Birefringence

I.

Mewling wild, naked, into the mad wood. Wishing to halt the incessant pointless ruminations of the mind as if one could, should, regressing into child from misspent adulthood. Driven by tabloid madness and the hash made of existing, wanting cognitive silence, the end of mental science and beginning of void. To exterminate the rationality of thought, stuck in the dream fictitious loop of being, couldn't take the cellophane thoughts without seeing the end of the man, the ghost, the persona, the triad ring. Must end all essence as an individual. Become an anonymous beast of the forest. Shed the cumbersome and deadly weight that overindulgence had made of the body. The carelessness of the human career was over. From then on, not alive, but as all natural creatures should be, ignorant of their own existence. No longer garrotted by a mortal snare, in this thoughtful death, finding life, the will to try, the soul, essential soul to dare.

Leaving status and identity at the roadside, a nude fat man's jiggling lope into the wood. Headlights the way into the primordial roadside scrub. Metal, chrome, plastic, fuel, leather, time stood running, a tuned humming outside the mind. The circuit brain purring reverberates between patient trees. They suck in the exhausted breath, inhaling corruption and releasing purity. Silent masses watch as this soft fleshy child leaves the shiny cocoon for the wilderness cold. The glare of possessions behind, finally eating un-conditioned air, unencumbered nakedness assumed, man-child becoming numb.

2.

Negating humanity, skin, flaccid, profuse, torn by the growth. Decades of saturated fat living ruthlessly torn asunder. Chaotic, clawing nature derided and exploited raw tenderness. A thorn sliced a ragged tear, shrieking like a bitten kitten. Stung, a demented bee eating flesh for nectar. A branch of spiked conifer slapped a teary face. Needles dug furrows in cherub cheeks. Sweaty blood dripped over parched lips and fell salty into a panting mouth. The violation, rude and raw, was refreshing. It piqued the blood. Penetrating the wild fold, being engulfed by its barbs and painful, erotic embrace.

Swallowed by chosen fate. No vast hopes. No longer a man, no cares. Thoughts, humanity's bane, without them, free, unplugged. Re-wiring the head and slam shifting the soul, ripping out the cathode tube mentality, replacing it with an organic miasma. The wood is an inspiration. A flood of xylemic blood, thumping, crude, exquisite, it is priming and inspiring. Life ebbing, existence seeping in, there is hope.

III.

Not choosing the cleared paths made by animal or man, recklessly crashing through barrier after perceived barrier. The scorn of the brambles a trial by fire on the body. The sensation, a revelation in its trembling, humiliating, liberating bite. Harder by the second and grown ripe under its punishment. Smile come upon smile and grin in the insane pain, the building of the feral psyche. A madman forged of sorrow, remorse, and degradation, a harder metal made by no hand but the will to be base.

Not wanting a specific direction, to run otherwise. In an ever-narrowing frame of mind, roads become frozen rivers in time, sluices that drain the senses and lead nowhere but back to where they began. When sore feet cross multi-lane tarmac in the dark, a stopped man there to conquer his own nature. What a travesty hands similar to those wrought on the virgins who stand sentinel. If there be weapons more potent than fists, to have pounded the black hardtop to rubble. Roads lead to the external, if only one to find the one that leads inside.

4.

The refreshed breeze a damp salve on a torn self. Through naked toes mud flushes away memories of well-heeled days. A wholesome and impartial moon lights ways in shades of black, grey, and purple green. Every few steps, closed eyes pressing on. Feeling each insult without seeing its approach. So this is what it is like to be born. Pushing out of the conditioned modern cocoon and into the rarefied air. The process fast-forward evolving the soul as the convoluted twist and turn through the living pelvis evolves. Driven by the pain, fear, determination that there is only one way to go, forward.

Wanting to believe that in the wood, there is no pointless, repetitive automation. There is no expectation or obligation. There is no profit or gain, only the loss of identity and the crude existence of the being. Emerging thoughts and the sparking feelings of freedom they evoke drives the will. Onward.

V.

On the approach of dawn perception of the world narrows to a blood encrusted pinhole. Focused by pain, exhaustion, cold, and hunger looking out through a concise point of dim understanding at bold surroundings. Lying on a stone slab next to a lesser cascading sheet of water. The din of the rain-fed noise sings. Under a small ledge crawling and resting in the shadowy light. Curled, bare arms over bruised legs, closed eyes, blind. The settling of a despair. To whom to complain? On what grounds demand asylum? There was none. Alone. There lies the sanguine remnants of a person. Within a heavy, naked carcass there is an infant. Like all newborns, needing sleep. From man to beast in all but the course of a wilful night. And finally, to rest.

The screaming draw of thirst and paralysis of cold awakens. The sun is high and broils the leaf-shadowed rocks. Heaving on elbow and stretching its skin, the warmth suffuses a dazed body. Like a lizard that needs the day in order to survive the night, prostrating at the lip of the waterfall, sinking lips into its flow, lapping liquid , melting blood, and finding pure water tainted with red salt. Eyes shot wide and organs stretched, awoke with renewed strength and wakefulness. Before there was no God, sure then that water and sun could fill that role quite well.

6.

Back broiled and tongue-pressing love into the stream, an orgasmic stirring of sensation and satisfaction, could not pull away. Only with a stomach uncomfortably bloated from drink, to turn over and the let the light caress a colder side. Above branches cross the view and wondering at the shapes and forms, knowing none of the trees, what they might be, or what their peculiarities were.

Frowning at ignorance, remiss at never learning that which might have been truly important, to have only ever studied that which was prescribed, abstract, and ultimately useless. Wallowing in that muddy thought, new, organic ones took clear shape. Soon laughing aloud to the wood. There's no weight, meaning in the names of the silent fellows. They were mere monikers! Birch, oak, maple, pine, just words, varied in every tongue. Determined not to relegate them to mere Latinate identities, but rather to see them as equals. Give them life. They might be Fred, Bob, John, or Frank. Speak to them as any other and call them you. How are you today? Are you well? The notion brought more laughter from a wet throat and the sound was deep, echoing, and foreign in the wood. It was the sound of joy. It was the roar of un-thought.