THE METAMORPHOSIS: SNAPSHOTS OF THE ARTIST AS A CREATURE OF CHANGE

by
Daulton Dickey

Part V

[Click here to read Part I, here for Part II, here for Part III, and here for Part IV]

i.

The world inverts, reconfigures itself
People split in two and merge with other halves—and transform into a newer, better people

Then the universe shifts and everyone splits in two
Their other halves morph into viruses and leap from person to person,
Controlling their hosts while persuading them they’re in charge

Viruses mingle with my shadow while I smoke a cigarette
They slither through the darkness and crouch at my feet
A concept forms in my mind,
Which forces an opening,
And the viruses leap into my head and take control

Life’s mysteries blur and vanish,
Everything fades
All questions expose their inherent irrelevance
But no— I can see the mysteries,
I can distinguish them
Or,
I could
Now they’re blurry and faded,
Possibly lost

Having regained control, I kill the virus, thus denying its only purpose: to reproduce

THE METAMORPHOSIS: SNAPSHOTS OF THE ARTIST AS A CREATURE OF CHANGE, III

by
Daulton Dickey

Part III

[Click here to read Part I and here for Part II]

I.

Creatures stalk everyone. Always. They haunt and infect us.

My creature, an amorphous mist,

Slithers near the ground. It merges with my shadow and crawls up my legs—and my pores absorb it. I decay in real time: my physiology weakens, my ego implodes. A supernova blasts through my skull, re-wiring me.

Every moment this creature inhabits me I lose the will to separate from it. Its lucidity comforts me. But it also breaks me, and the worlds flashing before my eyes dissolve before I can muster the energy to record them.

A creature, Frustration, consumes me. It spawns Disorientation and Confusion.

I reify these emotions the way our ancestors anthropomorphized physics. Having superimposed it on the world, I now feed on it,

And it feeds on itself.

Empire of Dirt

by
Daulton Dickey.

I can’t escape low-paying jobs. No matter how long I stare at the horizon, I don’t see mountains protruding and growing and replacing clusters of trees.

My name fades in the minds of people who’ve already forgotten my face.

The planet, a sphere of rotting flesh, drowns us in the bile of the used and forgotten—and none of us can escape it.

Patriōtēs

by
Daulton Dickey

You, to whom I’m speaking: ants and maggots writhe on a rectangle made from bones. Blood fills the gaps between them, and a square filled with bile sits in the uppermost corner of the rectangle. Each part on its own devolves into abstraction, but they evolve life when combined in this form.

This creature enchants and controls you.
It embeds itself into you and, like a virus, travels at breathtaking speak. Whether you work or don’t work, watch movies or don’t watch movies, read books or don’t read books, do drugs or don’t do drugs, and so on—you fall prey to this virus.
Then it assumes control of the host and forces it to worship the creature.

Bertrand Russell—A Prose Poem

by
Daulton Dickey.

Soft tiled tissue of longing and regret shoot from the prism of circles folding inward from cackles distorting our eyes. Merry go rounds spurt with the juice of ten thousand angels martyred and hung and forced to spend the rest of eternity* spinning in endless circles. Through caves in the universe emerge miasmas of rock and salt, of thoughts brimming with annihilation, and through circles in time, through gaps, they slip in and devour the moment without expression.

Slurp slip sloop, the heavens cry as they distend and droop into the flowers and soil below. And the stench of honeydew permeates the air before flames disintegrate the spirit of neglect. The worlds in the silence of the motion of atoms hum and hem and haw and drum slowly the output of trillions of neurons and sketch flames into the canyons of organic machines too blind to notice the empty gazes in their reflections.

Where concrete and gold flow into the wombs of pregnant cultures, corruption creeps into the smiles of the machines, each of whom trade gold for reflections better suited to their images of hungry and explosive gazes. But nothing is ever complete, and grapes hang on vines and pop and bleed onto the ground; fire ants hatch from the cells of traipsing blood and scurry along the grass, trying to evade their inevitable rise. And sure enough: they do rise. Each ant shifts and evolves and transforms into musical notes and soars onto the tablature of the moment as it skips along the tremolo of the spinning planet.

And we’re left alone, deaf to the songs played by the wind and blind to the black holes devouring our reflections.
________

*’The rest of eternity’ is, of course, a pun: you cannot quantify that which does not end. Men have tried, and they’ve exalted in the fountains of their newly found neuroses.

[copyright 2014 Daulton Dickey]