The Golden Age of Menace Something blocks me from knowing everything there is to know of another even of you, with whom I have spent some twenty-two hundred— or two thousand, two hundred days, at home and abroad, searching for a skyline fit for bohemian ways and dreams that stretch beyond, slightly under and, on the bad days, adjacent to, if not directly so, the skylines we’ve known all our lives, luckily spent in the same geographies and the same seasons I don’t expect a reward for this behavior but regularly find myself asking when the recognition— and by recognition, I don’t mean, again, reward but, rather, interaction, discourse, hearsay (well, maybe not the last one) —will come I don’t understand why perceived failures pass us by as if we never had a say in them as if we never recognized ourselves in the heat of the moment of their passing as able to take up the mantle, steer the ship of our lives as a place for choices choice may play a role, yes, I don’t doubt that, but I definitely don’t doubt fate, and yet, I’ve felt much closer to choice all my life, but who says they’re in conflict with one another? I wonder these things as I try to recall whether or not I blew out the candle in the living room before heading to bed wouldn’t want to burn the house down but wouldn’t it burn regardless with Fate at the wheel? And wouldn’t it find its way around Choice if she decided to make an appearance through me, through my actions as captain of some vessel floating among a sea of passengers all equally struggling with their own decisions? I blow out a candle, and excessive current causes wires to overheat, leading to melted insulation and sparks, resulting in a full-blown electrical fire. Of course, these fires pose a major risk to you and your family, your family. That’s right. You have a family. The experiments in choice have led you to a family. A family you’re dragging through this feeble century that feels so poorly developed, like some Kaspar-Hauser child sans the mystery, the intrigue of scandal which now lives out in the open air… is it scandal— is it corruption— out in the open like that? For all to see? Or was it always like this? Back in the days when you could try to beat The Turk in chess be seen as blessed as you sauntered down the alley way to the place you know is just a vice… “At least,” you say, “it’s not the worst one…” I cannot recall where I was going I cannot remember my dreams I hardly dream anymore and prefer it that way, anyway. I’m not sitting around and waiting. I’m taking action toward a something better, a something good, in spite of the already good to shed the skin of the disciple to hang it up to dry overnight for no apparent reason to finish another’s sentences against their will, apathetic to their wishes. It’s not a respect thing—I exude respect and admiration for the elites on their streets paranoid beneath the bedsheets… It’s warranted, I suppose. There’s not so much good in the world but there can be good in your world and this is why, perhaps, we are better than God—higher than God because God created a world not which is violent and unhinged but one which is lackluster and mediocre and allows for oxygen to mingle with other things and form all variation of life that’s pretty good. But only that. The birds scream, as Herzog says, and we mustn’t forget that. Why does the dust settle? Why do the ashes come and go so quickly? Phoenixes—Phoenices?—rising and falling from past lives prioritized as a July evening grips you by your ankles in the Midwest heat and coming snow coming rain coming from the sky the sun—Fortune’s number-one stronghold, a compass rose depicting a red magnetic north among otherwise yellow directional arrows The Rite of Spring bears rotten fruit and it’s fine that we left it in the past, as a rose is a rose is a rose no matter where is grows but how can we ensure our flowers go untouched when the right to bear arms is privileged over a drinkable well unblemished, not poisoned, in tandem with dewdrops unspoiled by modern machines marching, consolidations, meeting in the middle of a middle hellbent on oblivion on sending us to waste, abandoned, disgraced, unlike everything we talk about loving as circumstances show a trend toward the triumph of the will and of the fantasy of hierarchy of that syrup dripping from your mouth that manipulates the masses and turns them into assets for an empire in its sunset years, its autumn moon it’s harvest time in these Balkans it’s Canterbury Tales without a point its people scream and shout, reckless abandon, its creameries cremated for some clout by foragers, by those selling toys and hocking things you’ve not seen a respite from the manufactured sheen of supermarkets, but all of this swallowed by the Culture Ministry, her new henchmen, and the stakeholders unnamed I’d name them if I could I’d name them if I knew their names If they are reading this, I want them to know that I’d name them if I could and think we always should but all this considered, I don’t let my heart harden, and I don’t let it go to waste, at the bottom of an apple barrel, going rotten, turning its back on the world, in which, by the way, it certainly doesn’t want to participate, but I’m not the kind to take up arms in a tinderbox, in The Golden Age of Menace, which doesn’t come from abroad but from at home, in my own backyard, in my own chest, and just as the seizures I’ve witnessed have woken me up to my own fragility, so the mirror in front of me reinforces the primary illusion of all life Two Streets I’m standing at the corner intersection, I suppose, of two streets: one leading to Montreal, the other to New Orleans, with a mountain in the middle, while the audience expects a few magic tricks. The problem is that I’m sick of magic, and tricks make me sick, but walking keeps me going, keeps me showing up, stepping, one foot forward, another back to a future I’ve already lived and a past which is only mysterious But a Beast Howling as the earth shakes I pick a plum from the nearby tree and carry on singing about something sweet but dead all those twentieth century ways of loving—and living —that might just prove to be sinister in the eyes of Time Why It’s Good to Go Out Walking I go out walking and it doesn’t do much to quell the craving, to bring anything new to the dusty table, with its flies buzzing all around, but that’s exactly why it’s good to go out walking, to see that there’s nothing waiting, there’s nothing there, and when you return home, there is so much there, so much more than you ever knew
Jake Triola is a writer, musician, and filmmaker from Erie, Pennsylvania currently living in Glasgow, Scotland. He studied cinema, photography, and comparative literature at Ithaca College, where he made the award-winning thesis film, Drawdown. He has since released nine albums and five EPs under the name “Kill Symbols.” His poetry has appeared in Hidden Peak Press, Spinozablue, and The Odd Review.
