I, Cicero

10/26/14 - 4:45am

I go to an old haunt, gone gloom still and shadow quiet by the hard amber light of intervening years. Ghosts of remembered motion flit to and fro, given strength of purpose by reflection. There I stood idly, or stepped with care, mindful of all that once lived in this transient place, unwilling to move those sullen spirits from slumber.

Gone for so long, my return would likely be met with a mixture of colors, of myself, projected upon surfaces. Bitterness, relief, amazement at all that had changed, amusement at what had not. Yellow, blue, green and gold, all the colors of the heart.

I touch the wall with outstretched hand, just with fingertips at first, then with flat of palm. Drink its quiet, swallow its cold. Loving with vampire's grace, the earth and blanket of night. The barrow is solid. Eyes of lidless gaze. Smile of no mirth. Soil below stone.

Soup is nice in the cold, the miracle cure all. I bring a thermos. A double wall, enclosing a vacuum, by definition. I find such pleasing and familiar. Cream of mushroom with milk and a dollop of hot sauce, for bite. I sip and listen to the buzz of traffic overhead.

Tires peel across pavement, when the wind stills, voices carry, footpads drop in even intervals. Bicycles go by at times, riders with hoods drawn for an early fall chill. Such pleases me.

A man sits still with line in water. Might be an old friend, for all I know or one who once troubled me hotly with discord. I came to hear and listen, not for discourse or vector meet of yon inevitable event horizon.

Equivocating spook, quill or spine alight in purchase of fingers or specter of steam and trans-orbital circumlocution. Shade of summer's magic heat swells, warbling black upon asphalt, always ahead of the car or shadow of debt collector, bill of past transgression gripped in meat swaddled fist, dour of purpose that gleams wet upon pate, itself a creased parchment.

I often despair of impermanence, my inability to comprehend the many cruelties of life, but every experience is of some value. Sadness and suffering grant us sounding depth to consider, give us pause, which grants perspective, which grows our awareness and makes us whole as a necessary contrast to joys which, without melancholia, would be lost without their counter definition. I love my loneliness, my anger and my hate, because they are me, because they are mine.

Here, then and now, all weighted upon the pendulum, joined upon the curve of glass. Does it matter, for none shall slip the zero sum noose. Not I and not you. All shall meet there, stacked together after the fashion of corded wood, and dumb as such, with a care only for conservation of space.

In the meantime, I like a quiet smile that gently creases the lips and lightly touches the eyes. A whispered exhalation of breath and more subtle expression of your power to fascinate me. I felt the briefest of stirrings where it once seemed my heart must burst. Passions had bloomed with such vigor and glory there, its music's familiar footfalls echoed out through still corridors where few now tread. Somber halls whose mouths lie open, jowls slack upon the stones. I leave them there, in silent repose.

Moments press together between the pursed lips of hour glass' abdomen, without purchase, to fall upon momentary beachhead, before they are upended anew, and the swallows of capistrano begin again their circuitous course through the blue and never. Always for the horizon.

I am ever agog at the all oblivion to be found beyond the current moment, fingers grazing the surface, lazily searching for ragged edges of the curtain, wishing to pour through the doors of perception and emerge the wiser for it, ever in pursuit of unknowable tomorrows. To find and know that nothing and absolute perfection are joined as Janus is, each with features facing outward, never to witness those of it's twin.

I give you this empire and rubble, suckling mother and barren socket, living hellfire equation and zero sum void, each its own answer to the other in an awesome balance of opposed forces. With this understanding in mind, I had indulged in ruthless calculations that spurned my behavior, and am not guiltless in so doing.

There is a heavy silence, black bodies radiating from the earth's electromagnetic shroud, as the heat of the previous day continues to rebound into space. I believe I can feel it rising.

There is a silence in the atmosphere which rests upon the planet. Those who slumber carry it's currents, emitting ultra low frequencies. I believe I can feel them, all around me. Those who ponder press their palms down upon it, exuding focused gravity.

A deeper silence is wrapped within these, my heart which is neither glad, nor troubled, beats with mathematical certainty. Moves like hands on a clock. Breathing in with every tick. Breathing out with every tock.

I leave you now with this. I am your other self and parody.  If you will pardon me the familiarity of this comparative study and by your leave, find not only a portrait of me, but a mirror of yourself in these passages.

That eponymous music which calls me to the altar upon which I swear my testimony to my peers in this assembly is that same voice that calls me Cicero, my fellow orators and publicans.

The night is cool, still and starry. I wish for you to meet me here, or meet me there. Hot breaths and cold air, contrasts the autumn evening's disposition. There is a quiet cloud of disagreement.

An electromagnetic current crawls along the the cage that holds me hostage with its hard hands. There is an eye that rises from the unfolding billows of smoke. It pours through my fingers from my throat in the voice that emits a gravitonic force of its own singular accord, uniting what is now with what has come before.

I who wanders through time across the sands of seconds and upon the turning of the glass house that holds the minutes and hours. I who am continually upended and lives to reflect upon it, for now.

I hope this final image should find you and upon the turn of another season, find you well.

I, Cicero
By
Daniel Christensen
Writing as
The Fire Elemental

Dear reader, CIcero is something for any purveyor of the pen to be inspired by. Embodying principles, speaking from the heart. Namaste.

Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Christensen All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.