Sisyphus, Bound
David Stevens
The swollen sphincter is the frame and the frame is part of the picture the
cloaca is stretched and it would be nothing but relief if an eagle would beak
in and tear for his liver ripping through his living flesh that would be a
change if only there could be Zeno was right motion is illusion a step
requires half a step and a shit requires half a shit before that a quarter of
a shit is required and what the hell is a one-eighth shit time is illusion and
there is no end to this end the boulder is forever poised to fall but that
suggests delicacy a lightness of foot a dancer caught mid-air in the mind’s
eye a graceful balance not this rough-hewn titanic mass generating an eternal
nothing is worth this kill them all take them instead all my babes my mother I
will do it just end it scream of agony and Munch’s scream should be the whole
fjord Norway-wide packed with slaughtered whales more dead more dead jamming
and squeezing in fleets full of blubber ramming it in condensing it with the
ships broken and masts splintered and sails ragged and lost so the oil is
pressed out of it and pours oceans of it from the sides and through gaps that
cannot be the screaming of it the blazing Hindenburg O the humanity of it but
still it will not move no lubricant will allow it to shift and he would be
shafted and done speared through and finished but there is no end there is no
watching it slide back down the hill and trotting after no variety just the
unrelieved unbearable permanent stretching blockage of a wound prissy
bourgeois hands clasped )0( to those cheeks tiny mewling mouth a nothing
beneath its fussy orange embroidery it knows NOTHING and the camel is
screaming SCREAMing frothing ejaculate through its teeth but what is a scream
an expulsion of air and it is over unless a hurricane bearing down a cyclone
sweeping all before it and the CAMEL is still there even if you have forgotten
because it all continues even if you are distracted it is whipping its head it
is fully loaded and the bindings cannot be reached they are encircled
completely as the needle tightens and its lungs and heart are compressed and
they should burst but that would finish it that would end the tremoring and
the thundering drone and that cannot be it is not permitted that an empty /
unempty tomb be revealed certainty would be the end of faith Schrödinger’s
Jesus must be forever binary but Sisyphus would give it all away in an instant
what faith has relieved a toothache what philosopher has reasoned away the
insistence of the tumour that will NOT be ignored that WILL be heard he would
smash it all hope all dreams as though armed with the boulder buried within he
would let that turtle fall tumbling onto Aeschylus’s pate give up all his
learning the facts the remnants of reading smeared on his brain like dried
shit on the side of an abandoned toilet bowl he would gladly be reduced to
idiocy in the wilderness in a forgotten place of shattered slate and brambles
in an instant and leave you in a lonely place with no regret but he cannot
escape he cannot flee the boulder is within and he is bound and his legs are
locked and there is to be no comfort ever again and there is to be no relief
what he would give now for that moment repeated a million times but never
again what he would give that moment he wipes his brow and starts for the
valley respite turns his head from the sun salt in his mouth fly in his eye
burr in his shoe he would not surrender them all no he would kill them all and
he is eternally revealed to himself stripped bare no sophistication no nuance
no story no moral code and it does not matter he regrets only that there are
no options that there are no choices that there is only taut tight tethered
flesh that will never unstretch that will never relax never go to Hollywood he
would free Thanatos he would weep for his arse weep he is bound within and it
has frozen him a river that can be entered again and again the same place the
same river he is the rock and what desire would Buddha have him surrender to
escape this pain what desire anchors him he would never spill seed never eat
he would never have spilled seed he would tear his cock and balls away by the
root from his baby body swaddling clothes crimson and dripping swing himself
by the legs and dash his brains out he knows himself and he would do it to you
and you and you if only you were within reach if only it would make a
difference and perhaps it would its worth a try imagine Sisyphus very UNhappy
and ouroboros is in the picture and ouroboros is in the frame and that snake
is Schwarzenegger arm thick protruding vein braided skin-stretched smooth but
not sluiced not slick not lubricated fist buried deep choking itself it would
release its fangs it would let go that tail but it is melded round the boulder
the eternal circle the eternal now the haemorrhoidal sphincter the distended
cloaca framing unmoving rock
Caption: the doors slide open the overheated late afternoon buffets you are
shocked the day has gone you have done nothing but you are exhausted sitting
around is exhausting you gasp and breathe for the first time an arse-slapped
baby wondering how you smelt the antiseptic the sting of borax holding your
breath all day but you can leave and they cannot don’t forget to pay the
parking before you go to the car;
Alt. cap., the pain of others, such a bore, later dude.
David Stevens lives in Australia with his wife and those of his children who
have not yet figured out the locks. He is the author of more than two dozen
published stories, which have appeared among other places in
Crossed Genres,
Aurealis,
Three-Lobed Burning Eye,
Pseudopod,
Cafe Irreal, and most recently in
Vastarien Literary Journal,
Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and
Penumbric. Check out his other stories via
davidstevens.info/publications.