Cloche-Captions

Colors take on different hues when they’re with different backgrounds.

(This is called chromatic adaptation).

Certain places, words, certain songs and smells, take on different meaning when they’re with you.

Plenty of people know the ship of Theseus theory,

but when do they notice it changing?

When it is replaced, piecemeal, old bones swapped with new ones,

is that akin to regeneration?

I always assumed that it’d be more like a muscle, like a heart,

where the fixes leave a mark.

But do they notice it changing?

How about Jason’s ship?  Does the Argo become less remarkable

as it wears away on its adventures?  Or when it is renewed?

By the way it looks, fresh coat of paint or new sails?

Is it when they look for the carvings they etched into the rails?

Running hands over smooth wood and finding them gone?

Do they notice it changing?

Not right away, but when it sinks where it sailed before, 

when the whole becomes holes?

They notice it changing.

They see the fabrication, a patchwork, each individual part sewn together and uneven, wondering, 

“Is this my ship?”  Their perception, 

Notice it changing.

It’s a shame that ships aren’t actually kept in glass bottles, glamorous and tiny and timeless and yours.

Changing.

Unstoppably, but maybe it doesn’t matter.  If it’s missing pieces, missing memories, growing while you weren’t looking and you didn’t notice or won’t acknowledge, won’t accept that a new ship can still be your ship,

Well,

Every inch

See the tools that I use and the blueprints where my thoughts are neatly labeled.  Find in straight, clear lines all the dimensions blocking out the lengths of my silences.  Strip me naked down to exposed wires and notice how much of it is bullshit. Take inventory of how little basis there is for any of what I do.

--

There's a lot of garbage in houses.  Builders will finish lunch or a cigarette and stuff the remains in the crevices between walls, sealing them up with plaster and crown molding.  Real estate agents get to showcase the house while everyone hums and nods at how nice everything looks.  Nobody notices the in-betweens. 

Time will pass and one day, when something goes wrong,

( some faulty wiring or busted switch)

someone peels away the layers and reveals the the rotting viscera beneath. They realize that their beautiful house, their everything, is full of trash, is detritus, is resting on a foundation of what other people do not want. 

Gut the walls of their filling and seal the abscess with plaster. Don't forget the crown molding.

Pretend you don’t notice the infection running like veins through your entire house, pulsing in anticipation of dissection. Hemorrhaging like cysts spilling pus, like questions spilling answers.

Deconstruct me.

Every Inch.

For all my confidence, half the time I'm just going through the motions, neon street sign waving like a banner on Fremont Street: This is me, hello, I am sure of myself.  This is me.

Sometimes I wonder when I look at other people: Are you faking too?  Shield my eyes and stare into their glow, squint and wonder if this is the shadow of surefootedness or the Plato’s Cave debris of someone else playing shadow puppets.  From a distance, light is light is light.

Sometimes, I'm inconsistent.  I'm lit up, I'm turned off, I’m flickering and unsure, the missing letters in a franchise sign that turns something respectable like "Novelty Home Decor" into a gaping "Oh."

Sometimes I'm a broken LED, or more accurately one of those halogen lamps--those things'll burn you even if they don't seem hot.  But if you press close, lean your cheek in, you can feel the heat as it burns down to nothing, even after it goes dark, sunset in your skin.  That's prettier than city lights anyway, I'm told.

But long expose me, see that all these random motions add up to something, the illuminated gestalt of myself picked out in a thousand tiny headlights you can see from your bedroom window.  Every car and houselight left on long after others have gone to bed, each one a person with a life and a story and a string of other inconsistencies or some other hamartia, laid out in the circuit tapestry of a city.  It's as real as anything else.

Watch it, and tell me that's not as beautiful as a sunset.  I'm sure that it is.

Don't be too interested, go back two spaces.  Don't say I love you first, skip your turn.  Pretend that things don't bother you, change little pieces of yourself, draw a new hand, discard your inhibitions, compromise, do not pass go, do not collect $200.  Ante in or give up.  Play again?

Take two.

Take me to someplace where I don't have to remember any of this and where nostalgia doesn't fray at the edges of my reality and this moth-eaten cover doesn't fall to bits when you touch it, or look at it too closely.  Lie to me.

Because you sure as hell can't lie with me.

Funny, it used to be butterflies, and then just warmth.  Maybe at some point they ignited and formed this conic exodus,

This flaming aviary in my lungs that makes it hard to breathe,

Windpipe clogged with soot-streaked wings.

It feels like singing steel songs that form sharp ladders up my vocal chords and shred inside-out through my chest. 

It feels like razor violins that pluck at my heartstrings and plummet a deep bass in the pit of my stomach.

It feels like I care. 

Since when do I care?

The man in a suit, legs crossed and sitting on his hands at the car wash like none of this is any of his business.  

Someone smoking a cigarette.

Every day we live through so much, and suddenly it just hits you!  You're struck by it all, the way the soap smells on the asphalt and the breeze ruffles your still-wet hair.  The long drag that makes the faint dying light of the day glow ethereally hot and bright.

You could just lean back and watch the whole world burn out.