Article and Art by William Compton
It’s a cave-sliding entry. I round-mouth breathe and round-mouth scream. The horizon bites itself around me. I’m a Kansas boy already. In the arms of a milkmaid — I’m in the arms of my mother. Amongst us an agreement that between us no other.
I scream but there’s someone comforting me. I’m sticky — scream on — I’ll hate sticky always. Eventually, I open my eyes to see Papa and Momma, the eternal we Side A staring back at me. At home, an older sister watches movies and waits.
Our parents have beautiful green eyes, but unto their children they cracked them, yolk from white. Yellow-orange in the middle. Outside, ocean blue, the cobalt mixing bowl shining through: a wide brim. My sister’s colors are fierce. An orange sunset still warm on your face, deep water over white sand. My subtle colors? Butter yellow quite willing to hide under stormy seas. Her eyes near-like me, first to see beyond me, through deep sloshing sea. My own to see bright lights and shining green torn lovingly between the eternal we Side B.
We’ll watch black-white koi fish swimming around each other endlessly. Born in our strained eyes, a truth of supremacy in balancing. I’ll know her to be my cosmic balance orbiting, her transformations transforming me. Says nature: head flipping flips tails.
From stormy-blue, golden heaven a creed: worship the inverse of your existing. Worship at the altar of diversity. And binding your balls, Mr. President, binding your mouth, truth rejoices on earth in the heaven-sent fact of equality.
We are kitty and puppy, but committed to switch. The sun and the moon and a popsicle split. The popsicle and the stick. Balance is an uneasy state except where it sits, in souls. It’s a tough sell in this world of money pits and serpents — a tough sell with penthouses to be had. I’ll want the penthouse bachelor pad and the boyfriend and the charity and the nice clothes. I’ll want it all, but there’s no balance like that.
To my future self a creed: when the balance becomes an act, knock a bit from your right. Baby boy, watch it fall. And remember that balance is soul, not society. Society is not balanced at all.
When I find my voice, I’m a chorus of momma, moomoo, mimi, my mommy. I cry for you and lie down for you — I’m a good boy. The nighttime terrifies, but momma’s bed is near.
Because of my mother I fear the devil and those on that same page. Pages turn, eyes burn because of my mother. The quiet part rips loud from my mouth and I loathe to be in an idiot’s charge. Because of my mother I’ll believe I’m loved when I’m unlovable. I’ll love hard the messy man, love the voice, the mouth that loves glass clinking. I’ll say yes to snow-sniffers and rave-goers and men who don’t know any better. Men who hate themselves and can’t treat me any better. Because of Mother Bey I remember: “I will always love you, but I can’t expect you to love me if you don’t love yourself.” Because of mother mine I believe I can fix him, love him into submission. Generational sickness because of my mother, the cure because of her too.
Now, I drink coffee because my mom made the morning cup Dad delivered to bed look so good. Now, every morning is a missed drink away from a headache. No one brings me coffee in bed.
When I find a man like my father he haunts me — the King of Pentacles haunts me. I’m so afraid that I put him in my pocket. So afraid that I dance with him. So afraid that I text him back and so brave that I stop responding. I could beg of this pattern: unleash me. But my destiny seems to be falling between Pentacle Kings.
There’s a man in my mind always waiting for a face. I call him my man. If he has your face you’ve become him. He becomes no one, although I try to make him. Today, he has blue eyes.
It's the day after Good Friday. Sunday will be so good it’s frightening. My man has calm eyes like a swimming ocean. Getting near him magnetizes, or it doesn’t buzz. Sometimes it hmm’s. Sometimes silence is simple with my man and sometimes it’s not.
Dreaming of you makes me hit snooze, Baby Blue. I like the back of you, Purple Shoes. I can’t handle that sometimes you’re lonely. I can’t handle the idea that you’ve woken up in a chilly bed.
His calm eyes might be sadness. He shares something sad and always apologizes. But I want the messy and the complicated. Let me see and I’ll never run. Hide from me and turn me away. I am my mother’s son. I can take a character flaw easier than flawlessness. I can take the stormy and the swimming sea.
But my man is pulling away from me.
It’s a momentary slip, a night spent awake and worried of wide eyes. More than I want to be, I’m my father. My memory of manic times requires context — its content blurs and dimples. You bring me to the edge, baby. The edge of gore and bone shards, the edge of glory. Will arms widen and hands remember their utility? Are you coming nearer or further from me?
Good god, on my guts we’re relying. I know I have to speak but tongue ties. I almost call you friend, then stutter, then lie. If I know cosmic law to be true, tension’s table sets up for two. If patterns hold, we caught this flu together. Into fever-hot Wonka bed fell beside you.
I don’t say anything.
Me thinking sounds like shuffling cards. The King of Pentacles bent in my pocket and now he sticks out of the deck. I shuffle and he slips to the floor. I bury him under clothes, then go back. I put him back in my deck.
I’m sick of writing about the King of Pentacles, so I go on a random first date, not meant to be good. The next weekend, they take me out to a party.
Hallelujah, a new thing to write about is risen. One great night is enough to ink them into my life — I just needed to know they don’t know better. Bruised neck and big hair and morning wood and a kiss goodbye. I’m convinced, then I wake up scared. I like them, then I think of him. I’m on a river flowing towards a forked choice beyond my choosing. So into your hand I commend my spirit, River. Plunge me deep and angle my affection.
I plant my feet and turn my face to the sky. I think of sky and earth and the horizon in between. Through the shaking beam of my eyes I give energy so that I may take. In from my face and my feet, Father and Mother complete the colors swirling through me. They turn me into a vibrating vessel, single love-being complete. The skin of my feet begs of my mother to drown me, to choke me and blast me with lava. Destroy my long-lasting mentality. Vary and cycle my spirituality or destroy the spiritual me, phoenix-ifying.
And may endless Father Sky humble me, isn’t the only thing to fear infinity? I can never be rejected endlessly, yet the sky is willing to befriend me, this infinity deigning to focus on me. Endlessness is the context of all humanity. If all context breeds humility, no action is scary; there’s no earth to shatter with this simple me.
Side A and Side B play together from me: they’ve been made to harmonize, I’m finding. I chew, as if through perfect egg scrambles, the kind only I make. I’m the popsicle to be licked and the stick to hold. The ocean and the sun and the green flash between them. I’m a Kansas boy: midwestern humility and country audacity. My mom and my dad and my sister and me. On the horizon, heaven and earth balance. Maybe our souls are a horizon. I’m learning to balance, to hold my core and feet and my head right above my beam.
The face on my man can’t balance with me. Remember Bey: a man can only love me if he loves himself. If he fills his cup, he has sweet juice to pour on me. The King of Pentacles is a goal, or maybe an eventuality.
But until then, I’ll love my morning coffee.