waiting on the world to change, Pollock

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray


He doesn't hide here. He leaves his things scattered.
The gift giver reaps bones and last breaths and strews them like litter at the feet of trees.

He feeds this place. Nurtures it. He watches over it, a quiet and malcontent vigil, as it covers his things in dust and shade and rays of light in between rib bones. In recompense, it holds audience to his feverish dreams and sweaty haunts eagerly. Its skin takes his abuse of scars, strips of husked wood, like a lion marks his territory. This place wraps itself around him (it always has, from bitter boyhood to demi-godliness) – it takes his violence, their screams and the cracks of their skulls on his headgear and weaves that into into bark, stone and lichen.

Into those beams of light that touch dead and live things so softly and exposes her, dancing over her shoulders and hips.

This is his home. This is, if anywhere is, it must be here. It cannot be surprising that it is in the murk of green shade and damp soil that the stallion finds his hold. Long ago, he had dug himself into peat and needles and against the cold, rough trunk of a jack pine, and there he had waited, invisible, until light came back. It is as soothing as it is disturbing – familiarity, but it mirrors a time and horse he abhors and wishes nothing more than to burn to ash and scorched ground. He likes the damp but from time to time he thinks he sees her pale form slipping by, wings dragging as useless as his from neglect (playing the same eerie music as his but louder and mightier). 
He wakes up shaken and in those hazy moments he thinks he can feel his body much younger and longer than it is.

Then he twists his head and carves bark from a tree and he is reminded of his gifts.
He is reminded of his remade self and of his place above fear.

He watches her. The sound of her passing by draws him from the green and black-brown flesh, provoked by the blood under her plump and smooth skin and by the temptation of her more pleasant scent. He likes his jewels (black and green and gold) nestled here and there. But they smell. They are beautiful and his and then they spoil.

He steps out in front of her, his black-brown eyes searching her resolved face. He wants to see it razed to the dirt. He can do battle. His lip quirks upwards.
“Hello,” his voice is gravelly and tight through his throat. He still smells rot, but as he steps towards her, he can smell honey and flowers, acrid smells of smoke and defeat somewhere to sour it all. “Hope I’m not disturbing you?”


POLLOCK
Lone Artist and Phina’s