Primordial: An Abstraction

85

Like tubs, like sushi — there is no University.

This is as it should be.

Tabula rasa.

I’ve said it before.

Remember?

Streets paved with glands, architectures paved with ether, intellects and ideologies evaporating into the veiled interstices of time and space. All that remains are the echoes of penetration, of flesh on flesh, a moist pop, performative gazes and eerie cottonmouths opening onto the wasteland.

I can’t tell if the libraries have been blown up or eviscerated like obese criminals.

The books are harder to look at than the bodies.

Memories produce turbulence in my lines of flight.

I must grip the armrests for support.

Vespers.

Ambience.

Over there is an elevator.

Where did it come from?

What’s an elevator doing at the University? There are only stairs at the University.

I have never seen an elevator outside the confines of its shaft. It looks naked.

The elevator is broken.

The elevator is on its back.

In the dead cornfield.

In the dry scales.

I circle the wreckage and gauge its semantic impact, its karmic potential. Then I pry open the doors with a crowbar and climb inside.

I take off my t-shirt.

I take off my sweatpants and my underwear.

I press a cheek against the walls of the mirrored chamber.

The mirrors are broken and the shards are sharp. They cut into my skin like unspeakable clichés.

I can feel the blood rolling down my face.

It feels gud.

Outside there are birds that don’t tweet and there are stars that don’t glint and the air doesn’t smell like anything.

And once again: this is as it should be.

This history, this reality, this future. . and dreams of wasabi slouching across the enormity of my tongue.