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1584 c/o Brad Nelson
Musashi's Blade
I’m forty-five inches of cold, uncaring steel, and I love the taste of blood. Well, that’s not exactly the truth. I am forty-five inches long; I am made of steel, sometimes cold, sometimes not—depends on the weather, really—but I don’t particularly care for the taste of blood. In fact, I hate it. And since we’re being completely honest here: I’m also a little squeamish.
“What?” you may ask. “How can the blade of Miyomoto Musashi, arguably the greatest samurai ever to step foot on the field of battle, not like the taste of blood?”
That’s easy for you to say. Have you ever tasted blood? I’m not talking about cutting your finger and holding it in you mouth while you go get a Band-Aid; I’m talking buckets of blood on a daily basis—rivers, lakes, oceans of blood, blood the likes of which even Stoker never imagined. Salty, rusty, iron-flavored blood overwhelming your senses, engulfing your being.
Many people puke or faint at the mere sight of a little blood. Imagine being bathed in its warm, viscous—ugh, just thinking about it makes me feel a little woozy. Blood cools quickly, getting sticky, turning a deep merlot; it’s best to get it off quickly. Not so easy when you’re me. I have to wait until He’s done slaying every crazy, sword-wielding maniac in sight, and by that time, it’s not just blood. There’s bits of flesh, hair, gristle, and bone caked to every inch of—oh God, oh God. Breathe. Breathe. Okay, moving on.
What’s worse is there are things out there even more gruesome than blood. I remember this one time: He was walking through some random bamboo forest, on the road to the capital, when He was attacked by a small, locally-well-known group of brigands. I have seen many men stand—and fall—before Him. That this ragged threesome even dared to approach Him astounds me to this very day. You could see by the look of these three that they were, more than likely, down-on-their-luck ronin who hadn’t seen honest work or a real fight in quite some time.
The first two charged, swords raised above their heads, screaming like banshees, bloodlust in their eyes. The third held back to see how things would play out. It played out exactly as I expected it to: with me flashing in a dance of martial poetry through the midsection of both men. The offal that poured from these two was such that it caused the third brigand to flee without thought of recompense; I think I even heard Him gag, though He would never admit to something like that.
You see? Being the blade of the fabled Kensei, the Sword Saint, isn’t as glamorous as you thought, now is it? Most people assume it’s all glory and honor. They seem to forget that there is a gritty reality behind glorious war—death.
1583 c/o Brian Oliu
Dyrehavsbakken
At the top of the hill were deer that blinked more than others—they ate apples with vigor, they tasted windfall. These fruits will make you younger, they said: there is something in the water. In the spring in the spring we let our legs dangle, let our feet paw at the water as if testing glass—to scrape something from the top, to take the water with us somehow, to blink more, to taste more. We came here to stay young, our days of our parents dropping us off at the entrance over—we have our own mode of transportation—we have our own way of getting into the park. We do not need our fathers to swing the mallet that launches the frog that wins the prize. We know about timing, about stiff rims, about strength. We are not scared of the pirate ship, the twists in the dark, being upside down. We tease those who are in hopes they will hit us on the arm so we can grab them, pick them up, hold them like a stuffed bear. On the way home, our car hits a deer. We check to see if everyone is all right, not letting anyone know we are scared. As we circle the vehicle we think of our mothers, our fathers. The deer looks up at us like a cooked fish.
1582 c/o Richard Chiem
1582 love in the club
There is an interesting way the water gathers on the window from the rain outside, where a young couple is kissing and pressing their bodies against the windowpane, and a small insect drowns against their passion. Little squirms and it dies easy. The water droplets make the shapes of boobs. Outside the sound of traffic grows hallow and faraway, just like how Los Angeles would sound years later in the future. Girls drink to see into the future. Hernando is very tired. Love feels like a thing people eventually learn to live without, like tonsils or god. The bar is not a bar. The bar is a place with a big mouth with some big teeth and a smart tongue and if you are willing, everything is willing, the bar will touch anything if you would like. Will do more, if you would like. The people that come here are terrible and angelic, and so the place is a void, somewhere imaginary to fuck or be existential, to be away. People come to come. Here is heaven. Here are angels with genitals. Here they sit, half delirious, on platinum dance floors, and the room fills with people in tight clothing, fancy shoes and serene faces so to talk and talk and come hither. Opium in syringes. Scotch and ice and thin saliva, swirl inside glass cups with lipstick. The halogen light is yellow and thick and alien enough to make you feel nauseous or invincible. It depends on how the girl looks at you, he thinks. Hernando returns from the dirty bathroom back to the dance floor, after vomiting out an entire universe. He wipes his mouth. His body aches. When he woke this morning, all Hernando could feel was his head, all big and pulsing like a tumor, and there is nothing left to do but to stare at himself in the mirror, until breathing became an art form, until art becomes bullshit. Someone pretty and perfect is asking Hernando if he would like to dance but he doesn’t say anything to her and he pushes her away, and she falls down over easily onto the beating crowd behind them. If someone doesn’t react quickly and retrieve her from the floor, there is a cold fear that she could be trampled to death or maybe punctured alive by dancing queens, or the latest craze of the latest pop song. The beautiful pop song. Hernando waits too long before he finally feels guilt, like true guilt, and when he does turn around to apologize to the girl, she has already gone away, departed for someplace else. Some place better maybe. Sound vibrates through Hernando’s body like echoes in a tunnel and despite everything, Hernando cups his hands together and screams out sorry into the crowd, but no one can hear him. He screams and screams at the top of his lungs, standing there, but no one can hear him, because the music is playing so loudly and the DJ is very hot tonight. He asks about what time it is?
1581 c/o Louise Norlie
November, an Anointing
The squeal of pigs. The yap of curs. The smell of mud-matted skin. The greased fur on his son’s boots. Richly patterned carpets bunched in the corners, tripping him in his rage.
Ivan the Terrible lifts his staff high in the air.
YOU, MY OWN SON he screams.
The metal point of the staff presses into his son’s skull.
It moves at an incredible velocity.
The skull of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich cracks. A dark circle on the head of the Tsarevich, leaking red.
Ivan the Terrible splays his fingers in surprise, dropping the staff. There are fissures in everything now; these strange, malignant lights. Kneeling on the floor, Ivan the Terrible covers himself with the body of his son. A torch hovers in the air, held by a hand with stumps where the two middle fingers should be.
Ivan the Terrible thinks there is a way to plug every gash. One hitherto undiscovered way to replace a severed head so it seals with its former neck to create an illusion of wholeness.
Even if the person is dead. The head, back on. With the staff, rolling away. And the torch, wavering in the smoke.
Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich groans in his father’s arms. Ivan the Terrible prods his fingers into the softness of the wound, filling it, stopping it up.
YOU, MY OWN FATHER his son whispers. Dark, beseeching eyes. A voice begging with love.
Ivan the Terrible kisses his son’s dank hair. A taper drips hot wax onto his hand, anointing him with a pleasant burn. He tastes something metallic. It could be blood, his blood. All the blood is his.
Ivan the Terrible concentrates. The muscles on his forehead tense, pushing down his eyebrows, gathering thick wads of skin in folds. A fissure opens on the head of Ivan the Terrible. He reaches through the fissure into his skull and pinches his eyeballs from behind. The eyeballs bulge like ripe fruit, the arteries thick and red within the white. Now he will not close his eyes. He will watch what he did, what he will do. The pupils cringe in the centers of their webs.
1580 c/o Sully Sanchez
The Book of Concord
It is OK to fantasise about being a tortoise wearing Ray-Bans.
Smelling yourself is the same deal as yawning if people see you doing it.
If a woman with one crutch gets onto the train with you, it’s fine to give her a minute or two to hit people on the legs with it before you offer her your seat.
It is OK to be an assassin but it’s a pretty interesting career choice.
Affecting a facial tic probably won’t make people think you are truer of spirit.
When drinks go flat it’s OK to think that humans are pretty easily impressed.
Hurry up and make a decision on your number one favourite vegetable.
Always find out how a person reacts to having their new shoes stepped before you go to bed with them.
It is OK if you want to stare at the crotch of someone you find unattractive because why not, it's the 90s!
Hurry up and figure out a way to hug someone properly while lying on the floor.
It is OK to imagine that somehow the human race has survived another ~12bn years and now the universe is shrinking.
Imagine that.
Yikes.
The crowning professional achievement of a teenage vandal is probably throwing a lampchop through a skylight.
It is OK if you dream of a racehorse that has drowned in a Jacuzzi.
It is OK if you don’t want to eat that scorpion for whatever reason.
Figure out what is the furthest you’ve ever rolled down a hill.
Go out in the next 6 months to try and beat that record because why not, it's 1995!
You can wear a scarf for as long as you want, it doesn’t bother me.
Hurry up and figure out what hairstyles will be like in the future and place a thousand dollar bet (there will probably be a lot of hair extension).
It was probably an overreaction when you punched that piglet hard in the face.
Wait, what is that ninja doing in a bakery?
