Neon Aloha: Angelfish

I looked up, then shut my eyes, to open the eyes of touch, scent and taste. Lips parted like the rose-tinted ovular rings of a titian hued gas giant, begging in silent worship for the godly contents of Jupiter. And it was as though this act alone was the bronze mallet striking the empyrean bell in his swollen recesses. Bays of release boomed air born earthquake, the conch shell refrain of Taurus - it rattled my existence to it's very foundations, but the oily tentacles of fear were surpassed by the effulgent inertia of want. At last, the mana of Wakea spilled forth in torrents fit to test Noah, a thousand divine kisses upon my heavenward visage. My tongue -- a squirming angelfish out of water dreaming of aquamarine Pacific fathoms -- swam finally, raptly, as the goblet of my mouth filled with the warm liquid that tasted of nothing yet everything.

The color of Beginning.

The gift of life assuaged Pele's stygian inferno, swarming magmatic consciousness congealing into coherent obsidian psycho-morphology. Gentle ribbons of life cascaded a zig-zag path down the slope of the newly florid valley of my throat; a vibrantly viridian and living masterpiece sculpted by the same hands that seemed to cradle lovingly my lolled skull. I savored keenly the smell of it, the pungent peppermint tang of fresh rain tickling heated Gaia; the sound of it a continuous pitter-patter of sweet nothings. The sopping yet sun-warm embrace of matted Etruscan satin was oddly pleasant, like the cocoon formed by another mammal's body. Contentment.

I ignored the attentions of the umbrella and digicam wielding herds of tourists shuffling by me on the sidewalk, eager for the slice of paradise they paid for. Snapping pictures of themselves with Robinson Crusoe and Jurassic Park backdrop, beaming the images home through cell phones like trophies of the Hawaii Experience. I could almost feel their collective opinions of this mad, obscene woman, dancing in the rain; lukewarm liquid sunshine had wreaked a racy skintight havok of my knee-length ebon skirt. Regardless, swirling nebulas of cumulus cloud caressed each other in the endless depths of the sky, still overflowing forth as I continued on the cement path of the Pali Lookout.

As I reached the monorail stop, the blankets of water subsided. The empty clouds burned with a sanguine scarlet yearning as the sun abandoned them, inexorably moving on to be with the next facet of the earth. The once comforting warmth of my wet clothes began to dissipate into a deep, fanged cold. I felt pangs of stupidity then, blindly frolicking through the downpour like some juvenile nymph. The bullet train whirred into the station, and I got on, shivering from a gust of concentrated trade-wind that was ice-daggers. The dry masses, heavily defended by dripping umbras of polyester, glanced and shook their heads at me. And as I sniffled the first vestiges of a head-cold, wiping the gift of some dead god from my eyes, I stared at the chrome alloy beneath my feet and shook my head too.

~Marianna

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A plastic click delivers this condensed and edited celluloid strip of life to the great bulletin board of the universe, or at the least, billions of people, theoretically. More actually, dozens, as the hit-counter on her blog declares in an archaic cursive Italian font.

The final directions of this most recent soul-byte drive toward negative and recursive constellations of memory. On the sub-retinal canvas of locked eyelids, jump-cut nihilist syndications rerun, whose sound track is the whiplash cacophony of screamed and unintended words set into a cello dirge. Familial faces, twisted with canine rage, splash forth in harrowing migraine-light- their tongues then flames of bridges burning- the reek of child-toy plastic dying, whirlpools of venom-flavored iridescence- homogenizing into the broth of liquid self-destruction that is tsunami amphetamine- phantom zygomatic-bone pain from the fists of violent and handsome men- crossfades to real, heart pain blooming like nightshade from a cancerous co-dependent black hole composed of those mens' absence.

Reflexive reach, written at fifteen, for a small rattling bottle that isn't there.

As salves of positive mantra and mechanisms of lateral cognitive escape from the riptide kick in, Marianna wonders if confessional writing and emotional instability are not mutually exclusive, and if not, which is the aftertaste of the other?

Another three mouse clicks strikes up a playlist of compressed audio that fills the small apartment with a synthetic sub-woofed heartbeat, at 130 heartbeats-per-minute. Upon this background, Afro-Celt hybrid percussion is layered, then the centerpiece: enchanting spells cast in a willow dryad's voice, painted in some indigenous Icelandic dialect. Milk embodied in un-parse-able song; lullaby. Ritual as old as the birth of motherhood itself, aural caresses upon green ears whose mind is yet deaf to abstract symbol, mammals virgin to sapience. It serves to help dissipate these depression vortices, like the light-cast enlightened arm of Buddha, charming a hurricane.

A paisley and atramentous puddle, splashed upon mother-of-pearl tile, blossoms a translucent corona, of rainwater. Legs of a dancer, contours an elegant negotiation of functionality and aesthetics, swan wings. A shade tanned by real sunlight, chameleonic, osmosing in varying lighting conditions between Irish cream, French caramel, and ripe coconut.

Once aureate fixtures, blemished an irrevocable mottled copper by a vanished economy, whisper dull glints of their former resplendence as they yawn in creaks. The water of this shower, she knows, is not at all as sweet as the sky's which recently anointed her; desalinated yes, but something in it stings like inhaled cigar smoke. It nevertheless is fit for it's purpose. The shimmering intimate rain melts pleasantly into the next piece which is of similar northern latitude but East-Asian longitude, a crescendo and accelerando of wood blocks into haunting Edo laments. Flutes of bamboo played by priests of nothingness. Blindingly simple in construction, but requiring lifetimes to master, as well as attention spans largely extinct.

As she get's dressed, she refreshes 'googlespace.com/mariannamalia' to find already a single comment incremented. This so far anonymous poster Marianna knows will almost invariably be Lani. She checks, and it is. Lani is a friend, coworker, and would be considered a 'homegirl', if Marianna thought in such terms. Lani was born in the Hawaii, in the Canopy, unlike Marianna, which greatly attracts her.

Black tea with lemon rejuvenates and warms as she packs her scant leafy costume into her simple handwoven purse, and switching off her notebook, it folds into something the size of a hand mirror. She retrieves a smaller and almost Japanesely tiny cell.

Lani does not answer. "I got the comment but didn't have time to read it, sorry. Leaving now, I'll see you there."

Time for work.

Marianna exits the Sheraton Waikiki, and what was once the grandest suite made for presidents, celebrities, and Elvis. The elevator does not work, but if it did, it would stop at the fourth floor, because the third is all too permanently flooded.

Marianna is, in fact, a dancer, her legs crafted by such.

And by other exercise as routine, lucrative, and total-body.

But she is more than the sum of these parts, elegant as they are.