It was like pornography, pt. 4

Men are hardly ever graceful.1

He thinks as images play under his eyelids, like rewinding video, staticked lines striking through memories like knives across flesh. His body is twisted, contorted, muscles ripple through his skin like waves through ocean water--the image of Adonis smashed through the window plane of a coffee table. His spine spirals, wingless shoulder blades buldge, ribs hover mercilessly over lungs like tiny daggers ready to pierce. His heart bleeds softlyslowly and murmurs nonsensical words into his ear.2

Men are hardly ever graceful.3

He thinks as he trembles above him, shivering like a lamb in the chilled mountain air, or a wolf, under thin fleece in snow. His graveplot lip quivers and glistens wet with reptilian tears. Rosey half-circle cheeks glow in the night, the moonlight setting flame to liquid insincerity, like cold wildfire, the cold center of a flame. Eyes shine blue and empty, haunted pits float in masses of Neptune--dark, dense, guilty. Elbows jut out, tendons stretch and fold, fingers clench, unclench. There are alien cells under his fingernails, evidence under his fingertips.4

Men are hardly ever graceful.5

Is all he can think as he sits origamied on the floor, toes bent in, eyes lowered like a martyr. He spies cigarettes under his lashes, spiked and damp, and faces wreathed like holidays. And trembling fingers, stained yellow and burnt red, craving sins. Alcohol that tastes like cancer, passing from one mouth to another, firing down his throat like bullets. And kisses, kisses like death, two tongues entangled like snakes in Eve's garden, biting at her ankles. Love too, love that tastes like purgatory, resting on your teeth and in your neck, choking and desperate.6

Men are hardly ever graceful.7

Is all he can think as he stares at the white flowers in the attic, blooming like ghosts in the dark, traces of heresy dressed as mysticism, violence dressed as sermon. They taunt him, poking knife handles through the notches of his ribs, the indents made of flesh and passion. They whisper to him through the thick silence and offer blood and finality and renewal. They offer cigarettes and lights. One-sided gestures of adoration, drawing people close as if they were entertwined in a kiss--one giving fire to another and being extinguished himself. Empty displays of humanity leading only to disease and funeral and death.8

Men are hardly ever graceful. He says with a chuckle. And wraps himself up like a cocoon in floral bedsheets. They really hardly ever are. He repeats. And douses himself with valium.9

No, he says, they really hardly ever are. He reaffirms as he remembers the stumble of the step, the fumble of the fist.10

The fall. 11

The fall they both took.12