Nine Circles of Tail

Gabriela David

‘As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.’

Reads Proverbs. Who? No one reads anymore nowadays, let alone the Book or proverbs at bay. Perhaps if they found themselves truly at bay they would. To which I, here and leisurely-witted, needn’t read, but rather say: look at that which is unreadable-because-unwritten-because-unspeakable. Then those who asked and those who didn’t dare are both appeased, and a town square’s worth of people cheer for me. I grew up in a city so the numbers don’t move me one bit. They’re all, however, left to ponder: what of the dogs that never leave their vomit? What of the dogs that are righteous and blameless, who between punishment, reward, the better half of a metaphor (here simile), or, similarly, a better half metaphorically are assigned none but want all?

A choice is a chance and a chance is a choice. The hellhound has both.

I want to say I have neither. I want to say I’m a victim of many things but my intentions are never one of them. That is to say, everything of mine—in truth nothing, but nothing is something—is strange circumstance, situation, or eventuality. I, effacingly and conveniently passive through it all. But I, too, have both.

Be not mistaken, I wasted and continue to waste no time. In all this inadvertence, some love lived. A lot more of it tried to wedge its way in, but the space was already occupied by nauseating iterations of the new old pride.

But, as a dog forgives himself for returning to his vomit, so I will forgive myself for not intro- or retro-specting but rather turning my folly into a spectacle.

1.

Where is the dog at the gates of hell? At the gates of hell. Rumour has it the concentric circles he’s chased around himself have bored a hole into the limbo floor and plunged him three stanzas down. This is no place for a dog, for the dog is not a spotless non-believer. The dog, however, and the spotless non-believer, too, are both eternal vacillators, thus neither hot nor cold.

2.

An irreducible space between us; an interval of about a body’s lukewarmth and another’s fever; always disjointed, and I don’t know what is whose and whose is what; a spectre terrifying, all other prospects twice so. 

Just within reach and grasp for a hand that rarely did. So then if I take the heart of the matter into my own:

If I give you my palm to eat from if I give you my hand to grab if I give you my shoulder to touch if I give you my hips to grip if I give you my breast to biteoh don’t weep now that’s a bit here let me do that for you if I give you my loins to

3.

Yesterday was a day of wounds. Today is a day of salt. Tomorrow we’ll start digging for all the earth’s and think never about blood pressure.

4.

The people in the town square are arguing about the cruelty of despair as a sin. I, too, was seventeen, but then I read Kierkegaard. It didn’t really make me much kinder, nor more willing to explain what I now find intuitive. Despair remained my finest disposition.

What I wrote was absolutes, what I thought was it would just be easier if you died. I would be very sad if that happened, but it would be easier.

5.

As for the absolutes, why can’t I simply have everything? Where to go to prevent death from arriving, as in the hereafter? Odd time; made hodiernal perhaps more so. But, to the life to come, I urge come now, bring no death to be delivered from.

And to you give me your face with our hours lay your moist eye inside mine I’ll look after it name something you can stand about me what’s yours is mine what isn’t is the impossible somewhere between the axis of the earth and the cracks in the firmament I’ll nestle your silence too into my body give me the lick you’re trying to get back I said give it to me hung in the vestibule a bloody spouse art thou to me and so thou shalt remain.

No, you won’t die the death. Not stood in front of me. You will give me what I want.

6.

‘But who am I to rebuke the guilty? The worst part is that I have to forgive them. We must reach such a nothing that we indifferently love or don’t love the criminal who kills us. But I’m not so sure of myself: I have to ask, though I don’t know who can answer, if I really have to love the one who slays me and ask who amongst you slays me. And my life stronger than myself, replies that it wants revenge at all costs and replies that I must struggle like someone drowning, even if I die in the end. If that’s the way it is, so be it.’

This seemingly slothful practice could confuse some people. This is as is because the dog has spent all his contemplative time raging at his and others’ tails. Also because this is what ‘as is’ means. Even though the dog should not be quoting Clarice Lispector, he’s still on schedule. 

And what else is there to speak for the dog’s angry heart, other than every hand he’s bitten and bark he’s barked up?

7.

The hellhound Ubers through Highgate and doesn’t understand how there are young people around.

8.

Whether from the depths of memory reserved for all that hasn’t been, whether in the subtler tonalities of your laughter, whether that I have given you my life and you me some of yours and we have something of an our to hourselves, I never have to dream about you. Of course, I dream about you. But, in the dreams I dream, you come and you speak as you are to, and you do as you are to, and there is not one bit of fantasy.

my unsuspecting near-saint, you are holy beyond compare, too sacred to be given a name

And one day I wake up from this dream I’ve dreamt and there is a zit on my chin, trouble with either diet or hormones (but what are we, a bunch of endocrinologists?), I, in pristine health, you, a step or a world away from me, I pray for milder winters and I pray for hot flushes or hirsutism, but you still come with a bite mark from a dog that’s bitten you with a love that isn’t mine.

my mirror twin, my little dove, my golden-mouthed graven image

Where I go there is no knowledge, no wisdom, no canis lupus familiaris, I sleep a sleep without dreams, for once only up to my own life, my skin and hands now clean again, and you don’t say a thing, the sign of eternity and a mere void now separating us.

they went out from us, but they did not belong to us, for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us, but their going showed that none of them belonged to us

The divine for me is whatever I can hold in my arms.

9.

Among a thousand brothers in the town square, I am much loved. Perhaps it does move me a little bit. Is it that they’ll canonise me?

Obviously, they don’t.