| The Hungry Caterpillar |
|
|
|
| Written by George Mouratidis | |
| Sunday, 04 November 2007 | |
|
nameless dumb late afternoon in dribbling handfuls of larval jelly absorbing all light splattering the cold blank walls, hanging down in rivulet twists from cracked cornices drooping between the folds of faded brown drapes crawling in the kitchen among the noodles, hovering in quivering halos around the lamp oozing all over the sick bug-addled light bulb plopping onto the desk in shadowy emulsions, black hollow eye sockets overflowing with whole colonies of them— they come in through the cracks around the door with the numb air and a dissolving sunset that has crept up on you yet again with everything still up in the air, undone— minutes clot, then break open again, flowering out like sea anemones drowning in slow motion time jumping like a dirty needle over warped grooves 12 mins to 35 mins to an hour and a half later, lines break apart and vanish, hours splinter into scattered shots in the dark, gone without a trace— and there they are again, pulsating masses of them wriggling around in the cracks of the day that get wider and wider until [probably, some day] there’ll be nothing but that, a whistling gap that becomes a slobbering toothless mouth slackjawed and gaping with saliva strands all contorted and hungry and unfed, just a big empty space, white on white, black on black, words and phrases, unfinished thoughts and fractured sentences all chasing one another to suffocate and blot each other out, painting over all expressions on a phantom drama mask— those fat spaghetti globs of caterpillar silence, spilling out in a creeping, flopping wave all over the bedside alarm clock that’s been frozen on 7:55 for months swallowing it all up finally, and then they’ll mute the television, the stereo the grinding whir of the pc, the shudder of the crappy printer the hum and gurgle of the fridge the muffled traffic on Rathdowne Street, the trams on Lygon the clacking heels of the lady upstairs the rattle of the kitchen windows in the thick heavy wind the steaming bubble of the boiling kettle the clink of the butter knife hitting the metal sink the rustle of papers, a book falling to the floor the scratch of the pen dragging across the page the mug hitting against other mugs in the cupboard the run of the tap that still drips the toilet flush, the shower head and whirling slurp of the drain the snap of the light switching off the shuffle of the blind grope to bed that becomes a deafening maze the tinkle of someone pissing upstairs like a cold blade down your back the weighty thrum of blood in your ears and soft warm swirl of worlds bleeding together in distant chattering whispers, all drowned right out, gone, until they cover everything— and they count with every one of their tiny hair-breath legs each and every single tiny failure of the day each and every little death and defeat every missed train, every wrecked ship, every single flying drunken car that slams into a wall and bursts into flames and they trace all the grimy skin-twitch trails the day leaves behind as it slides even farther away from any possibility of redemption, salvaging at least something worth noting down, something worth writing about, worth photographing in your mind or carving into the resin-bark of your still-beating heart something worth resting and sleeping and dying and being born in… they drip and droop in gleaming dark rivulets, emulsion puddles of silence, and with the trillions of microscopic nerve-endings in their billions of crawling microscopic hair-breath legs they sweep the dull buckled grey lino floor clean |
|
| Last Updated ( Sunday, 25 November 2007 ) |
| < Prev |
|---|
