The Anquish of an Instrument

No. I'm not allowing it. I'm not going to allow myself to become flattened. I'm not going to permit you from smearing me into the idle background of your painting.

Paint the world however you want, just don't use me as the brush.

Don't smudge my existence into a tiny blotch. Into a quiet bystander. Into the compliant little man.

You have Howitzers. I have grocery bags. I'm expected to continue walking. You're expected to continue bludgeoning. Through this process, we're both instruments. Cogs. Tools creating other tools. You and I, we're just part of an endless pedigree of toolmaking that will undoubtedly go on forever.

You're the hammer.

I'm the nail.

But not any more. I'm bent. I'm crooked. I'm fucking tarnished to shit and no matter how hard you hit, you'll never supplant me. Not so long as I take these breaths and stand this ground, I won't be a part of your ugly construction.

Yeah, I know, I'm done for.
I'm going to become an itch on your side that will barely even affect you. That will be quelled with one quick scratch of the skin.

But maybe, just maybe, somewhere out there in the sea of docile faces, there will be someone who'll see me. Who'll remember me. Who'll spread the irritation so that the next thing you know, you're covered in a vile rash of contempt.

As I Sit Burning

The moment I was born is the moment I began dying. Dying to live; living to die. Everything, everyone. Even the skin particles that flake off and ultimately become dust. Even they'll die too. Some day.

Like a flash in the pan. Here one moment, gone the next. Don't blink because you'll probably miss it. So I just stapled my eyes open.

I'm in agony right now. But I'm not moving an inch. If trees can do it, so can I, right? They burn like all of us do. Except they don't run around, screaming at the top of their lungs. Don't bump into others and ignite them into a ball of flames. Don't destroy everything they touch.

Just fucking stop already.

Dropping and rolling are optional. Nothing can retard this process. So just let it take its course. There's no stopping it.

In truth, if you put something under enough pressure, combustion is bound to happen. All you need is a little oxygen. A little fuel. A little spark. That seems to be everything the Earth provides us. That seems to be our ingredients; our recipe. That seems to be our destiny.

Shhh. Just stay still. And burn.

I, Shield

I feel weird. Bullets and Molotov cocktails once whizzed by my metal frame, now I'm a pillow for the tear-moistened cheek of a crying woman.

I shield soldiers, soldiers shield society, society shields this woman, and somehow I'm supposed to feel consolation in that.

I don't.

I simply barricade. I simply demarcate imaginary lines that wouldn't exist if man didn't exist. I make delusions into reality.

And how do you suppose I feel about this? It doesn't really matter because I'm just another inanimate object. But, you know, people forget that they too were once inanimate clumps and they will one day return to inanimate clumps.

Just once I'd like to switch effacements; to embrace that poor woman the same way she embraces me. Instead, I'm forced to impart unquestioning armament to this man who probably has less thoughts than I do.

From the corporals to the corporeal, all is an attrition between the dead and the dying.

Scar Tissue

Much has been lost along with the blood. But the skin, we forget about the skin--the skin that wraps our torsos, the skin that strangulates our necks, the skin that gloves our hands is irreplaceable. Such flesh is precious and unmarred at birth.

Until afflicted.

Until abrasions scoop away its mass, until time stretches it into thin oblivion, until knives, bullets, blades, and nails reveal what it so vigorously attaches itself to.

It becomes scar tissue. Sinewy, lithe formations that are vastly inferior to its predecessors just as cellophane is inferior to Kevlar. Bubbled up to cover the unclothed spots, even though it neither keeps its contents warm nor protected.

Opaque like palpitating geckos and frogs.

It adds up too.

Little by little it germinates exteriors like a mossy glaze, transforming into reptilian monstrosities. It devolves. A new Jurassic epoch on its way, being rendered by the monotonous accumulation of fatty skin scuffs. Silky decadence suspended briefly turns to paleolithic dinosaur leather bred to survive the vicissitudes.

Spoiled milk spilled with tears.

Hello, Gun

Hello, gun, my old friend. I see you're at your old tricks again.

You seem as indifferent as usual. Almost complacent really, especially in the face of what is to come. When he pulls the trigger. When the trigger releases the hammer. When the hammer slams face first into the primer. The bullet spiraling down the grooved cave, heading towards the light at the end of the tunnel until...

Birth. Life. Death. All in the same moment.

Tell me, gun, how does it feel? How does it feel to be handled by a person with such exactitude; with such confidence? What's it like to mother a race of hollow-tipped children who's only fate is to become mere shells of their former selves?

I guess I should ask the same thing to the man who shot me.

After all, isn't there a cause, a creed, somewhere out there that is pulling his trigger the same way he is pulling yours? In the end it seems to be a complex contraption with a simple purpose. The politician rants, the fists fly into the air, the screams bellow.

The trigger pulls.

The hammer falls.

The bullet spirals.

My body hemorrhages.

And I, gun, what of I? I am born, I live, and I die, all in a split second.