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.