Israfel Sivad's Blog, page 12
March 31, 2016
Imaginary Mountains
Imaginary Mountains
By Israfel Sivad
There’s so little of my life that I want to remember and so little of it that I can’t forget, but you can never escape your memories. They prey upon the deepest recesses of your mind. They’re the monster that you can’t outrun in a nightmare. You pump your legs, but your limbs are waterlogged with the past’s disease. You try to close the door, but you move too slowly. A claw reaches through and catches hold of you. You cry out. You wake up, and there the p...
March 29, 2016
Crossroads Blues
From the novelCrossroads Blues
ByIsrafel Sivad
From the observation deck of The Empire State Building, 86 stories above the teeming mass of humans gawking and mumbling and screaming and shouting and talking and walking and running, the streets and lights of New York City spread like veins and cells, a spiderwebbed body, many-headed like the Hydra, covered in eyes like Mithra, animate in its grandeur, breathing as a spreading amoeba, breeding with itself, consuming the flies, the demons: Beel...
March 24, 2016
The Hallowed Halls of Academia
The Hallowed Halls of Academia
By Israfel Sivad
What did you say,
you hallowed halls of academia?
That our questions were mere
blasphemies?
Is that what you would say to us,
teach to us, your servants,
faithful and true, respecting
you and the order
you would teach?
Our reply is to challenge.
And if you reject us
yet again, we will move
our operation
underground.
Listen to me. All of you listen:
There are two people
who write for me,
but I can’t tell
you their names.
They are my secret yin a...
March 22, 2016
A Day in the Life
A Day in the Life
By Israfel Sivad
I wake up in the morning, and I lie in bed, listening to my alarm, waiting for it to stop ringing.
I think about my dreams. I had one the other night that I want to remember as vividly as possible. I hadn’t had anything to drink that night (I’d gone straight home from my café). And the lack of alcohol always lends a certain clarity and twistedness to my nocturnal wanderings.
The dream began in various odd pool halls and bars and strip clubs where I was simp...
The Last Thing We Ever Do
The Last Thing We Ever Do
By Israfel Sivad
“Byron, are you smoking too?” Sarah asked.
“Yeah,” Byron answered. He nodded even though she couldn’t see him, and he moved the phone a bit so he could flick his cigarette in the ashtray.
“That’s nice,” she said. For a moment, she sounded like herself again. “Maybe I can just close my eyes and pretend like we’re smoking together here.”
Byron smiled sadly. He set his cigarettes and his lighter beside himself on the bed, and he leaned back to rest his...
