Feature Review

Fight Club

****

I am not going to talk about Fight Club.

A fight can be truer than love,
at no other time can you be sure
that someone is thinking about you
and no one else
as when they are standing in front of you, fists upraised
eyes never wider
and each breath they take becomes greater than
the rise and fall of empires pale and condemned by their
utter irrelevance.
How their face marked with red blotches and black stains,
molded by your own body, and your flesh by theirs.
No moment, so isolated in perfect space and time, as when
As when a head hits the floor and you can
taste the impact like
sour lightning across your tongue.
In what seems like ages before the infernal crack
hits your ears,
and sight leaves in a white flash and
you
can't quite decide if you are hot or cold.
and don’t care
It’s not about violence, senseless or otherwise
senseless implies, there is – needs to be – an order to it all
give it up, you are not in control.
It’s about not separating the body from the soul,
letting the lines blur
one and the same, empirical.
Recognizing your best friend
by the way they cough when they are sick,
a simple ailment as much a part of the soul as any
fucking philosophy.
The time you skinned your knee and you’d push
your finger into its raw mouth for a second, even
even though it hurt.
it’s the reason you kept doing it again and again
For the way your hand hovers on the light switch before
you turn it off,
the way you walk through the cold winter,
before you close your coat to it and continue on.
It’s kneeling at the dying bird and everything you felt --
wondering why you threw the ball at it,
wondering what was inside you,
what forces in the universe conspired to make
that single moment come into being.
All the “why” you will ever need
in your own very short existence.
The understanding of consequences.
or knowing you can make the choice not to care
It’s about telling a lie,
the long pause as they listen,
and how angry it makes you when they believe it.
How they let you get away with something so wrong.
And you blame them as much as yourself
even though you know that to be a lie as well.
It’s standing up and looking in the toilet.
Fight Club isn’t about asking questions,
It’s about meat,
and if you can handle it

by Richard Leader