Sour Note – 11/2/2023 – Armani Hollindale

May 16, 2023

“I would rather this Note were not read, or that, skimmed, even it were forgotten;” – Mallarmé

The knuckle of my spine against the chair, a mirror. Few voices allow full volume listening… to probe the white plastic deeper into my ear canal; stabilise the rattle of the bus– put me closer to the sound. The mundane satisfies. Suspended. Evil erupts inside it, but can’t escape. Pinching the lines you read between. Repulsion at the thought. Stumbling at the translation. He’s an amazing writer. The outer surface suffers at the swell of completed past. Accept the suspension offered by commute. May travel mimic the freedom of the child carried in slumber. 

Beyond the glass, a man walks the path to himself; cement stretches to guide his step, paints the land grey. Hypnotic form. Eyes moving outward into daydream – a woman beaten at the hand of several men – one of iron pry. And a girl, a girl holds her grandmothers’ hand, and the syringe fluid reduces to disappear. The man keeps walking. Nothing changes. 

Footpath margins the asphalt, no more serenity. She died years ago. City begins to fill the air, closing in. Towers over me. Blue sky recedes to grey. High risen out of mind. Consuming at ground level for the most part, made a moron of me. Moving through the centre now. Darkness chipping away. Back to blue. Heat rises and falls again. 

Deity claws at the outskirts. The church spills at noon. White buttons bursting at the seams. Several men. I want to slit someone’s throat but there is no pain inflicted – only released. Frustrated at the prospect of energy exerted too early for the day; clothes worn prior the occasion – a loss softened with rhyme. 

Passing time savoured by closed eyes. Foolish privilege. A light bite to eat right. Hysterical realism to fainted dissonance. Fiction grows… out of reach. Impeccable prose. Beat myself before they do. Guard the page from the first red line. I believe it less the more I hear it. Disgrace made in-dulging ignorance; so maybe – tolerance is bliss. 

Almost there now. Retired to the place, called – but not; Home – does lesser now, perhaps, sometimes – satiating. Faulty slumber signs a lemony taste. What am I not doing enough of – that – turning the page feels so… strenuous? And he just ties up the story like that! I hope you waste your time moving in the other direction long enough to see it through. To wish upon a star in hope it might fall. From here on, no sense can be made. All for a split second of heartfelt anything. 

Back into the sound. Charged to face it. Fascination sustains the life of the party. Looking twice seeing nothing for the chance to recall…and only the chance. In hand-held vision, life extends— for the love of seasonal characters cradled to exhibition – maddened over the summer, pricked with memory and posed potential. Strangers to themselves, all the more inviting, whose purpose reduced only to imagine, time stops and collects itself to ordinary beginnings… I write for them. 

Without the camera – I retreat to feast. Failure to cope. If you bite the bone at the right angle it reveals more meat. Something forces the unchewed meat down my throat. I can’t control it. Fat strings between chunks of softened muscle. Fat diluted blood coats my dry mouth. Iron high. Plate licked clean.   

And so I write for them. I write for them where justice wouldn’t dare prevail. With failed attempts to remove myself from the page – overworked. Relief from the senses. Another line for desire. Short lived stimulation greases the stagnant turbine. A seed severed at the sow. Amid chaos, something spawns to sentence. Bring something to me. Heaving at the sun set to rise. Tortured by distorted logic, possibly true. The next day I’ll always pay. I’ll die soon, like the rest of them, upon the edge of a dream looking down.