Bruce

Bruce A lumbering man, audibly achily, stepped to the floor’s center. Had there been a spotlight, he’d’a shone. His arms unfurled. His hips spun. His soles, silent as he padded here, then twisted to place a foot there. A phoenix swooped, festooned in fire’s colors. A monkey stole a man’s visage, and made play there. Time and fluids compressed. Bones were rent. In mind, in space, in intent. Daggers were buried. Whips whipped. Elbows as bellows, bent and unbent. Jawline funneling sweat. Palms embracing, rejecting. Face and joint creases unceasingly creasing. Eyebrows dancing, storytelling. Toes and mouth corners curling. Sigils of sages haunted, as ghosts. There in the air between where and where else. Taking note of lost language, alive for a time. The ancestors awoke though none need’ve spoke. Their tongue was in motion and emotion that sets motion in motion. A man wrang meaning from Void. And the teachings returned. Lifeblood can run long after rot. The teachings were present in empty air though the teachers seemed not. His skin, carp-scaled and swimming in the unknown humid sea that was the air; that was the air that the serpents sliced. A Savannah pierced up from the ground around, ‘til now, hardwood... though now sheaves of camel brown. His hair a mane. His bare hands a bear’s hands. His nails pushed out, piercing like regret through memory- an eagle’s yellow, knife-edge talons. Tsunami in a thimble. Hurricane held within moth-wings. A ram, on scree. Up the jagged slope. A crane, in reeds. Down the ragged slope. A horse, in dust. Somewhere. A deer, in underbrush. Just there. A leopard, in canopy. Nowhere. Birds scattered, but turned back to watch. Clouds lingered, darkened. Stars winked, unseen. Worlds whirled by in galaxy’s arms. His arms, held reservoirs of might. Tattooed. Muscle-lined. A burial chamber’s coffin carving come to life... ...once more. Improved. Angered. Delighting at life and its coursing force. A cat, unperturbed, groomed itself nearby. Insects found new depths of holes into which they could disappear from view but not the rumbling vibrations of foot stomp, jump step, and sole thud. He summoned grace from a world unknown, unexpected. From Impossible Places. Youth came to him, as does dew in the dark, to the ten thousand green blades. In his coils, Dragons. Black. And blue. In his fists, Thunder. Roiling and rolling. In his heart, Tigress. Stalking. And snarling. In his legs, Mountains. Craggy and windworn. In his breath, a comet’s tail. In his eyes, your dead gods.