Antalya Dreamscape 1999

Today I set forth to write something as unforgettable as this landscape. A premeditated wall of stones, a majestic infinitude of water, is laid out across the horizon like a kilim left in the wastes of a long forgotten Ottoman fortress. It is strewn out into the distance as warm welcome to an unopened door protected by all the lies of modern history.

I sit as a deranged catalyst, somewhere between a row of Doric columns crippled by the elegant touch of wind and sand, and a lake of familiar strangers taking in a very rare moment of serenity. Somewhere in the middle I am watching souls made of fire wrestle with one another. They swing subtle motivations above their heads in concentric circles around the rusty columns. The columns are buried ornately, precisely, geometrically as schoolchildren,

as unsold condominiums,

as soup cans on a dusty shelf.

The crystalline disregard of lapping water surrenders to the hardening wills of these caged wanderers masked in swimwear. They sheath their daggers with laughs and absurd promises. I ponder if they are too near to me as I dry out on a rock that was fortunate enough to elude the indignity of a human hand carving pagan symbols into it, and I am waiting to say or hear something worth remembering.

Can you see the claw marks on the backs of these ungrateful visitors?

The bruises?

The swelled heads dismayed and frayed from a jumbled fury of nasty words flung across rooms like an old set of China?

Out here silence kills dumb ears in the ocean breeze of dusk. They are accustomed to names being bounced off walls as bats that squeal to elude a formidable communion with some belligerent stalactite.

The hand that writes this trembles, shakes itself naked of the serial backbiting of strangers equipped with distance, and languid tongues, and men with guns on every corner, standing at attention, commemorating the conquests of 3,000 years molded into the Ionic, Corinthian pillars of dark reverie. Still these false companions of mine stroll arm and arm, pretending the pain they have caused one another was yesterdays fashion hung on bargain racks to be sold and recycled. The ghosts dancing emphatically around the stone monuments of war know, however, that the wound may be sterilized, but the scar remains for inexplicable eons.

The ruins. This ruin of souls. The entropy of genitals and promises. Misery passed along like a family heirloom. The collective madness choking on smog and lies. The harshness of teeth smeared over bottom lips. They are now tired too long, too much, too heavy. Too late to wait on fingers that orchestrate and push people like buttons as gluttons of death and desire. No Breath to escape decisions draped on desks to rest, to be signed and stamped. I’m lost, cramped between the careening destiny of these corroded columns, and the sand that bands together like five fingers on a hand whisks away the blandness of unchanging reasons and seasons unnamed. This will end in twisted metal and chipped skulls spewing blood and hatred from its nose. You can be sure of it.

I want to go home,

Or at least to have the pathos of this landscape finally crumble and let words be the true representatives of what is in our heads, before somebody is dead.

I want to go home,
But where is home these days?

Am I truly from the tar and tin that rapes the earth and breeds the sin,
Or can I be reborn in the rocks and wisdom of wind?

This began as a search for a world or a word that someone might remember. Somewhere the compass was cracked by empty mouths deceiving each other, leaving a trail of antiquated allusions displaced across this unforgettable landscape along with the shipwrecked sunbathers in search of a tan. Today I set forth to write something unforgettable, but the visions that plague me calling to be displayed on these pages, are lifeless jewels gone bad that I can only beg to godless forces of calumny to let me leave behind. The bane has become unbearable. This began as a search for something unforgettable.