How To Unmake

Duality abstract

There a man sat at his workbench in front of a window with evening light tumbling on an inkwell and plates of sand and pen nibs. On the table the skin of a human’s back was draped over. He took up a pen nib and dipped it in ink. A scorpion’s tail across the centre where broken lines bloomed into geometric spaces, circumscribed by thoughts over the feebleness flesh had mustered. He reapplied ink to the edges of skin chewedlooking and smeared coalblack, a shoal of runes coaxed from the surface with each stab of his pen and he smiled.

The wether’s goods, entrails rotting black on the back skin. Within a vault of bleeding stars. Testament to the gruesome purple trade of artists. Sovereignty without a crown in the sun whorish and shedding violence by barrowload. Yet the noble’s trade is living clay, the vibrance peerless to broken forms of the blood-purpled robes art concealed itself in.

The pale tops traversed by a clattery of souls ropy and black. They climbed the spinal outlines and with each pass the skin gradually whitening until it was indiscernible beneath a geometry of lines. He smiled at his work. Inside the shapes a surging ship cleaved through a wave of wasps. Children at the dinner table. A sea buzzing and breaking apart the ship. Grace recited. Even destruction produced nothing of meaning. Boys play football. Shipmates drown in the winged whitecaps droning against the ship’s hull. Drawing on the refrigerator, lone vestiges of a journey first plodded. Still the ship drives onward through a storm of nectar. A painter’s first teacher. Teeth cut on the razor for shaving charcoal. Bring the portrait to life. A skein of clouds over the dinner table and the family’s faces drawn sloppily. A gallery burning and a painting to blame, a portrait of a man whose soul was fire. A family at the dinner table.

Grace repeated.

Grace defeated.

He reached under his desk which had a sowing kit and opening it he took a needle. Through skin and skin again the silver strings braided until his hands were fused to the painted flesh and he leered over his canted brim. What art is no longer of the self is not spared from uncertainty.

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