New Poetry by Charlie Reid Stotter

Perfectly Capable

Under a late-night thunderstruck sky, I was smote with divine intent. I became repugnant to my earthly being. The utmost feeling of loathing besieged my mind, and the crescent moon's twilight shone down my spine, casting with it a chilling calling of fate. I saw a godly being, lurking surreptitiously beside my crackling kitchen window. It stalked me, predatorily. I stood in awe, I couldn’t help but adore this enigmatic creature. It radiated with an ominous hum that shook my bones. How was it that such a ghastly sight brought me comfort? It was superior. I wished nothing upon myself other than to become ‘It’. Within the split of an eye, marked by the cry of an owl in the distant abyss, it vanished. I pleaded for its immediate return. Its absence brought me unequivocal torment. The only thing I could do is work through my frail, effete brain. In a dire frenzy of desperation, I penetrated my veins, drew beads of blood and painted a mural of its guise. The next step was to transform, shed my ugly, pathetic,

senescent exoskeleton for this creature's mastered complexion. I was seized by a fever of pure sanity. A tongue is for the wallowing wicked. The unrestrained exuberance of expression. My teeth are perfectly capable. With a swift ascent of the mandible, my tongue split in two. Rusty blood leaked from the wound. It tasted of everything, life and death on the cornerstone of existence. I could not smell it. It reeked of the past, I had to fix that. A brisk spasm against the central pillar. It cracked… my nose, obliterated. I bored my thumbs and inserted them in the cavity that sat on the margins of my eyes. With a graceful penetration, I gouged my eyes out and finally watched them sink to the soil.  My sockets ripened with damp, smokey air, and bloomed into caskets of certainty. I searched, with the lingering radiance of an ominous hum, for the blade. My ears are extremities, they wear down my versatility, they impurify my slowly recovering body. I snarled, like a rabid creature crawling to Babylon. Off with them now! A light pull on the tips, the razor oscillates. Sweet Sounds of Silence, I heard the hum. It swallowed me. I felt alive, I felt too little. ‘Exuviate your integument.' I stumbled towards the warmth. Hot. Burning. It engulfed me. Fire spread through my skin like goosebumps. I had retreated into the womb of my fireplace, to be born again. As the ceremony was commencing, the sun ascended. Grace. Light. The owl had retreated into its dark crevice. The beams had shot out, across the universe, and evicted the night. My fire had perished, and with It, my ceremony had concluded.

What have I done. My pillar was crackling, and with the weight of light, my house had imploded upon me. I was no more. An unsubstantial figment, a hallucination. I perceived with grave dissatisfaction. Pursuit of life, had brought me death. Now I merely radiated, with a powerful hum. I was only heard in the twilight.

Photography by: Joel Peter Witkin