Kyle Muntz - Voices

(

Even though it was raining, we never

went inside.)

::::::::::::::::::::

Flashes of mirage in the belly of the desert; cool clears pools gleaming my sacred oasis. I slept in the cold at the side of the bay, head in hands. Gentle pillows of sand, bearing an aforementioned history, staggeringly unimportant, lofted me to dreams. The desert made marking on dry baked skin. I slept with sand in my hair, dust in my throat, echoes of brightness still burning. In the dream I had a vision of a

sandstorm.

It came at me a whirlwind of heaviness, granulated flying. Underneath, in a sandy womb, I saw darkness and bones of dead animals, sapped by the infinite thirst of an overextending desert. Cactus spines joined them, old meat, giving weapons to the storm. Ahead on either side, in the back, the wind picked up, turning abstract shape to flat patterns in the sand, a maternal lifting up of body. When

I woke up, I took a drink of water, packed my bags, and discovered I was a prophet.

::::::::::::::::::::

The wolves came for me

when I turned a corner. In the empty streets, I heard them coming (clawed paws

scraping holes in the path, five six seven of them coming, red eye, worms in their

fur). Somewhere in me, I thought of running. They surrounded, a sacrificial circle.

Each had one eye, a geometric anchor to plain, expressing purpose. They growled:

yellow teeth, a poisonous tongue.

I took to the walls,

to rooftops

and highness, climbing up windows, hanging down an awning. Sometimes I

astound myself with my own agility. If I had friends, maybe I would be able to

depend on them to help me. Apathetic, I kicked at teeth and knocked them away. I

still

had the pipe. Though

it hadn't necessarily been destined to become weaponry, I had the power to

alter fate. Gazillions of years ago (to forgo measurement), I'd seen this very thing in

dreams. Fur, teeth, claws and bleeding. I was not bleeding, though in all likelihood I

ought to be. Metal has the strength to break teeth. I have the power to move metal,

inclined to a certain avant-garde sense of the moving.

::::::::::::::::::::

I saw her

turning a corner, or she was something like her. She had the inward sense of

body, the extrovert aura of presence. Dark hair, of more than one color,

differentiating, moved in the absence of wind to move it. She walked carefully, and

slowly, though no matter how fast I ran she was always so far ahead.

::::::::::::::::::::

A cloaked man, bearing sickness, wearing rags, came to my place in the center of the desert. Scalding winds dug blisters in his skin. Impurity spawned serpents in his blood. Rough cloth cloaking, too thick, fanned to an overarching length behind. Standing thirty feet away, as was custom, he addressed me.

"I can't help you," I said. "Go away."

There is no safety under the shadow of this red rock.

(come sit with me under

the shadow of this red rock)

"I'm so sick," he said.

""Go away."

"At least pray for me," he said.

"I won't pray."

"But look at what I am!" as he removed the turban, tearing green stained

bandages, his rotted skin. "I'm dying!" he ripped gauze bloody red sprouting sickness, calloused, pussed, infected. The skin might as well be falling. So mangled, it came off in strips.

Look at me

, cried wounds, we

beg…

"There's nothing I can do."

::::::::::::::::::::

Footsteps make such strange sounds (beating beating). They come in sync, signaling movement. Wherever I go, they follow me, like a theme song. Identical, mine and others.

I followed her. She made no footprints. Her hair billowed as she ran, floating up behind. It reminded me in a way of the first short story I'd ever written, somewhat plagiarized. It was based loosely on footsteps and chasing. In all things, I see my own future, separated from the real, my life running (not exactly) backwards, from the center of time, not slipping in sequence

what pray pray for me I can do

to help you

there's nothing

::::::::::::::::::::

I don't know if I would ever admit

this to anyone, but

I can't

even help myself.

::::::::::::::::::::

When the sandstorm came, I found her at its center. She was at the center of all things, not as a kind of focus, but maintaining distance from all points, asymptotically receding. Always slipping, she was there but she never came closer. Everything saw her, always there, even caught fragmented pieces of imagery, but she alludes confinement in representation, canceling herself.

Bathing in

sand, suspending in desert

hands, she was there but not really there. She would not lead me to any dependable source of water, no niche of coolness in the dry ache of the abyss. She laughed, suspended, and beckoned to me. In the eye of the hurricane, surrounded on all sides by walls of earth, taking a step, I barely kept from falling.

::::::::::::::::::::

Writing poetry

in the dirt sweat dust heat rock rock beauty in the sand

collapsing

::::::::::::::::::::

If I were to have a mantra, it would go something like this (avoiding by careful measures the confines of language, clusters of meaning and often tapped expression- much the kind seen on television, in windows, on huge boards off the side of the road- and capturing fully the intricate operation of fern, telephone, barbed wire, bed cushion [not fluffy], and pouring grains of wheat the

::::::::::::::::::::

I came out of the subway somewhere near the gateway to the sea. On the horizon, a full globed sun split the water, barrier to barrier rocking wavefronts away. I shifted my shoe in the sand, thinking of ways to capture scenery, its second self, the more important half. I still captured things with my camera. Confined them. Overlapping vision, quinine plausibility of secrets; pen and paper, ink, lines falling irregularly to sequence; separating idea from vision, self and self image, clear filtered projection. Standing against the sky, I had only one shadow. A family, way down the beach, walked along the strand, so dark I couldn't see them. Perspective shore tunnels of vision, rays of lights, sinking in the darkness, they walked along the sea. Irrevocable, in violation of sinking. The sun sank towards the horizon, breaking in half, to vilify night and day.

::::::::::::::::::::

The subway let me out somewhere in the center of the city. Maybe I could find her here. Slabs of concrete jutted at irregular angles, breaking windows. Stolen merchandise, the useless kinds, fell unstolen, my silent personalized city. Plastic mannequins, still wearing dresses, brassieres, all out on display, were the closest thing I could see to women. Up above, clouds of broken glass, suspended in time, multiplied individual shades of evening. Sky scrapers were caught in falling. Darkish gold, a fire glowing, solid stillness solid marking, enshrouded reflective edges, illuminating emblems of destruction, a pristine pathway.

I took a step forward. I'd seen this place before. Certain paths led certain places, maze-like. My dream city. Bright colors flung banners on high. Smashed in cars asphalt peanuts littering the sidewalk. It smelled like subtlety and extension, an indescribable brink on the senses. I followed myself into the street. By where I was standing, a set of stairs in the street, bleached white, led into the sky. They were white, marble. I approached them. They led to a maelstrom of gravity, an undulating sea of crushing force, heaxi-directional.

I climbed.

And it should have been impossible, but until I got the top, breaking through clouds in the sky, moving towards the moon, there was very little sense of falling.