Defenestration

I send my voice out, like a messenger reluctant because he knows not the destiny of the message. As if in a Kafka novel of solidity without reason, my voice resounds, plaintive. It curls like smoke into crevices, searching for appropriate ear. It squeezes through cracks and under doors, hoping to ferret out vibrating bones — hammer, anvil, stirrup — to pass along the message.

Sometimes it comes to this: I throw my voice out the window, disowned, lips not moving, dummy projected. It falls over flowerpots and under flags, between power lines and lynched laundered fabrics flailing in the wind. It romances birds, startled into radical in flight insights. It paints a mustache on the moon, half in loving jest, half just to feel her face.

Dark and hidden message destiny, the search for you is the one voiced goal. I tell myself that it is you who must decide. You must decipher. You must be the defining Holmes, sure unlocking understanding.

In your hearing my voice, message itself will come to life, develop flesh over strong bones that can dance endlessly. Receiver will reincarnate, reconstitute, manifest message out of voice.

You hear what I say: If the recipient is unknown, the message itself is encrypted. It fondles its way through filigree, stumbles its way through webs, waves its way through watery culs de sac. Heard, not gotten, not begotten, besotted it be.

If voice is thrown, questing without rest, in search of quixotic resolution of mattering, of defining beyond chaos, a question emerges. What is the difference between voice and message?

Voice is merely a vehicle, a container, vessel, holder. Voice is voiced in its emptiness, uttered in its spaciousness, whispered in its vacancy, articulated in its immensity, gasped in its boundlessness, murmured in its hunger. Voice is nongrasping servant of message, barely there, avoiding personal identity. Voice, to be voice, knows what it is not. Voice longs for message to emerge. Voice exists only in its pregnancy, its expectancy of message birth.

But then what is message? Message is merely package of potential, waiting to be opened, suspended in possibility. It is smote smoke, mirror mirage, trompe l’oeil, supreme illusion.

Message is no more substantial than voice.

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, matryoshka lovers, indistinguishable, indeterminate, indecipherable, entwined forever are message and voice. Both are quintessentially empty. Both are of the essence of hunger, of desire, of itch, longing, passion. They are yearning lust and pining thirst entangled in embrace that blows away in the wind like bubbles popped, like silvery silken strands of milkweed seeds taken to flight.

They fly toward the destiny, desire destination, the promise of apprehension, the troth of visibility, the pledge of substance, the vow of meaning emergence after so long a journey.

Dancing utterly and thrown infinitely out the window they come to rest.

In this destiny scenario, we see a forest hut, and enter. Inside is a hermit, skinny, beyond thought, word, and expression. He is both essentially unpleasable and utterly, ecstatically entranced.

If I say he is asleep dreaming, will you feel this is a cheap comic book ending that smells like buttered popcorn? If I say he is awake, will you feel the chill of a starry, starry night sans moon?

Even the destiny itself is merely dream, just as empty as voice and message, no more defined than spin spinning. I am terror stricken and I revel in amazement. Both agony and ecstasy are mine.

But not mine, really. Here there are merely other meandering moments of message, penetrating the awaiting chambers of voice, always en route to parts unknown, not claimable. With a butterfly effect kiss, we return to sender. 

— Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse who hopes to inspire profound mutiny in all those who care to read. Our Rx ma y b e wearing a pir ate cloak of in visibility, but emanating fr om within this shado w is hope that readers will feel free to respond. Who kno ws: You may e ven inspir e the muse. Make contact if you dare.