Scoochathustra

With my tears go into your loneliness, my brother. I love him who wants to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.
-Thus Spoke Zarathustra

On the Nothing and Going

“I could die for you.”

“The eyes of the gods part from me, forget me by my hatred.  Revenge.  For I do not bow by gods for I do not bow by men.  For when my humility has broken my knees I know the dirt by its warmth.  Take me, take my anger, take my disgust.  Swallow the dirt for your loathing Scoochathustra, you will know death before too long.”

“These children dance around me as butterflies and lost and forever they will dance.  But their beauty fades, darkens, becomes shamed by their lies.  I hate the discussion of truth and lies, you perspectives, not but perspectives.  I know you liars, for cowards blot out the sun with their cloudiness.  Ah the blue sky and bright sun, where are you?  Would that they spill out, these clouds, into wretched earth, the dirt would swallow you along with me.  That is where we belong.  Heads on sticks, these playgrounds are battlegrounds.  Are wars are games are chides and chiding.  God for the coming and going, nothing in the coming and going.”

“But for waste for all things unmoved, free me, I take leave of these tiny relationships.  A greatness makes tracks in the distance.  I was born with unfathomable love, and when you gave me knowledge, I swear, if I had it my way, all you motherfuckers would be dead.  For treachery in this wilderness, that cunning resentment and suffering and moaning, I will live and for all things unmoved, you that seek to tire me, my blade will open you.  I look back, a sickness and empathy dulled.  If I had it my way, grab me by throat and kiss me, that my breath were stolen and mouth were shut.”

Scoochathustra scrapes his teeth along the rocks in the mud.  His feet glide steadily in the air.  For his head that drags through the mud, must his feet be above and without gravity.  The earth would see him swallowed for his digging.  Thus does one walk among the coming and going of friends and strangers, thus does one defy their facts by dreaming.  On the creation of truth, not for coward empirics by nothing objectivity, there is no gravity, none.

“Have you seen my fists in the sun!  They break the spirits of tyrants one and more and all are none for my fists!  For all war do I crease by my thumb, an instant is a mere instant when all truths lie prostrate in war.  If I, wave, my hand, all the cities wipe away.”

Scoochathustra lands to his feet.  He sprints through the trees.  He sprints toward the end.  For the god that peeks at him as the sun blinking through branches.  Tears flee Scoochathustra’s eyes, they are gone as they come.  For his speed, old desperation, he sprints to the end of the trees.

“To the end of the trees!  I could die for you.  Revenge, god revenge are you with me?  What wisdom robs you from me, have I learned to live and not die.  For life must I, go under, and for that must I, beyond romance, leave you.  I have left, I am gone.  I knew when I was a boy, beyond the end of the trees, of all things beautiful, of all things love.  I was alone when I knew, I remember, no one was there.  Or were there all and none at once?  Were they shadows or ancestors with me?  What could I ever know of loneliness?  For mothers and grandfathers that hold my trembling heels in the mud.”

Scoochathustra runs faster, kicks harder.

“I see none but an endlessness, just curled roots and twisting trees.  Just trees.  My soul aches by the beauty, the perfect chaos, the design in the leaves.  The wind and the sounds, the wisdom and peace.  For hollowness is not emptiness, rather a shelter for living.  Thus does one do more than sleep.  Verily these days my heart cannot find its way out of its cage.  Why is it always my chest?  For it is my chest that I move I swear.  This forest moves me.”

“If I reach down now, the world will shift by me.  As I grab the earth, it is clear to me, that the world will move.”

“Have you, silent passenger, come with me this far?  Can you hear the buzzing in your ear?  Can you hear the rhythm?”

Scoochathustra stops dead in his tracks.

“Look at the bouncing sunlight ahead.  See how how it prances through the branches toward me.  For us does it dance.  Do you believe me intolerant?  I find myself the same too often these days.  You must know there is more.  I know there is.  And so long as it remains art, we are all kept in.”

“But why would I close my eyes now?  Breathe.  Not for revenge, hold, for more.  Revenge is back there.  This is frenzy, comes to silence and reflections, reflections are always boring.  I dash from my limbs as the murder of all innocence in industry.  Their farms and commodities make useful pivoting and parallel.  My breaths become weak, this fatigue is sabotage.  I can still taste the dirt in my mouth.  I may have swallowed too much this time.”

“What is my howling and clawing for blood?  Where does that come from?  I have left these secrets behind long ago.  Do you think that I caress my words for passions and floating about?  Am I the liar of liars whose throne’s taste has gone sour.  For liars that kiss the feet of king liars know the taste best.  The eyes of animals beam still from me, as they did when I first met my enemy; humanity.  Not by softness does one remove a sword from their chest.  By the weight of age do I know, how exposed I’ve been and remain to be.  For these days do I strip my armor, do I strip my clothes and my skin from my bones.  In comfort, I know my truth that wants me dead.  What quality of life?  You would not believe my gratitude for anger, as those in padded cells whom tear away to the cement behind the cushion.  They embrace their chaos while others sleep in their tomb.    Would that original freedom wash the dried blood from my fingers.  Reveal my scars I take leave of heartlessness and knowledge.  This scratching turns to chewing, turns to battering, turns to brokenness.”

Scoochathustra looks down.  He reaches for the earth.  Once his palm is firm and flat, he motions for its movement.  He looks up to see if the sky has moved.

“What dream am I in now?”

He gets down on his knees.  His jaw rests, his eyes fill, searching, gazing outward, to the end of the trees.

“Be with me now.  Something beautiful comes our way.”

A lion joins him by his side, and sits.  Scoochathustra rests his head in the golden coat of his companion.

Thus Spoke Scoochathustra

On the Wolf and the Whale

“Would that my heart be the stunning attention of all things in this, the aggressive displacement of illusion.  For you I cannot, for the world I can, verily, am I the fool, the unknown and desperate.  The one who by the Earth sinks, this aching distracts my romance.”

“Would that I gaze outward while the beasts moan.  The beasts!  They promised me attention and hopelessness all at once.  Their attention is hopeless.  They chide and caress, shattering all destination, all gravity sworn as quality and appeal.  These cuts and bruises make for tasteful dining, you hounds and howlers, perhaps by haps my mistakes take graves as friends.  A dancing thoughtful tone abhors itself cold, ruthless, and cunning, it begs of me to lose me.”

“I do not know how to love what is not great.  Never is anything great enough.  I do not know how to love.”

“By nights I am the aggregate of some resounding momentum.  One that I cannot forget.  One that I do not understand.  It takes me under I swear it.  Not by choice does one lose everything for nothing.  This nothing stands bewildered and ashamed, it is only a verse and not a song.  Not but for cheating, it steals all intentions and offers unwanted truth.  I curl into the arms of my fleeting sanity, the arms of my distant displeasure, verily, serenity is crushing heart break.  Thank god.”

“All reason begs my attention.  ’For you I protect,’ thus it sounds, ‘for you that have died, I protect you, I am a friend.’  And for it, and for all, give me peace, and in that by freedom, give me solitude.”

“Solitude from reason.  Solitude.  What age did knowledge exit me?  For the bored and full-stomached would I pretend to display myself as tragedy.  But for all callers, those lovers of life and lovers of love, ah unto the aging fathom of one another.  It’s all absolutely absurd.  What is happening?  What is happening?”

Scoochathustra knows the road by its eager quiet pace.  He drags the heaviness of his legs, as they paint mountains by intention, and pitfalls by forgetfulness.

 ”Their eyes make for sharp revenge.  I can feel them digging into the palm of my chest, the moment when this energy yearns and denounces its aim.  I speak on the great unseen, the connected and the longing, by hopes and dreams, these smiling dreams.  No eye forgives me, not one that has met my own.  This I know by the frown hiding in the peak in its corner, it must be confused, or some shape of fear makes a window to their pain.  By peering memories do I pretend to know anything, I collapse by misunderstanding, thus does my hypocrisy want my humility.  While elsewhere, I gaze outward, an unknown shade of darkness stares back at me.  It promises me loathsome sentiments and lonely death.  I welcome all that knows me best, and thus, do I love the shade for its darkness.  Not for the absence of light, but rather, the empirics that exit as the blind eye relinquishes trust.”

Scoochathustra comes to the edge of ocean, once again.  A beach he’s never known and always dreamt of.  When out of the dancing specks of the sun glimmers an image he’s never met.  For in the ocean floats a wolf, on the back of a whale.  Such is the loud hunger of our man.  

“When I was a child, I am a wolf.”

“The wisdom of a wolf sings to me as the calm hero after her fight.  Thus do all wolves intend for this friend of whales, they whose survivalism is beyond nature.  Beyond want and pleasure, or meager or the petite expression.  Wolves the keen murder of mockery and discompassion.  I can tell by the wit in their eyes.  Thus do their howls make men’s violence shiver by thunder.  Whales the serene beauty and grand life.  I can tell by the calm in their eyes.  Thus do they move the world by their glide.  For these travelers at once gestures hugs and smiles into my own, they tell me of their ocean.  Or so would I plead universality with their wandering.  That all things there are similar to all things on the dry Earth.  Not that social, relentless turning out of my stomach’s laughter, not by games - not here! - but by our enraged resilience for life and fervor!  You the wolf, you know of this war, I am a warrior and a lover of war.  Thus love my war or do as others do, and soak in the stench of arrogant peace by no subtle distance.  Verily is my broken foot my cripple, by condemning the failed movement, while I stomp as do children when they see what we’ve done.  Shun me not by my limping.  You the wolf, you the whale, you know of me so little and verily does one pine.  While impatiently, for this little that you know of me by hastened moments have you understood me.  As do our souls as do stars.  In so forth, we speak of spirits by moments.  For these spirits dwell by hiding in the chattering discourse, the nothing and going.  They hide in the pauses, the beats, the glances.  And when some truth has made its way into the nothing and going, they glide through us and they breathe us they breathe us!  This wolf speaks to me, loves me, welcomes me and exits.  Such is the kind of wolf that would make friends with the epic whale.  Such are those that move the world.”

“Are you with me absent listeners?  Know that all stories have truth and tales and tales have lies and jest and distort.  All perception is your own to conquer, and by my brow, do not exhaust your sweat.  Save it for the race, the endless parade of the fortunate, you consumers and liars.  I love you.  Though I know nothing of how to love you.  I must.  For the wolf that leaves me after the morning has gone.  I must.  I could sleep forever in your absence.  For I know you exist.”

“The world has not ended, but for me, I will know it I know.  Sweet end, sweet overcoming.  When will the fight be enough?  For when all fighting goes over, I am the lion whose faint tracks it lusts after.  By lions for lions, for wolves and whales and all creatures gone under.  And for you beasts!  What creature are you!?  What form have you taken!?  What have you become?  I’ve asked you here a thousand times.  I would have it here in my chest!  I would dig your sword deep into me!  Break past the skeleton you cowards your blade dug deep through me until I am not but blood and unrecognized!  End me!  You are fruit, and you hang by your birth!  I know!  I was there, I know your art, I am the fucking roots.  God I am the roots.”  

Thus Spoke Scoochathustra    

On the Sky

Some confusion has taken me.  I cannot remember your name.  I  cannot speak, and therefore, I can see you finally.

“They bathe my tenderness with atrocities, the fires they’ve shamed my face by. Pseudo-nihilists nought for by coming and going, you are a pretender, a child in a cape. It is tattered, torn, misshapen, ugly as the heart fallen from its cage, and rhythm, off-beat, forlorn from the great original. Ah virtue, fists and speeches, friends of tears and hushing blinks. Smiling heroes, you know me best, reclaim, by flight shall you forget the ground. Look down! The nightmare, the consumption, a cause for the obsessed, bewildered, curdled by the stench of gods and states, the conjurers of death, the soothsayers, the preachers.  The recycled life, the game, the longing, the hurt, the recompense, the disillusion, the defeat.  Look down! Your feet still touch the ground, ah the dream, you deserve it I know. By the great wisdom in the eyes of my mother, I know. Not still, grand sight: Nothing is known by everything lost, nor the disgrace of faithfulness; the hallows suffocate and peak. Tradition is deaf, let us meander only for politeness.  The lessons are taught, now learn.”

“Murder is for lovers, have you the breath of another? Were we once seeds? Are you the rain?”

“Death the crescendo have I sung but once and all my life! Unabashed. You the perfect, you murderer, you were once a lion. As I was, I lie, down by the fire, and it eats me. Would you have me eaten alive, by death, I am your nostalgia and your whip, move you coward. My strength is none without yours, I am strong, I will change the world. Thus move, my brother, the lion, and watch the trees take back this land with me.”

“I needs must I, go under alone.  As lightning with memory, as sadness, I miss everyone.  Such is the power of glimpse, subtlety, fervor bent by the ferociousness of clouds.  Float on,  and I needs must I.  Go under alone.  You tyrant.  Float on.”

“Lust is not nature nor demon, it is forgetting, and thus my end. It is remembering everything and surviving nothing. For it keeps me in my skin. It is not pleasure, nor sex, it is not intimacy, nor friendliness. It is, here so defined, all that is not true love. That being, the impossible burden. My happy knowing by my tragedy. Embrace the overcoming.”

“You! On the destiny of romance and words! Don’t spend your mind here. I swear, I’m trying to remember, how to love again. I hunger for bleeding out the great moral, its permeation, it dies alone. In distant fields as do the sons of the poor. I crease war by my thumb.”

By eyes, upward turned, your jaw would drop by starvation. Gaze through the light glass of balancing tears.

“God, I swam in you on the sweetest night of my life, O’ that I knew sweetness, I ran perfect I was free. Your beach, your impossible, not but a simple glow and an endlessness. Is it true? Are we here to see the end of all horror? And, by my shaking chest, would you have me retain the myth of my sanity? Who would not share this with who would not live? Live.           god live die my lust for no dancing is nothing is not life                                         it is not life                       i swear        i want you by me for the end                  you will know me by the freedom in your spirit                                                               it is not sweetness    it is true

”

Thus Spoke Scoochathustra

On the Pregnant Star

“I met god in the rain last night.”

Scoochathustra has found himself a river. He is not alone. And so he drifts. Gazing upward.

“Words bent on promise for hope and reason decry on empty stomach. No chests, nor voice, nor inspire, nor fathom unto the passions. The masses groan and drag their hearts. I am pulled outward by my virtues, a cancer and a dear friend. The animal flesh in their mouths, the fashion on their backs, the capital in their palms, the ego in their throat, the hatred in their vision, the disdain in their taste. The intellect stampede eclipses this light into darkness; I love my enemies for their lessons. The austere grandeur, a flight of synapses into silence. A deaf melody dances these tears from me.”

“As I fear sanity, as I drown in it, my lungs swell by open eyes. A slow crawl, a truth by default. For when I hate my revolution, I hate my truth. Ah the nation, the capital, the society; the nightmare. Histrionics have some purpose for the bored and full-stomached, these dreams sleep in them. Dare not to wrinkle eyelids and stretch out your gaze, you the whimsical dandelion choking on purpose. You in the sea of yellow flowers, you that would grow highest and beg mercy from storm. Would that we reached down to our roots, and find them entangled, and find ourselves ancient lovers.”

The river has become shallow. And so sinks our man. And so he rests on the riverbed unmoved by his clenched breath, the waters running over his face. The cold, restless current knowing peace better than his quietest sleep.

“How curious, the night has frozen all around me. A child, a complacency has taken my love within its hands. And I am grateful for the storms and sunburns. The deserved memories, the aches that rest. Ah strength bursting from my chest.”

“Ah my peace that whispers in me for war. By serenity I will never forget the atrocities. A fate by slow flood. No victory and so this without bests my ego; all souls forgotten. Lost in the impossibilities of justice. Their white teeth embolden my violence. Their crooked, bleeding laughter. The gut-stench of their fear. A disease, a loyalty to sickness. A pride in the nothingness that starves them. A hunger with swollen bellies full. Verily, an originality deviates from our unity in resistance. A unity I’ve never known and always loved. An originality I will die for.”

“Nor, you crumbling mountains, will I ever forget to live. For my company whose lips sooth my face. By whispers and kisses, by mocking solitude, by songs that banish routine. And for my dreams, my secret momentum. And for Artemis, for her unbridled courage echoing into me. For those that journey with me, the puddle the thorns and the fly. For the tiny footprints I see behind me moving ever closer to my own; they seem to hunger after my wandering.”

“For my brother who has freed me. For yesterday he grabbed me by the throat and stared into me. He told me I am full of poison. He showed me where the fangs entered me with venom. He was calm and steady. He breathed in deep and filled my collapsed soul. For lions do not fall by snakes.”

“We shall see to the bottom of this dark well.”

Scoochathustra stands and gasps for breath. He looks to the moon that is hidden by rain clouds. He looks over to you. His blank stare full.

“A greatness is in us. The moon and I. We tug on each other. A madness claims me by hope. Death the crescendo. You will know me by my gravity. You will forget me by my flight.”

Thus Spoke Scoochathustra

On the Wide-Eyed

“The night walks on me. The day’s hope crashes to my feet. My fight, their settling, my gut thunders and turns. The fury routine dwindles and empties. The day comes and I am once again at the whim of the all. A curse hacks and claws at my shoulders, it stands on me and smiles.”

Scoochathustra walks in the mist of an empty rain. The clouds chiding at the faint, blinking sun. He has turned from the town behind him. He has been asked to leave.

“The pious want and concern after the nothing. Critiquing the living as dead while the illusion of the dead lives. Forced and moving, thralls of nothing climbing the hills after the commodity hero. The golden fields, the sun blanketed wheat waving in the wind, covered in the blood of false enemies, drowning in claim wars, ego and tradition. The great kingdom, the sword, the quill, the tale, the scar on my face. These story’s conclude our own, these outcomes are not ours. Your living turned to learning turned to listening turned you mute. The account of logic, your denial rationalized, hailing mystery, and lying you down in the morning before the day. The united misery, the forgotten lessons. The false vulnerable, the endless sleep, O how we impress our fear by mocking our truth.”

Scoochathustra collapses to weep. He looks up to the solitude of his road. He sees the field surrounding him offers no path, no company. He sees nothing in all the possible.

“Great confidence, born from falling off the cliffs of the soul; given up, verily does one move forward. Exhaustion drags out the spirit from the beast, washes its hands and caresses its sores. A humming purpose whispers in my ears, that childhood destiny resounding and brilliant. A wind beckons me by champion at my back. You belong in the painting, you belong to the art. You the hero, you the all-too-human, you the dancing soldier. I stare into myself. All my past lives fought and died for, of martyrs, they scribble, should one’s own self be loved. Of cause, they scribble, we will soon forget this freedom. And in the recollection I fathom. I feel the warmth of my eyes sooth into tears. Ah the untamed, wide-eyed sensation, compromising disdain, and pleading momentum. All tricks for words, no ears makes for fruitful nudity. Romance. I belong to you. I belong to the lions, I belong to the sun. Across the field a greatness gazes back at me. You with your fist at your chest. You are beautiful.”

Scoochathustra stands up. A song fills him. An ancient one. He looks at the dried blood on his wrinkled fingers. The cracks bruising and sore. He smiles and walks.

“They won’t have it though, they won’t have us painting visions. Not until the consumption parade achieves alternatives as relief; not until the clock, the whistle, and the race break their legs.”

“There’s no time to lose, all has been lost, all will be lost, we must move. We must move into the next loss. The modern propose on bended knee, the ancient propose in kisses and longing. I am awake, and I see death all around me. Ah wisdom, impermanence, breath. Of all the disenchanted forgotten, the innate survives, and breath keeps rhythm; the chest fills and empties. The future is a myth.”

“And I still believe in us.”

Thus spoke Scoochathustra.

On Love and Death

“I came across a field today and in that field was a patch of imagine. It swallowed me Oh tragedy.”

Scoochathustra stares into your eyes.

“Upon an upward gaze I move into your soul. Possessed we argue of values and sacrifice. Of life, the empty universe, the tenacious inconclusive. The resounding brilliance, the upbeat. To be all things to be is all. And you sing and you glance at your voice that floats. The dying romance, details and pity. The superfluous and simple by mundane and mote, unfurled from scripts bled through by ageless pages. Sharp points and heavy pens. They write the last word and thus the last word ends.”

“Is this all I have to give? Is that all there is to take?”

“Embrace your over-nature, fall in love with everything. Awaken and overcome, though longing and cold. The crisp wound from depth and fathom. Love all and be all. That is that to sake for sake. Not fright, nor home, nor despair in comfort or chaos. In love, and risk, to be by swarming incite. The internal, by outward, by perception all truth. Demand it all, fleeing power, and all is commanded. Ah the impossible, that will kill you.”

“Of all great secrets, be present with your heart in your chest; caress the shattered gaze. Romance and disdain, my friends, so close to me, sworn unto in myths and burials. Leaping and sweetness, ah breath clenched tight.”

“I cannot see past my hand, your face, to me, is blurred.”

“And when I remember I know. And while I am I wander. And while I look up I ache, for moans, breathe fire through me. If not for more than the less be discovered too late. The fool dies alone.”

Thus Spoke Scoochathustra

On the War of Nostalgia

“Was I ever a child before?”

“What war has taken me?  This pace is a blur.  My words are compromises.  Since I can remember, every thought has died.  Save for the strength to inherit myself.  By steady patient ears, while original songs are mute until the hum of the common chorus.  My low swinging despairing tone is the universal remorse: the chiding, flourishing resentment in adult eyes.  When they cannot remember. What metaphysics identify with your over-nature?  Empathy sought perception in the panpsychism of the all-encompassing, and verily do I shatter across the universe with you.  Such is the unromanced extrinsic skepticism of purity.  For nought of embracing maturity; would that the dead be the all-knowing while the living never know life.  Would that my ancient walk with Pyrrho be not punctuated by my stumbling, while I am suffered by finite parallel time.  It has me bowing by mountains that are otherwise oceans.  The agelessness of life.  Therein, the great hope, my starving momentum is crushed.  As I free fall from the bottom of the Earth.  I embrace my child therefore am I forgotten.  I watch the end of essence and I am undone by the curse of my resilience.  My smiling spirit cheers the hero onward.”

Scoochathustra stands in the day of his measurement.  The celebration of his aging identity masquerading as wisdom.  While the ripple of wrinkles bend by his eyes.

“I conjure the perfect memory in an image as digression from reality, until the pompous circumstance of now denies the curiosity of then.  The image glows and beams through me.  The internal monologue quiets and listens.  What is it that tugs on me?  That pulls these tears from me?  What is it that stops them at the brink of my eye?”

“I move to compel understanding; I do not want to be alone now.  I write these pages as scars on your perception, the great memory of adulthood.  Our knowledge resists all truth.  Is not every thought an acceptance of not knowing, while refusing the existence of, anything else?  While even not knowing is the condemnation of limited knowledge; possibility suffocated as perception.  Such surrender is false, while such power abhors itself by claims, demanding existence.  Such is the illusion of fact, and understanding, and control.  Ah the impermanence of truth, and the attachment of conclusions.  Ah consciousness, and order, and reason, and grandeur.  Ah objectivity, and supposition, and routine, and epitome.”

“Ah repetition.  Discovery.  Acceptance.”

Scoochathustra peers over his nose into the endless destiny of knowledge crowding around him.  Everywhere he goes, there it is.  Suddenly, in the abyss of dim lights surrounding him, he sees you, the bright one.

“How are ideas more poetic to me, more than any poetry, of some relationship, and your pleasures, and your feelings?  All discourse as dialogue, containing two, and maybe more, but never all.  You and I and the absurd destination of us.  Of matter I am detached.  By my consciousness I am let loose.  By my heaviness I am retained.  And I look to you, and I am suffocating, and I am needing. And we make sense of energy when we touch.  A frenzy of purpose fills our chest, and we sink deeper into the unfathomable.  But by my head, by my friends, I am held in awe.  Seeing everything that is happening.  How people exist.  The horror.  Watch them defend their fear.  Watch them die for it.”

He stands and brushes himself off.  He loves you for being with him.  But he would not have you stay for much longer.

“I cannot flee the weight of everything.  I am a prisoner of language when I think on it.  Of communication, of limitation.  Ah the lull of disinterest.  All movement has course without me.  Why then should I make use of my feet?  Everything will change.  Therefore move now, or stagnate eternally.  What existentialism  has claimed your perfection?  What nihilism has the destitution of your ambition?  Embrace it, be free from culture, and move forward.  What means, by which to experience, has murdered our living?”

“May that I never exit the beautiful gaze.  May that I never walk with you the forgotten children.”

“While the day is calm in the palm of my chest, I wade in the wind, a wanderer of the unfathomed, glistening specks fluttering about as ideas, and I chew on my teeth for as long as sense has focus.  Ah the playful feral laughter of new born spirits.”

He wipes his eyes.  Fatigue has bested his interest with kissing your cheek tonight.  He would rather gaze upward than massage your charisma.

“A hero yawns and stretches in me.  A virtuous noumenon calls upon me to rest.  My energy yearns for my mother, as she touches my forehead, and I see everything.”

Thus Spoke Scoochathustra

On the Passion of Tragedy

“Let us not meander in poetry.  The luxury of the middle is the dance of the aimless.  They repeat themselves on themselves and cue digression as a form of art.  There is no bewilderment inside the illusion of your form.  It is mere politic to express with nothing to say.  Let us not pretend to understand each other.  We’ve not communicated once in our lives.”

Scoochathustra sits on the bed of a shallow river.  He stares at the water breaking in front of him.  The ripples reform in an instant, as if he were never there.

“Let us not be fools.  Do not think for a moment that anything you have ever done has done anything.  You have done nothing.  I have done nothing.  The monster still chews on us.  Still puppets us.  Still feeds the sickness of our false existence.  Still breathes our breaths for us.  You have never lived.  I have never lived.”

“Would it be easier for you if I spoke in tongues?  Would that qualify me by rambles?  Or to dribble my blood on the page?  Do you have the taste for my blood?  Do you know anything of passion?  By some great metaphor you entice your careless attempt at impassioned absurdity.  While every artist seeks insanity, and alludes to supersede its role.  They know nothing of its reality.  They know nothing of blank walls and chaos.  They delight in the ambiguity, and drift into their normalcy the moment the choreography feels new.  Feels substantial and uncompromised.  And when they meet some insanity, want nothing to do with it.  And glorify it with the coming pages of reason.  Love it in their reason.  Behold the passion!  That will show us how to live!”

“Have any of you spent time with me?  Do you think you know me?  Do you think you know me?  Is there a rush of individuality pulsing in you?  Do you think unto yourself, ‘what of it, he does not know me!’?  Does your alienation protect you?  Or have you concerned yourself with the task of loving me?  Does that convince you of your knowledge of me?  Of yourself?”

Scoochathustra kisses the water.  The coldness chills his lips.

“Let us speak in shadows for the entertainment of dwindling ears.  Tears digress the panic of suffocating minds.  Desperate glances from across the room sings a bird song echoing in your soul.  This stare is my life’s final appreciation, the climax of my story.  It must be.  I know the earth by the day we make love in.  I know my skin by my pinching bones.  I know happiness by sadness.  I crawl into the loathsome advocacy of my waining will.  I know kisses by their lips.  I embrace the lost distancing of my pride from the crowd, I am not of that they are of.  Fear has bested us.  In the end, what would our discourse mean for meaning?  If nothing more than nothing is.  By light I search for the darkness to reminisce.  Aspiring to aspire, and when I grow wings I will give them to you to break.”

Scoochathustra weeps.

“I am in truth.  I do not chide at my dreams, I love them more than I’ve loved anyone.  I am the tragedy.  Only by the edge of absolute beauty does tragedy hang.  It dangles lifeless.  And I am with it by my highest of heights.  I look up to it and remember when I was a boy.  When I first found it.  I thought to myself, ‘I am five years old.’  I am measured, and undone, and for nothing.  Would that we were so cruel with our words, would that we knew what honesty was.”

Scoochathustra perks up to the rustling of leaves nearby.

“For the dancing feet twirling by, I am glad to see your ecstasy.  If one were not uplifted by these thoughts then one is not willingly alive.  By the discovery of tragedy is subjugation truly witnessed.  And by testifying does one hang oneself with it.  For tragedy cannot exist without the stars.  Without the fire in your palms.  Without the songs in your mouths.  Without the perfect gaze of animals.  Without the impermanence of mountains.  If you know the tragedy, you know truth and beauty.  You know love beyond any expression of it.  Beyond anything you’ve ever known.  And you would not falter for even a moment.  For you know life.  And your courage is everything to me.”

“By the bleeding of your everything, you will know me.  And we will have it finally.  We will fall from the sky and swallow the world whole.  I am not wasted on metaphors, nor on the meager sustenance of fleeting romance.  Only on the intoxication of my breath.  Give me truth, and I will show you what’s more.  Give me nothing, and I will forget your eternity.”

Thus spoke Scoochathustra