THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE VEIL by Tom Steck SLEEP I feign sleep. Sleep presumes I have ever been awake. Wakefullness presumes I have ever been alive. I feign life. DISCONTENT While wandering in the desert, I stopped, and pounded the earth with my fist. I displaced dirt, that was all. FLIES It is a sunless grey day. The flies are made comotose by the moisture in the air. With so little time to breed and die, they may not fly the whole course of their lives. So they wait for a warmth that may not come in their lifetime. They remain still and motionless, knowing they’ve been cheated. TOUR I do not become empty. I pour emptiness into myself. I purchase emptiness, and stock it with misleading labels, filling the warehouse with a cold absence. There is no more room for the books, the conversation, the prayer, or aspiration. I have exchanged all that for the crisp biting cold. The cold speaks with a voice that creeps into the hairs on the neck and scalp, whispering the names of ghosts. I have been robbed of the warmth of my own body. Sleep is intermitent and shallow, never deep enough to not be aware of the icy cement floor that, in its dogged flatness, contorts and strains my joints. My organic frame is unwelcome in this architectonic hell. But it is mine. I accept no visitors. There will be no tours today. The dirty plates and unfiled papers will be on view tomorrow. The dust laden surfaces and cobwebs will be preserved. The numb placid guide will offer no history, no nonsensical explanation of the display with loose ends and contradictions. You will see these things for yourselves and judge. I will not be the resident docent any longer. My infrequent visitors are juries and judges, counselors and gawkers. Their words are inconsequential, and exist only as cobwebs that lace the things that once were relevant. Visiting hours are over. DOGS. We are dogs. Dogs behind fences. Dogs behind fences barking. Dogs behind fences barking at noises, birds, other dogs, shadows, indiscernible movements, the barking of other dogs. The barking causes barking that causes barking and escalates to madness. The barking, the madness, is a comfort from the indifferent black sky. BOX. Meet me here. For my feet are sore and blistered. The virgin flesh stings. The road has beaten me. You must meet me here. I am but bone and blood. My mind is but a cloud. The world, but a mist. I will lie here. Whether you come or not, I must lie down. The elements soon decay what I was. I am already as still as a fossil. And so they come with pity and black cars. With flowers and ribbons. By the dozens, they come with condolences and sympathy. With speeches and formal wear. All I wanted was water. But they grant me a new home in a black box, and my own patch of real estate on a grassy hill. And my own stone welcome mat, that says something nice about me. SUN The sky was screaming something. Silhoettes of fragments bleed black from the ground, man-made, temporal, and dirty. The shadows of urban life are menacing and absurd, but the sky was screaming with vivid and frightening color. Screaming across the emptiness some essential meaning. The sky itself declared some irrevocable truth. As I watched the long goodbye of the sun, and the celestial waltz of the heavens, as torches were passed from cloud to cloud by unseen spirits, I wished for some of that meaning to be shared with me. Impish and impure, I wished my place with the glory of God. My soul clung to the sun as it journeyed to a new home. My body lay down as the night constricted these aspirations to sleep. FARM. The tiny green shoot that peeks from the earth is afraid. He fears being eaten. He fears he will always be so small. He fears the darkening clouds and the winds. The farmer, caring for his land, says, “This will a beautiful tree, and it will bear much fruit.” BABY. The newborn cries. With all of his newfound autonomy, he wails, his face flushed and wet. He is born wanting, and he can’t have what he wants. He cries for the unfairness and cruelty. With his first voice, he cries out to something, accusing that something of injustice. Too soon there is suffering. So soon there is dissatisfacton. In that first moment, before knowledge, before will, the child is keenly aware of some innate mortal terror. Unspoiled and innocent, even the newborn know that life bears an inherent flaw. As soon as life is life, it is afraid, and it senses the absence of an unseen necessity. Yes, they are soon curious, and are easily distracted. They will be distracted their whole lives, and that becomes their purpose: to remove the consciousness as far as possible from the inherent horror of existence. A man is not consoled by memory. A man must have a future hope. A man must see his end as the enclosed circle of all purposes. A man must hold his life like a baby. A man must see that he is the baby he holds. Everyone has hope for a baby. Everyone wishes the highest blessings for a child. Some men have dropped themselves by the roadside, to be babysat by tumbleweeds, and fled to the wilderness. Some have pricked the child with thorns, laughing at the blood flow. But it is by hope that a man must grow. Hope is but a blessing of a wish. Hope is as cool and quiet and intangible as the breeze. MOON The moon is a liar. I saw him hinting at romance and a love affair. I saw him wink knowingly a divine blessing for my eager anticipations. He whispered my fortunes and conquests. He carried away my imaginations to foreign shores to the nuturing quiet warmth of her body. I never met her. And the moon stares at me blankly, as if we had never spoken. The moon is a liar. WALL I shall go to the wall and weep. Not with pride, nor humility. Not with contempt, nor repentence. Only with sorrow and vexation. The wall will only be a wall. It will offer no comfort, nor friendship. It will be undeniably real. But I have come for the symbol, not the reality. I have come for a revelation. I have come for a resurrection. I have come to circumvent the arduous process of enlightenment. But standing in the sun, confronted by an obstinate wall, the superficial experience is the only experience. This moment is the entire world, and it is not enough. DARKNESS I can’t see anything. I saw what I wanted to see. I saw hope, and anticipation raced up the back of my neck, startling me into mania. I have seen darkness and it presaged darkness. I cannot see what I want. I cannont see what I need. In darkness the skull aches and beats blood behind the eyes, begging to see, widening, scraping at the nothing for a narrative, a subtle difference in shade, while the legs shake and feet shuffle, wary, backward, retarded. The ears prick up like a rabbit's, and amplify every useless bump, shift, and creak, undeciferable and maddening. I hear voices. They say they are on a garden path with warming yellow light and purple shadows and can hear the springtime birds. And then you bump into them in the darkness, and you know they are mad. CELL For each, a cage, a bowl of water, and a bandaid for that irksome cancer. The jailer takes no requests. he is mechanical and predictable. He is but an extension of the surroundings. But I try to give personhood to that entity out of my need for solace. I have only the company of stones and damp and cold and the dizzying pain. My own voice isolates me further. I am not my friend. I have betrayed too much of me, undermined all my efforts, and it has cost me my identity. Through all of this, the pain has been my closest friend. It always there. It comments on my sense of being. It speaks to me, screaming. I agree with what it says to me. We will see through this together. SEA I know the cause of the troubled waters. It aches down here in the deep, lost in the darkness, alone and inconsolable. No wonder the sea laps at the shore, trying to reach out to another, in friendship, only to fail, wave after wave, pushed back by the indifferent sands. For all the sea’s efforts, an eroded coast. KINDNESS Give thanks for the ornate delicate artistry of the guillotine, the carefully woven basket that will hold your head. Give thanks for the sharp steel, and to the diligent kindness they have demonstrated in tying your hands so lovingly. ABSENCE Something wonderful has been eluding me. It is not here now, but I have felt its presence, and seen its shadow. I saw its footprints on the water. I see it leaving as I arive. I thought I saw it right in front of me, approaching me, and I was deathly afraid. But it passed by, and as it did so, I found it to be wholly unattainable, too sanctified to be experienced. I know it to be wonderful, but only through the hopeless anticipation of experiencing some closeness with it. I am closer to its absence and the loss of it than what it is.