A Man-Shaped Hole
︎Jason Moisiadis︎
1.
“He asked again. ”
Image on glass screen,
quanta of information,
itself sufficient to invert the meaning conceived.
Shaded heart,
iced cold in silence,
glinting w/ Quantised fact,
radient vapour orbiting,
despite cliché.
That small part of me whispers:
“Did he ask for my mind,
or my body,
or both?”
Another states:
“The subject of the question is irrelevant,
Would it even matter?
He asked for me again.“
Knit heart that was iced cold with silence and shade,
now radiant vapour orbiting and glinting w/ fact despite cliché.
“He asked for Me again. ”
2.
Fullness,
is a fucked up myth.
But I could believe in it,
if he-traced-it through-his-lips.
Truth executes its enlightened task,
when skin touches skin,
warm flicks,
back and forth from flesh to flesh,
dreams dripping into reality between bodies that used to be labeled,
but now seem as one.
After a time,
that is itself without time,
Still, while tall dreams stretch and stalk in circles,
Their bright waves of not fully colour,
head hight and waiting.
Flaccid within sheets,
We are stretched out,
neither one above or below the other.
He turns his face,
Green eyes glint,
He smiles in that half way I’ve only seen on him,but I don’t see his face anymore.
3.
Somewhere along the way,
—maybe in the dream.I lost sight of the man,
he has folded back onto himself,
the meaning of his features lost to me,
no longer a construction of its own making:
In those lips
- I see the end to my own pain,- I see the future crawling outwards in his eyes,
When I see his face
When I see the lines his body
—I see the answer to the question I asked when I was twelve,
I see the embodied ‘other half’,
I see all that I’ve wanted.—mine,I see Children
Pores on skin now texture on my canvas,
His body transubstantiated now membranous and thin,
Wet and glinting and sheathing,
With a sharpe breath it reaches upwards
—like a puddle after the drop has fallen.
it stretches down,
down through the bed,
All peach flesh and red veins —
A body shaped hole curving—
down,
and through,
and outside myself.
4.
/with a deep breath in the nose/The light of that single pendent bulb barely scatters through,
I move closer to see, BUT OH GOD,
I see the reflection in their eyes.
Within the shaped hole
Its full of bodies.
Each different —yet all the same
Each piled upon the other.
Each one was myself for a moment.
Each brought close.
Each told,
/Chin on shoulder and whispered with a whimper/“I’ll do better next time”
before knife slashed
/body of meat falls on the other/
A new momentary me takes hold
their blood on the knife,
a sacrament of my own unmaking,
given to that greater whole —
that Him, that anchors eternity,
given away in blissful—innocent—ignorance.
But now,
as I look down,
all I can see is their eyes:
—my eyes
—our eyes
once glazed over in hope,
darkening, as we approach now.
Each too aware of the lie they were told:
5.
There is the us when we were finishing our Undergrad.
The scars that have just faded slightly for this ‘I’,
still raw and weeping —
bright and violent —
fear is all that those eyes can say:
fear of being Queer
fear of what that means
fear that religion can no longer save him
fear of dying some Monday morning soon —
fear of a lie on stoneof the ignorance he grew in those minds
fear of never being truly known —
those ones he loved most —to spite fear.
6.
Over there is Us a year ago.
His eyes dulled w/ shade
The stench of gin
and kombucha
and folklore
still fresh.
he is the only one who has found Fullness
he served his purpose well,
alcohol a medicine old and effective,
It renders all
in shade for a moment or three
“it’s easier to explain away the pain
when all you do is
s u b e
t m l
in shade.”
w/ an empty glass upon my ear,
his words slip around my head,
“how wish I could do it again!”
7.
Visited often is the one who spoke to dad.
All you can see are the eye lids shut tight
—we live in his moment
The one in the car ride back from woolies,
The one who he said he was proud of,
The one that almost let it all out,
The one who didn’t know the sting of death,
The one who saw him last,
The one who stalks my dreams and
The one who breaks the silk of my mind,
The one I hang my anger upon.
The one I blame completely.
Do I see His face in yours?
8.
Visited often is the one who spoke to dad.
All you can see are the eye lids shut tight:
—we live in his moment.
The one—in the car ride back from woolies,
The one—who he said he was proud of,
The one—that almost let it all out,
The one—who didn’t know the sting of death,
The one—who saw Him last,
The one who stalks my dreams and
The one who breaks the silks of my mind,
The one I hang my anger upon.
The one I blame completely.
“do I see His face in Yours?”
8.
My dreams that walked your room now shrink away.
The man-shaped hole stands up and slides his underwear back on w/ a single motion.
I give him only a hug when the tram reached my station.
Turning my head, I glimpse his face through the people and windows as it pulls away:
—he looks, so, Sad.
“Will he ask again.”
Disposable-Human
Content warning: Slurs, themes of violence and self harm.1.
What am I for them? A quick fuck,
Some strange Fleshlight with a brain or soul,
Am I made to be Interactive only for the 26 minutes of thrusting
—in
before ecstasy arriving,—and
—out
clad in its
—Simple—
—happy—
—slowly condensing clouds—
—burning through the motions of sunset—
—Blue paling—
—yellow roaring to red—
—then pink—
—darkness seeping over all.
/There is a quick breath in/
and the clouds clear.
He smiles,
then I.
Cum is then cleaned
by tongue or tissue,I hand him his shirt and he—mine.
Half remembered garments gathered,
Without words we walk,
half hearted kiss,
or a casual glance and nod,
lives diverging again.
***
Walking away from house—through—park
I say to myself:
“I am a disposable human,
a miraculous medicine,
one pill to be topped at a time.”
“I am just Yellow urine splashing on stained porcelain,
a remembrance pissed out the next day,
the effect had,
a discard for another to clean.”
Eyes closing and it’s the next day,
we are alone together again,
he flicks out my last vibrant drops,
I gaze up at him—diluting,
Ripples mouth the words I didn’t say,
missing the meaning he leaves.
As water circles down to darkness,
my eyes open on dirt path,
warn-lips whimper to myself:
“You are not finite1”
2.
Having spent a lifetime, “tonguing at what is
and must remain inapprehensible 1”
I was content to find fullness in feeling of that act.
still hoping to find some end-point:
or fact, or set of actions that could satiate,
but the only morsel of meat I found was self-hatred.
Arks of narrative benign at the surface,
Yet sharpened on the inner edge,
Pain-flowers blooming inside the flesh of people like me, Flowers I couldn’t let you see:
to show them—
to ask for help—
to manage pain outwards—
to even seem queer—
Is to admit difference,
which guarantees either isolation,
or worse exaltation,
to be propped up as the ideal,
an example which proves the rhetoric.
In silence I’ve been bleeding inwards for half my life,
I can’t tell you where the flowers start and my body ends, both subsumed the other, one-flesh, a marriage of pain.
3.
You ask,
“ But how could you live without God?”
And I don’t know what to say to that.
Call it indoctrination or some indication of the sublime,
But I will always live with a voice inside my head that tells me,
“there must be more to this?”
But a voice I can barely distinguish screams,
/as the train comes into the station./
“jump you dirty Faggot.”
It is not that I’ve solved the equation for God,
I just can’t have—that—anymore.
I’m tired of living with this scream,
of being in a community that at once say,
“ we love you for who you are, despite that...”
With sincerity they’ll hold me down and exhume the parts they can’t fancy:
a life built w/ honesty,
a man to love,
a family.
they’ll leave a corpse behind and go home smiling
they’ll call that action Real-Radical-Love.
4.
From the front,
all I can hear is,
“God is owned, yet not by you.”
The ever-present has been bottled and branded for regulated consumption.
The goal of my life is to be a cog in that machine,
to ground down and disposed after.
“I’ve seen too many ground down and disposed of.”
It is a relationship where one side holds no consequences.
Blurred realities ever shifting,
They’ll render simply in broad strokes,
—lighter Blue—
—red over yellow—
—then pale—
—white poured over all.
“was there ever something below the paint?”
Age is the greatest filter of truth?
Their simple happy choices dated long-before-our-time, made by Men, or God or is-there-a-difference—
simple choices consumed year on end, if tolerated by most, then am I wrong?
“could you question God and win?”
”no.”
”still, I broke myself for you.”
”what do I do after?”
”did you even think of that before you made us!?”
”or made that choice,”
/eyes closing/
Now we’re at the bathroom,
And I’m staring up at You,
I’m 24 now,
all crimson water shaking,
pain-flowering for half my life,
the bodies piling up somewhere,
their crime a fault in my nature,
to appeal is an invitation for water,
I’m no longer going to just mouth words,
button pressed,
I spiral down,
“will there be any remembrance of what I gave?”
”You never said this was a no-strings-attached kind of thing?”
My grinder hookup had the decency to tell me that from the start,
we knew what we were in for,
what I wanted from it,
what he wanted from it,
in our fleeting moments together we gave and took from each other equally,
“You never did that for me”
5.
But you say,
“Jesus waits with arms open.”
He does,
I see others jump into his embrace,
The warmth in their eyes,
purpose and assurance,
Yet, when I come forward,
the warmth I feel is from blood flowing from my back,
eyes wide I see the knife in his hand,
but I don’t really want to go.
“I just don’t want to die anymore”
6.
I’ve had my fill of bleeding.
I’ve cut off piece after piece of myself,
walls have been built to be broken w/ time.
Looking at it all now,
I don’t understand why I let it happen;
the only ‘I’ I can see is cold,
and dark,
and rotten.
You know,
the more of myself I’ve let live over the years,
the more peace I’ve found.
It’s a strange sensation,
to be at peace within myself;
yet in silent accidental-war with those I love.
The peace it burns quietly,
it melts into rotten flesh,
it stings,
but with time,
it becomes bright and almost feels right.
I’ve almost come to terms that my life isn’t about Him anymore,
like Frank I think I can “wean myself from God. 1”
Yet, even with the trauma,
I still believe that part of myself which says ‘there must be more to this?’,
that there is something that-is transcendental.
I know I’ll still hunger to know the absolute,
but to submit to destruction or lobotomy,
in order to find it in some end?
—I can’t.
”Despite myself dear reader, I can only imagine what you’re feeling reading this, and I’m self-conscious of that. I promised myself I would never be like them that hurt me. I don’t want to hurt you in some vain attempt to transfer away my pain. I’ve forgiven their ignorance, but the pain-flowers won’t let me forget the crime. The rage that flows from my heart, to toe, to wing on back is not for any one person to bear anymore. It flows outwards, seeping into the fabric of reality, past the muon and quark, until it enters the throne room. I don’t know what it does when it gets there, is my pain more righteous then another?”
7.
I sit here now,
—darkness losing its hold over all—
—roaring to red—
—then pink—
—almost to a boring blue sky—
the rest flows outwards,
wounds close,
the flowers starting to wither,
—then disposed ofmy body grows back,
“Who is the human who will inhabit it?”
1. Bidart, F., 2017. Half-light. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p.506.
