A Killer Metaphor

"And I think of your letters as love letters, which is how I think of songs, in that it is the writing of them that tends to carry us along"

I am a clown in a dunking booth. They want me to fail. They pay for it. The little kid with the big glasses wants to be just like his daddy, so he throws at the target. He doesn't know I have feelings. He doesn't realize that I'm broken and afraid of falling. One ball, two... good.. he misses. But his father, oh his father, who's breath I can smell from inside the cage... bourbon...and tons of it. He nudges his son and asks if he wants to see breasts. He wants to expose me, and we both know he won't miss. I fold my arms and pretend to not notice their eyes searching for my nipples. I am humiliated. It is the world...the stupid, silly world.

A killer metaphor.

Anyhow. I grabbed a shovel last night and started digging in clay. See the difference between clay and mud is: mud is sloppy, loose. Clay is smooth, stronger. Clay has a mind of its own. It can be molded and shaped into whatever it damn well pleases. Patient hands are needed for this one. So, I'm digging and cutting this orange matter, and I notice every once in awhile a slight redness appears. I open a conversation with it. But as soon as it open its mouth, the redness blends back into orange. My lips curve a smile, because I have now caught its bluff. Now I cut the shovel deeper into the clay. The red comes back. I throw down the shovel and surrender my anxious hands. I tell it, please... stay. Talk to me in your true form, you look like a sunrise when you use words like that. It says, I'll talk, but I cannot possibly stay.

But what if I take you from here, and hold you...dry you...with my fingerprints all over you? My friend, you will still be free....but at least you will be mine. And I, yours. We could mold each other, we could make shapes unheard of. I could make you wings, or arms. We could fly together, or hold each other. We could be a part of beauty, or we could make it. It is the silent, never faltering connection of art and the artist.

But who's to say I could take care of you? You may melt all over my dresser. You may lose your color, and then I would lose my interest. You are clay, and you belong in nature. You don't belong in between chests and ribs. But God....the smell of you....the feel of you between my fingers.... how can I not want to keep you?

And I was afraid that clay, was merely clay. It told me it cannot be kept. Regardless the intensity, the passion, the admiration. And I told it, I'm not asking to keep you. As always, I am read in the wrong tone. So I got down on my knees and whispered my intentions to it this time, as if I were a ten year old girl trying to keep the "bestest best secret ever." You see, clay, it's not about keeping you. It's about you knowing who you could be. It's about you knowing what we could create together. See hands are nothing, if they have only empty space inside them. Clay is nothing, if it doesn't have a pair of hands to revive it. I want there to be an understanding, dearest clay, that the one is in need of the other. And vice versa. Of course there are millions of hands out there, and miles of clay...but there is something so special about the way you feel.... inside my hands. And I know, just as you know deep in your clay heart, that my hands are the only pair of hands that truly appreciate who and what you are.
No, I do not wish to keep you. Not on some dresser, or some shelf, or some mantle. I wish to make love with you, I wish to make hate with you. I want to create chaos, grief, desolution, desire, mirages, and even definitions with you. We could go beyond "beauty" itself.
But you have to be ready. You are already lovely, in your orange/red shell....but if you're not ready then you cannot hold form.

And the problem with clay is, you won't know it's ready until you put your hands on it and try it out. It either is, or it's not...it either bends or it flops onto the wooden floor.


And I am terrified of the possibility that clay is merely clay.