Mark Owen Martin
and Lauren B. Flax

Music: Elements
By Mark Owen Martin

Response

Elements
By Lauren B. Flax

Inspiration piece

I. Female

What has inspired more art than a soft, round body? Cities rise and fall on the gaze of the lover. Battles are fought, won, lost, and men are drawn back across the boiling sea under moonlight to home, to the center, to the splendid magnetism of the womb.

Art begins with a birth. Big, round bubbles rise boiling from the soul, bubbles round like an apple, a ring, my belly, my eyes, and the fat, round promises we use to keep each other close.

The story was always there, inside: apply heat and watch it take form as it rises to the surface.

II. Male

At first it was an accident. Lightening struck and burned away the underbrush; it turned the beach into glass. Then you learned to capture it and make it useful. There are tools and celebrations, cities catch fire and collapse.

You shape the idea by burning away the excess. You cauterize the wound, and reveal the glass that existed in the sand. Your fire unlocks the sculpture in the steel, and makes it bend, glowing red-hot.

Art becomes visible by the light of the fire: still, the sun must set and you dream by the moon.

III. Union

We scream our way through a lifetime of injuries, pulling art out of our wounds. Everyone, look: my life has blown up, the garden is razed, and the only thing I have left to eat is the rest of this apple. This is my story right now. Will it draw you in from the sea, or set our city on fire?

Combine the water and the fire, and use the ash to paint on the walls of this city. Let it stain your fingers, and I will use it to write my story on your back. This is our way. Make a mess, let it burn, and something new arises.

This is the story art tells about our time in the body, and it is the only story: all we want is to dissolve into each other.

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One Comment

  1. Posted June 2, 2010 at 8:41 am | #

    I love Lauren’s wonderfully original prose.