from the searing glare of the one star close enough to teach me a lesson.
A lesson was learned that night; I became myself without my fake hide, and I could not live that way.
But once you burn your clothes, you can only be dressed in rags and ashes.
Rags and ashes.
...
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(katmeow came with me the other day when I read this for the first time at a spoken word event...very nerve-wracking!)