Revisiting the Scenes of Omission and Commission

Am I the sole witness to these murderous metaphors or do I write the scenes as they
unfold?

That could be the reason for my existence here – that I need to look again and again to
make sense of these shadows.

Perhaps, I could begin with the allusions: are those archers borrowing the conceit from
an ancient mythology? You know, Cupid and Psyche, Coupling and Psycho, all three
figures, their arms stretched with an imaginary bow and arrow, trained onto Lovers, to
wait in ambush for the consolation of their embrace, for the fruition of their course.

Or Infidels. Sad, sad love of lovers in trysting, framed only by billowing clouds that can
never hold them. That is why love and passion are precarious cliffs. Tandem they are.
One stands and exchanges kisses with another because soon they are about to fall in
love and in hate. Or another plots death while ignoring life.

How hateful are these unreal questions. How vengeful these truths and lies are. How
true the unreal in these imagined realities. How moving.

First, where does the horizon begin and the land end? Around these tender hills, two
women lay down their trap, their home.

Out there, another woman contemplates the solitude of a shell. That is how aloneness
begins, or where power is concentrated on a solitary table for an unseen festival, for an
absent feast, for a festering presence.

Further down the true and constant routes of stars and tears, let us investigate a toxic
beauty, a temptation so divine for how else do we explain our faith than by the disbelief.
Or you might say, let me count the maze and let me destroy the ways.

Suspicion and doubt are companion pilgrims in this our search for the origin of sins, the source of flaws, the direction of errors. The trajectory of cliche is riddled with puzzles.
Solve them because you have entered the frame of knowing. Address them as you have already traveled the path both of righteousness and indignation. Of dignity and platitude.

The mountains in this land are red and gray, the shades of soil, the tones of the earth without the greens. Let me check their reality, for there begins my investigation, there lies my introspection, there poses my meditation.

This world is for lovers and annihilators, two sides of the same coin, two faces of construction and destruction. Flip them over anytime, for that is what this game is all about. Guess? Probe. Fly over the zones where no man or woman has yet landed to secure a territory.

The compass has no colors, but only south, north, east and west; the boundaries are illusions – change the gray to yellow, the red to black, the anything to something and you have caused an upheaval in what you have proposed to conquer in terms of answers to queries, solutions to crisis, condemnation to benediction.

Or, we are sleuths, with pieces of chalk to draw around the dead or wounded figure, mark where death has won over breathing. You know, like the traffic policeman making sure we remember where the bones skidded and got broken, where the body ruined its weight against the pavement, where the soul had left its material vessel, and floated to build its own shrine to honor its devotion.

Here is my solitary act: It is standing far apart, away from the canvas to better appreciate

where the technicolor impasto and dots and dashes,

the slashes of palettes, have ceased to be pigmentations

but faces, torsos, crimes of passion,

contortions,

even blooms and nights,

streams and stones,

skies and angels,

gods and nymphs,

all the allure of what makes us all imperfect

(hey, wait!)

perfect (glorious)

australopithecus (also)

sapiens (as well),

Humans.

Erectus.

Acta non verba, deeds not words

Words by Tito Genova Valiente