So anyhow, here's a rough, rough, rough draft:

Doubting Thomas

Thomas had heard curates and academics lecture endlessly in the corridors of the museum, their words bouncing off the cold walls in invisible, insubstantial waves, their rhetoric as sculpted as the marble pillars: art for art’s sake is not art, art for one’s own sake is not art, art for others is not art, divine sublimity for the sake of creation: that is art. Voices, windy echoing on the cold walls: whisper, shudder, consonant, vowel, unintelligible but for a word here and there—“never,” “contours,” “sublime transcendence.” No matter. He recognized the speech: recognized, remembered, knew, ignored. Their words are not Thomas’s words. The words here are not art. They do not concern art. He spat.

In a maze of winding hallways, Thomas snaked through the exhibits. Statue of David, scrotum but no rectum, constipated I’d bet. Hasn’t shat for a thousand years—friend and lover to the armless, assless Venus de Milo—fertilizer of fallow fields. He doesn’t pass like me. Thomas passed by Dave. Sling slung over the shoulder, slingslung flaccid but stony hard, iron irony—marble erected in impotence: solid, stony sloth. Replica, anyhow. Plaster marblemold. Not even that accurate. Mike’s Dave stood on a raised platform, his plaster flaking.

Mockmarble crumbling plastershell behind him, Thomas pressed on to the Monet section, taking his usual seat, expectant, staring at the center painting on the West wall. It was a piece he knew—had memorized. Hazy, sunset-shadowed parliament buildings stood motionless, trapped in a moment which craves the next. Ever approaching Night crouched on sinewy haunches, flexed to lunge, forever prepared and patient, waiting. The water which had once flowed and eddied now lay stagnant, the reflections therein unwavering. Still. But not for long. He was just in time. Back storeroom of the museum. Alone. Wall-thumping. Curator. Panting. Woman there. Breathing. Thudding. Dull. Hardbreathing. Thud. Breathless bodies beat away the minutes at the usual hour against the wall behind the painting. Hidden—virile, victorious, self-pleased—God what a curator. He’ll be finished soon. Call you? **** that. You’re fired. New secretary, same curator, same wall, same rattling Monet. Same Thomas. The future is the present is the past, that bygone mockery of progress, ever laughing.

Laughter, now static-hidden, now buzzing clearer, now hidden, finally burst in his ears, the booms of a fireworks display. Such a long time ago. Thomas was a student then, an avid learner with a passion for the arts. Going places. An old Professor smoking a pipe. Smokebillowing windwhispers — You’re going places, Thomas. Laughter. There she stood before him, Vanessa, brilliantfaced, ringing laugh sighing again. Bright and wonderful she had told him of every work the museum held; wonder-full and bright he had drunk her words. So long ago. Fondly the repartee bounced in wave and particle between them, Thomas and Vanessa, Vanessa and Thomas. They knew well their medium, with one ear silently listened to the starry night, couched in quiet awe. Vincent, mad-eyed, still-listening to his mono audio, did not know how they admired him. He had loved, they had loved, and loved she was gone, a ghost, the first phantasm flitting behind that damned Monet. First, but not last. Curator. Usurping lecher. He spat.

And now the same lecher hid behind his Monet-hanging wall. Every day Thomas watched, waited, and listened, ashamed, alone, hoping to hear the bodies beating as he remembered, but always knowing that only every third day would the painting shake—scheduled. Penciled in by the curator; I’ll see if I can make time for you: scheduled, controlled, linear. Behind the framed painting she beds down with Procrustes. He’s protected, a son of Troy. The plaster ceiling—crumbling, flaking—dusts the marble floor. Dusting marble? Never mentioned... Who told you the floor was marble? Limestone floor, limestone pillars. I will not lie, not intentionally.

He stood, still watching the shaking masterpiece: the painting still suffering sodomy, but not stillsuffering. Nothing immobile. All eroding. Water cutting rocks. Canyons thirty-thousand years in the making. Ground stonesits motionless and indestructible, underground walls hiding sputtering, spurting streams, the siltful waters hiding nothing—only slicing into the solid rock, gouging granite gaps and crevices. Stillwatching, Tommis listened, still-listening, to the drumming against the wall. Almost finished now. Five minutes, no endurance. Way to ride, cowboy. In the last throes, the painting fell, marblelimestonefloorbreaking. The wooden prison lay splinterframed. Tommis ignored this. No frame. Unimportant. Vanessa. He listened to the last thud.

Thomas could not control. How could he when. It’s perfectly excusable that. I can’t be judged if. Why does. Done. A seed—denied, ignored, suppressed, unleashed—is sown in stony ground. Self-pleasing figures standing around him, marblemade, unfecal, infertile. Framed in preconception, unaware, or perhaps too aware, of the ever-cracking plaster-caste past, the voyeur slides into the shadows, vanishing without effort, knowing only the final spasm. He will return, not understanding his momentary fulfillment, jealous rage welling up in his heart, an endlessly unsatisfied, unwitting student walking into hurricane force wind—wind invisible and insubstantial, full of animosity and spiteful power. Full of fury it blows, hollow and empty.



If you have ANY questions, please refer to my response to hunter60's first post on page two. It clears up a lot of the main images and symbols. If you're still unsure of something, ask. I'm more than happy to answer it, and you'll teach me something about where my writing needs fixin'.

Or better yet, go here: http://www.guitartricks.com/forum/showpost.php?p=189169&postcount=38