Cuils

Cuils

Cuil Theory: A theory that proposes a system of measuring the abstraction from reality for any given situation, with Cuil 0 being the closest to normative reality and Cuil 1, 2, 3 etc. becoming increasingly more distanced from these parameters.

Cuil 0

I say I love you,

You turn and walk away.

Cuil 1

I say I love you,

You ride a wild gazelle into the sunset.

Cuil 2

I say I love you,

My voice breaks as it flees my frozen lips.

I realize I am a statue, and you are a receding stream.

At my feet lies a valentine, the words obscured

By someone else’s legs.

The World is Red.

Cuil 3

I say I love you,

But you only hear Portuguese.

I attempt to translate, but my heart becomes a winged sun,

Combusting from my chest, and my shell collapses, revealing

A complex web of smoke and mirrors.

You stare at the black hole where my heart used to orbit yours.

You disapprove.

Cuil 4

I say I love you,

Or at least I try to.

I suddenly remember I am a Benedictine Monk.

A blinding bar of silence seals my lips, strikes my throat.

The searing tone of holy dogma bolts through you and you are raptured.

Your soul, now a golden shade, flies through the arrow wound of a once-beating

heart; you have become a cauterizing tool.

I stand at the window of an empty monastery and watch the battle below.

You undo the cord that holds the veil to your soul.

The resulting light rewrites the base code of the Universe.

Fundamental physics takes the day off. Weightlessness sets in.

An arrow, no longer bound by Gravity, flies upward

Through my broken heart.

You shriek, laughing, for the Universe has opened itself to you.

Your cries create the Universe.

I say I love you.

I cannot speak.

Cuil 5

I say I love you.

A small family in Spain loses their house inexplicably. They live under a bridge now.

I say I love you.

You used to have a dog, but now you live alone.

I say I love you.

A butterfly in Africa bursts into heavy rain over Europe.

I say I love you.

A man in a trench coat offers you a smoke. You decline. You are vegetarian.

I say I love you.

Several small dogs wander through the night, looking for homes.

I say I love you.

I come to the realization that I have no arms. My therapist is useless.

I say I love you.

A small man in a trench coat offers you a wiener dog. You decline. You haven’t smoked in years.

I say I love you.

Your penthouse is full of strays. You turn your light off. You put my arms in a closet.

I say I love you.

It is raining butterflies over a bridge where a tape player sits, spouting;

“Te amo… Te amo…”

Cuil 6

I say I love you.

The Universe as we know it, Ends.

It is replaced by a series of dreary picture postcards,

sent from Africa to a family in Spain, stuck in some drawer in some coffee table somewhere.

You smoke a cigarette that burns holes in space-time.

The sound of the Big Bang reverberates through your room and interrupts your regularly scheduled program. Somewhere in the background radiation, my voice can be heard.

You disapprove.

All the atoms in the Universe gain one proton.

A small dog begins to lift the veil between now and Always. The stars begin to wheel without order in the sky. All forms of conventional time become useless as we fall in an endless spiral towards the beginning of creation.

The postman is late.( again )

All the knowledge of the human race is reduced to the word ‘MEH’ by a benevolent passing wormhole. Several small libraries attempt to account for this. My struggle to speak is increased by a sudden loss of electrons.

Outside your summer window a tired eskimo pulls his dogsled through the snow, or he would if he wasn’t a symbol.

The Universe is taken out of it’s drawer and rearranged;

This is how the stars are born.

I cry out into the empty night , looking for a metaphorical eskimo. I can only see a sky of dizzily whirring stars and a distant explosion; the Universe is being put back in the drawer.

Time is forever an illusion. The postcards are mailed to several small libraries. The regularly scheduled program is cancelled.

There is a phone call from Portugal, but you don’t pick it up.

The sky takes on the colour of your apartment; you can’t tell if you are outside anymore.

I forget if I was born or not, and decide not to check. I send you a postcard by dogsled. You can only read Spanish, and never reply.

Cuil 7

I say I love you,

There is an explosion of light. The sun goes into supernova. We are all slightly warmer than we want to be. Penguins vacate your refrigerator; it’s too warm in there. The planets spiral maddeningly around the fluctuating and expanding sun. Gravity reverses for five seconds. Your tape player stops working. A monk cries out in pain. You disapprove. The heavy crate filled with postcards from Spain lands on your lap with a quiet ‘Squeeeeeeee’.... You do not open it. All the libraries on the African continent are taken over by a group of small dogs. The sun has rapidly become a black hole. The radio stops its normal programming and plays a little light music instead. You feel an arrow pierce your heart as a golden glow shines from your eyes and mouth. I am a small valentine, looking up at you from inbetween someone’s feet. A herd of wild gazelles flock to the black hole where the sun used to be. You disapprove. My therapist puts my arms in a suitcase and rides a storm of butterflies across the atlantic. The dogs have converted all literature to a series of smells only dogs can detect. You become deaf, but are still upset that the radio cancelled your show. I am mute, and attempt to learn semaphore. The manual is in Dog. We all get sucked into the sun. You lose your job. The Earth reappears exactly as before, except somebody stepped on a butterfly. One of the smells is removed from Dog-speak. It no longer rains in Spain. You smoke to cope with reality shifts. You smoke to cope with losing your job. You smoke to cope with the consequences of smoking. It is an endless night. The sun has gone on vacation. My lungs become lead. My limbs are on fire. I run and run and run but your face is on a postcard the keeps coming in the mail. No one has seen the mail man in weeks. Dog becomes the official world language, with semaphore being the close second. You get a new job chopping down phone lines. The stars are getting closer. My lead lungs begin to corrode; it’s all that smoking you are doing. The stars have given up on constellations; they were too much upkeep anyway. The freezing landscapes of America have solidified; a glacier rolls across Illinois. The fossil of the mailman is found, freezing in the wastes of Iowa. No one is surprised. Somewhere the radio whizzes quietly by an empty monastery. My arms are now relics for a group of worshipping penguins, on pilgrimage to the sea. My therapist was last seen driving huskies through the East Arctic. The ravages of the battle are not felt. I attempt to translate the Spanish on the postcards; it comes out Portuguese. No one can tell the difference. You have smoked all of the cigarettes. My lungs have exploded; I am a baby star once more. Your second hand smoke causes the second Black Plague. Clouds of ash form mountains and forests; eventually, they will become stars. A group of dogs re-enacts all of the postcards they stole from your apartment. You disapprove. You put on some light music instead. In an attempt to reach you I have become a system of fungi, spanning seven foot-ball fields in length. You don’t notice. I cry, but I cry spores. My children go forth and conquer the Universe. You are slightly inconvenienced by being owned by sentient fungi. You throw the radio at a passing library, on the run from the ghost of the postman. You have no idea where the letters from my therapist are coming from. The Earth explodes for the 1,978th time and you are pleased. I become a traffic cop and wave ‘I love you, I love you…” into the night. You have stopped driving. You don’t answer your calls. You breed gazelles and correspond with the empty shell of my therapist.

You disapprove.

Cuil 8

I say I love you,

You say,

“ I love you too.”