Halloween, South Beach
Written by Kimberly Campanello on Sunday the 25th of November 2012
Halloween, South Beach
...Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee;
air, earth, and skies;
There's not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee...
- William Wordsworth, 'To Toussaint L'Ouverture'
They're wearing skull masks and
bone coats and blood lipstick and hair suits. It's Halloween and the body is
getting denied all over again as sexy pirate costumes make a mockery of
revolution. I just want to watch the clouds flirt with the moon, think alone
about the water cycle and how I get to drink Abe Lincoln's piss and this guy
wants to talk New Age bullshit and Jesus, the primary metaphysician: He walked on water. If I cut off my arm, I
am still me. We are spiritual, not physical beings. I zone out (or my
spiritual being zones out) and I nod and nod. To waste breath on a
counterargument implies that breath is valuable, hardly a spiritual notion in
the primary metaphysical sense. To you and only you I will say this because it
is important: that guy over there with the dreadlocks down to his ankles would
be at a loss if they were cut away. Those tubes of hair and air and sweat have
their own climate and weigh nearly as much as I do. They carry 10,000 nights of
loneliness or fucking or living however he lives. And even though you and I
have exchanged blood and hair and cum and silm, you can't just unzip me and
climb in like I'm a Catholic schoolgirl outfit on the sale rack. And yet when
you trimmed your beard I was so pissed off. I was all over that hair, clinging
for dear life. Now we float together in some Dublin sewer. And fingernails-a
vital vodóu ingredient-I'm not under
yours anymore, but I have made it onto your guitar strings. Tomorrow, c'est le Toussaint, All Saints Day, Día de los muertos, and candles and
eternal flames are selling out and I won't be told Jesus was the primary
metaphysician as we drink his blood and eat his flesh. Toussaint L'Ouverture
didn't lead a slave revolt and beat Napoleon in a sexy pirate costume to free
only the spirit. Bodies were chained and owned. Bodies were sold. The common
wind-and-water cycle. The clouds flirting with the moon. Eternal flames,
everlasting ink.
--published in Tears in the Fence no. 54