Sleep Fissures (ROUND 8)
SCENT OF THE DAY: Ghazali Finalé, by Elkhaldi
This is a musky rose oud—with musk as the star here, then It is tremendous. The musk I have smelled from Elklhaldi lacks the grandeur of Ensar and even comes off much close to the synthetic musk smells we know and love from top tier niche releases like Zoologist Civet. But what is interestign is that despite havign more of a link to the synthetic sphere in that way, the whole composition seems way more artisinal in feel than Ensar’s stuff. Ensdar’s stuff is just way polished now. Elkhaldi has that roughhewn vibe like we get from TSVGA—not as garage band lo-fi as Pinoy but not as slick as Ensar or especially Bortnikoff (the slickest of the bunch). This is my style fo perfumery. I mean muych of this stuff shoots to the top of my list. Take Ambergris Myanmar, of which I only have a small decant: it’s opening might be the best in my entire collection.
But yeah, I need more time with this. This is merely my first day. This is extremely animalic and yet without being rank or rotten or fermented. I really love musky oudy florals like musk gardenia and here we have one that does apricot-cream champaca and candied rose. I think it is the champaca and milky sandalwood base that really makes me think of TSVGA releases like Fiona. The similarity here is not just in feel but in base aroma.
*This is a poem about a woman who, reclaiming abuse the way some reclaim “nigger,” carved into her skin a portal back into the womb-wrecking ravages of a man with one hell of a toddler tooth.
*Worked on the end section. I think that, despite having leaps from each section that bring the atmosphere of a fever dream, it hits you like a makeshift prison blade right between the ribs—three solid stabs
Sleep Fissures
1
The mom—amoxicillin bottle four, baffled by what could keep doubling a toddler over
with olive discharge as foamy and fevered as her vomit—guts the home of all culprits:
scented soap, bubble bath; junk foods, synthetic panties too tight—all, save Mr. Malik.
2
Porn-pretzeled preschool self tatted below her tits (bald pussies converged, the overlap
plumb as his improv butt plug— her Gumby—and its plastic), now the real “Big Girl”
can feel—cervix pigging out on every avatar’s whimpering load—the child in the perp.
3
Inked cheeks in her care, claws too deep to slip— she spatchcocked the slimy butterfly,
purpling that spot where splay mattered most, and hissed cruelties (“Spit on her pussy!”)
until men got enough balls to snatch the baton (“Lil’ slut ain’t never havin’ no baby!”).
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)
