Jacob Fortino
few thoughts enter the mind at the ending of moments
iron, cold and sleek binds my legs and hands
new punishment future here
grinding, clashing raw
too loud for one man’s ear
bellows-there’s roaring in the lab
the machine, a great beast awoken from its clockwork dream
another period of excruciating deafness
ending in a piercing pulse
no more than a light breeze
invaded and shot through my cranium
an invisible beam.
Next thing I know, a cerulean bleeding
Concludes in a thick fog of scotch mist
My head glides bodiless
Through the monolithic flora of time And stops for nothing
What pestilence overcomes someone
To pierce my skull with protons
I should thank these men
In this cut short cavalcade
I have never truly lived until now
Where death began the penalty lies absent
For once I am seeing discourse between conflicting atoms
The intimate covalent bonds
An adenoid approaches
Asking for its lover
I can feel myself pointing north
Yet I am only a floating mind A metaphysical decapitation
Desperately grasping at thoughts Losing track of time
Between the first and fourth eternity
Did my body even exist when I was alive
Alive-what can I call this If not living
I was rotting before this expiration
Now I hear the supper conversation
Between two ions Nary even born yet
Bellowing returns
Two suns Circling in splendid debate
They narrow their eyes at me
“Looking pretty rough, friend”
beckons the florid sun
“I’ve been through worse,” I respond
There is a transition to the expelling
Repelling the full sail rift
Wholesale on the horizon
Spectating a past of a hundred selves
Striding through the motions
like unending rehearsals to an opera combating amnesia
one big bang is irrelevant for I experience thousands
in the line of sight of this ever procedural code.
I am able to reconstruct some life of the man who claimed to be myself
No longer a man however, nor even a person
But an optical sense on the very depths of dimension
Thrusting this grey matter vessel into richer fathoms
A lifeboat being a luxury that bears no mass in these planes
In one orb I see a childhood
A young boy sits alone in a chapel, a captured structure In time
Teeming with importance to him
He however prays to no god
I can read his thoughts and memories with possibility of shared experience
He prays to no god but a name
“atatoz”, he repeats it
“atatoz”
This child tears a cross of ivory from his neck and tosses it
The talisman traveling to the front of the congregation
A sound echoes but no heads present to turn
He pulls a small geode from his pocket
and throws it at the window of monochromatic stained glass
the thrown geode creates a wound in the glass
the clouds block any light wanting to enter and the child leaves
the chapel and the orb with it, morphing becoming the castaway talisman
it approaches
why do I speak to the contorted talisman of cracked malformed ivory
its cross withered away with the dust
convulsing into the creation of a polygonal iris
looking at me but unaware of the existence
one phrase is able to emanate from the optical maw
no fear, amalgam ostracon
you have been given presence and a title following
you have been designated ostracon
An amalgamated stone from the terra Mediterranean
Casted out like the name etched upon them
Like this stone you have been exiled from your home
Brought into these realms where no home has yet to be found
Nor any foundation of the self of who you once were
No bed to lie upon, ostracon
Only the infinite movement into these deepening realms
This is your life now, ostracon
But is there something hindering you?
I almost feel asleep , needing to wake up and glide once more
If you are going to make your way to the next dimension of transmission
You are going to need to hear beyond
You will ride the signals and become operator in the dimensions
My memory engorged itself
on the marrow of looping pasts and I can’t help but feel full
a large technicolored ear has appeared
and connected itself to me
what follows is a spectrum of screeching
vibrating the fibers in the mondo drum within this luminous canal
ceaselessly,
these memories will remain unbothered awaiting their subjects
to sift through their nostalgic ports, awaiting any resemblance
of the self what was