Breakthrough
C. J. Leon


Copyright C. J. Leon, 2007, Vancouver
museslave@gmail
myspace/cjleonspoken
youtube/thesurrationalone
**********************************


Breakthrough

1

We're all trees and flowers, on the inside.
By which I mean, uncap our skulls,
our brains are like hydrangeas;
pop open the ribcage,
find our lungs like upside-down poplars;
our eyes like chrysanthemums
or black-eyed Susans;
the heart a fruit;
our genitals are like
sensitive irises both inside and out;
our muscles like the mealy pulp of redwood;
our veins like weedy goldenrod;
nerves like vibrant evergreens.

2

The bubbles jogging up some little Asian girl's milk-shade shake
remind me of the bubbles in the China in my syringes,
Burroughs' 'If bubbles in needles killed ya,
all the junkies would have died
years ago!'

and the tight trained lips
of trans Thai boy-
girls.

The silver spokes of a bicycle wheel
remind me that our glimmers
wear a tough black
crust.

Then it's autumn and the leaves turn.
They rot on their limbs, colourful,
like gangrenous hands
waving goodbye.

The sky is sunless,
white for days.

Oak leaves
track the pavement,
leave tattoos.

Autumn's dirge
shivers the naked arms.

Congealed mist covers the rows
of automobiles like a paste
splattered, smeared,

and stuck
cold.

3

She was an artist.
She wasn't very good.
She made a living selling shoes.
And she dreamed of the breakthrough.
She had an accidental kid along the way, a boy.
Artists are big fans of unprotected sex.
They like to leave things to God.
They try to be observant.
They try hard to do
things, whatever
things may be.

She recognised his depression when she saw it.
Her doctor had given her a checklist way back.
She recognised his drug abuse,
nothing she hadn't done herself.

But she didn't
think he would finish it off so soon.
She didn't,
until she saw the envelope outside the door.
They never talked, she and her son, so she knew.
She knew the only thing that would be
in that white envelope outside
his door locked from
the inside.

He left it outside the door
so she wouldn't have to go inside.
She could just phone the cops or ambulance.
This was his final consideration for the living.
She wouldn't have to see him,
if she didn't want to.

She broke her collarbone before she broke the door.
She dislocated her shoulder in the second to last attempt.
She shrieked like her limbs were being severed by lightning.
Her age-weak, grief-raged body slammed, cracked, splintered wood.

She fell through the doorway,
fell down on her hands and knees
sweating and drooling blood and spit.

He exited,
sitting upright,
an exit-wound
hole for a crown.
He flew like an oil well,
a murder of escaping crows.
He spread wild turkey feathers,
stuck them, black, to the wall behind him
when his body spilled
like an overfull cup
all down white
forehead
edges.

She saw there,
churned a beauty from its misery,
her life work: blood clotting
in the clear sunlight
of damp winter
afternoon:

he was facing south
right into her eyes:

Her Son, His Dead Life.

4

Her agent was a dick, a jerk,
and she was a woman, if that matters.
She was a lesbian, and fantastically social.
She wore a suit and tie. It worked. It was great.
As is the bald necessity
of avant-garde installation art,
the piece was highly promoted, by said suit,
as a breakthrough, as a masterpiece.

Patrons were led through a hallway.
Its various small chambers were divided by
to and fro passages delimited
with black curtains.

The distances were divine measures
borrowed from cathedrals, pyramids, tombs.
//
\\
//
First, the patrons saw two yellow haystacks;
those were his feet; nobody really understood this.
\\
//
\\
Second, the patrons saw two timber saws
and two giant redwood driftwood logs;
these were supposed to be his legs.
//
\\
//
Then they saw a whole room full
of irises; these were his sex.
\\
//
\\
Two dead cedars were
hung after this, lungs,
their roots dipped
into the ceiling
like heaven.
.
There was a pomegranate
in the middle of the floor.
It had been stepped on.
It was sitting in a sticky pool
of its own evaporated juices.
//
\\
//
Then they saw Peter, the apostle, crucified head- down on a cross like an X;
and you knew it was supposed to be him, the O.G.
J-dog freak, traitor,
because of the audio of a rooster that was playing. This
was arms or part of the lungs or optic nerve
or perhaps symbolically representative
of the separation of body-mind.
The critics are still debating;
and they suppose
many things.
\\
//
\\
Then another room full
of mauve echinacea,
being natural eyes.
//
\\
//
Then they saw
one brilliant red geranium
with its green spine jutting from leaves
in a cheap plastic pot on a kitsch Ionian column.
It was missing some petals
off the top.
\\
//
\\
Then
a wall.
The wall.
The suicide wall.
Cut out of the house.
All splattered with gore.

Bits of handwriting, hair, and a few CDs
were littered like dry leaves beneath a tree,
the fountain of death like a black bare elm,
the red lava burst crusted into igneous rock.

A crooked steel plaque was suspended
by one fishhook in the bullet hole
one fishhook in the eye
of the frame, 23cm
of clear fishing line between.
Of rooms and a wall it created art,
the highest form of misery. Etched
with minimalist font, sublimating
child-amputation into artform,
it described:
black specks
over and across the wall
(when you were close enough
to touch them, smell them)
–the plaque read simply:

Life, A Constellation.


(The artist herself remained absent
throughout the duration of the exhibit
and could not be reached for comment.)












About the author:

C. J. Leon is a surprisingly happy person.