‘The Girl Who Sold the World.’ (david bowie)
She stands with bands in her hands, strands of string with which she bind the minds of men. How coy, her sinister ploy is as a parade of waves. She is amazed at the light of day and pall of night. Her liquid eyes are demanding, and her lyrics are compelled to conquer.
There she is in open fields, plains of grass surrounding her, a canopy of blue sky adorns her crown, ready to make her offering.
I was warned of the likes of her, for they beguile with smiles and charm with poison. Stubborn man that I am, I cannot learn, and I cannot know any better than to stumble into the snare she prepares for me. I am as a foundering fish flailing at the hook of bait I have eagerly bitten. A captive, vulnerable and defeated.
She shows me the world. Everything my heart desires she prepared as a meal to be devoured. Each conversation is a preparation for slaughter. Gingerly she slakes my thirst for esteem with wishes and fantasy. Hungrily she observes my affection as predator does prey. The world is offered to me. The world and all its prestige. The price is not named but it is clearly implied, it is clearly defined in lines of language and orders.
I will have to conquer her. Slay her, kill her, and resurrect her with love. I will have to resurrect her with the thing I have neither regard nor passion for. The thing I most detest, the two edged sword that cuts twain between euphoria and depression. A love undeniable an ineffable, powerful and sure.
At such a magnanimous order, surely the world seems unattainable, until she makes offerings to me, gifts that enlarge my capacity to feel. Can it be that this girl is my own image, my own pride, and my own esteem, a mirror?
As things appear, she is everything in public I imagine myself to be in secret, a thespian, bohemian, and a lascivious heart. I am smitten, for there is nothing I adore more than my own reflection, my own hubris and my own creations. She displays an image of such powerful woo, I am bemused and confused, and drunkenly enjoying it.
In my state of inebriation, I fathom my heart to seek that which it despises. With the world I desire presented to me in such beauty, and such majesty, I find it important to know the feeling of love.
Here begins the commencement of my slaughter.
Serene seems the land not treaded, seen from distant angles and known by stories and legend. Banal and common it becomes upon long inhabitation. Begrudged and despised is it when it becomes the field of battle where the earnest labors of your hands are captured by thieves and barbarians.
Such was love to me. A charlatan chameleon of varying qualities. I remember as a youth, I dreamed of love and its bountiful fields of fruit. Fault of my own when I found love I tasted the fruit of the poisoned kind. The agony of its pain was long and sufferable. And I suffered in shame. The poison tipped arrows of cupid affects the victims deep and hard. As an eruption, I was outside of myself swimming in the blood of my broken heart. My futile attempt to revive what had been smitten was humorous and pathetic.
When I came to myself, and my mind and body were healed, I had nothing but contempt for love. How could I have good regard of the thing after my sojourn there left me in bewilderment?
The seed was planted, and I was inoculated. Prepared for the wares of those whom seek to weaken the strength of a man with the vulnerability of his heart. I became the cold soldier, on a crusade to damage and rampage my enemies and conquer the world with my gospel of apostasy.
I built my weapons and armor well. A fortress of stone is the kingdom of my heart, secured by a moat of deep disdain for feelings and emotions. A behemoth is my mind, a violent power ready to assume and consume any trinket or fact about the volatile earth it inhabits. Warriors are my eyes, agents of scrutiny ready to invade the structure of our existence. A comfort is my tongue, to calm and seduce my prey into a somnolent repose, before I attack, annihilate and demolish. My hands are daggers with the range of talons, they soar above earth and descend with one purpose, to capture and exploit the puny peons who are provided for my nutrition. My ears are ravens, ravenous creatures feasting on the cadaverous words of fallen kings, emperors and lords. And I crafted my soul out of contempt. A sour meal and bitter constitution is it, angered by affection and perturbed at assistance.
Such is the mechanism of a mad mind. It served me well. In such a state I was able to exist, not wanting the things I was wanting for, disdaining the things I desired. The convenience of apathy is a soothing narcotic, and I filled myself with it. By day I was a marauding rogue seething with passions, at night a hungry and sorry shell of the vessel I used to be, intoxicated with bitterness.
Glorious is the youth I was, a chaste and righteous knave in the court of ministry. My desires and ambitions could not be more pure than they were, to deliver illumination and healing to those who were as I am now. But I went to the land of love and got corrupted by heartbreak. And that was only the beginning of maladies for me. While I was there, I also fell victim to betrayal as well as an overdose of learning. I tasted the forbidden fruits of the tree of life, and learned of the wiles of my fathers and teachers. With eyes as young and heartbroken as mine were, such an image to behold was seismic. My faith in the court concaved. My lust for rebellion grew. My wild oats spilled through quills upon sheets of paper, I crafted the forbidden letters, and forsook my inheritance and treasures.
My hair grew long and haggard, my hands and feet became filthy with soil, and my garments tattered and faded.
Then I saw her.
Clean as the ray of dawn, young as rose bud. I was about my way wrecking havoc in the world that I abolished when I saw her standing there in the open field, bands in her hand, smiling in the light of morning. I was frozen. Immediately at once as I cast my eyes on her, I was thrown toward my innocence. The conflict within me was rapidly revolving. My blood rushing, as it was when it had erupted from my shattered heart, veins were visible on my forehead, my breath accelerating, my madness receding, she looking at me with the ribbons of passion between her fingers, beckoning my approach, and I looking at her, curious and fearful.
In my fear I ran away. The emotions were too deep, and the recognition she became too powerful. But I could not let the image of her from my mind, the liquid eyes flowing throughout my dreams. Surely her arrival into my consciousness was a symbol of my façade. My performance was coming to completion, and my stage was in preparation for demolition. I could not escape it, for she became my becoming, against my own judgment, I went to the field where she was again.
She becomes my revelation. Her intentions are not of consequence to me, if she bind my mind with her strings and leaves me hypnotized, it matters not; the ministry of her is so soporific. How long had I languished with the languor of contempt and discontent, and now becomes my release. Her eyes fill my heart, and she sees everything inside of it. Every dusty corner, the weathered walls I had prepared to guard it, she knew every design, every trap door, she was witness to the remains of those who tried to invade the castle, floating in the surrounding moat of running blood. I let her lyrics into my mind, a compelling language that maligns my convictions, which I had construed to aid my recovery.
Her molestation was methodical and meticulous. In my defeated state, she reveals my decrepit fears before my balling eyes. My face, coated with running tears, snot dripping from my nose. I become enthralled at her sadist behavior, her sight teeming through my heart, her words streaming throughout my conscience. I become the subject of her fantasy. She wrecks havoc with me as I had wrecked havoc with the world.
In my crestfallen shame, she embraces me. Her breasts softly kissing my chest. The large globes of comfort sooth my convulsions. Her lips touch my beard. My armor crumbles under her invasion. I look into her eyes and become affixed upon them. Not anymore am I the cold soldier. I am now her uxorious suitor. Eager to claim the world she prepared for me. My plummet toward such pathos recalls the reckless nature of my former transformation. I lose control and become eagerly abused.
I reveal to her my forbidden letters, scriptures I had composed while I was on my rampage throughout the lovely lands. I propose every letter to her as the babe requesting milk from mother’s nipple, my mouth in small ovals ready to receive her delivery. She comes to me in calm and maternity. I anxiously receive her in eagerness and hunger. She receives me like a bitch in heat. We knew each other.
Her fingers comb through my dreams as a river wafting over bedrock. The sensations are sonic. Her skin is as the dew of morning. She descends upon me.
In the repose of our communication, she reaches for one of her bands. She motions for my hand, and ties me to the sky. I stay there like a bug trapped in a spider’s web. From my vantage point, I see the skulls and carcasses of the many men she had slain. Cryptic revelation of the widow I have come to know births an omen of black destiny. With all my weapons and armor revealed to her, I cannot free myself, nor can I attempt an escape. Neither do I want to. Yoked to the sky by her ribbon of affection, I see the world turning from the inside out. The walls around my heart crumble to dust, the warriors of my eyes drunk and deceived by the liquor of love, my hands, talons of daggers, bound to the sky, I hang awaiting my end. ‘These fragments I have shored’ (T.S. Eliot), they will be my obituary.
My armor falls to the earthen floor, I remain naked upon the ceiling of our globe, her poison ossifies my blood to crystal and stone, I pass away, ready to be welcomed home.
