Liturgical Burnout
Let's workshop this poem that, cataloging the chiasmus between muscle memory and depletion, tracks a priest's spiritual exhaustion through the increasingly questionable trajectories of his holy water
scent of the day: Kyara Koko, by Ensar Oud
spiced-fermented-cheesey oud plus musky-indolic-animalic incense in a way I did not expect from Ensar—at least before I tried Iris Ghalia Trifecta (wet-dog animalics) and Siber Extreme (curry spiced), which in their own way read like nods to Prin. / While not as funky, and here balanced by yin energy in the form of refreshing citrus candy, I get a similar oudy funk to what I get in Arsalan / Kyara Koko brings not only more citrus greenery (clementine, lime) but even a mint edge—which makes sense since—whereas in Arsalan there are various spices (especially cumin) and the cheese is really ramped up / Although both have creamy florals and creamy woods (sandalwood), Kyara Koko’s vanilla-custard frangiapani works with the sandalwood and iris to make a creamier concoction whereas Arsalan’s fermented-apricot champaca reinforces the strength of the rot impression made queasier by the buttery sandalwood. / Although both have a metallic sparkle of aldehydic florality, Ensar’s rose-jasmine-iris combo is still not as diffusive—even with the kashmiri musk—as Prin’s jasmine-gardenia combo (which I imagine is boosted by synthetics). / Although both have a charred aspect, Kyara Koko’s mainly comes out in the dry down and in the white-ashe form of matchstick ash whereas Arsalan the char is louder and darker and present from earlier on./
I have two lists in my head, the ranking of objectively best and personal best, and on the former this Ensar is higher than the Prin (if not in terms of blendign than erspecially in terms of ingredients, Prin likes to use that cheap mishandled fermented oud) whereas on the latter the Prin is higher than the Ensar (and at the bottom of both lists, in a rare overlap, is Malle’s Promise lol). / The way I have been getting into Ensar laterly though—i don’t know: I could see myself liking Ensar more eventually
This is the daytime partner of Kuru Kawa in my mind—more because they seem to complement one another than because they smell alike: although both have a medicinal aura and a base of musky leather (these features much more pronounce din Kuru Kawa), in Kyara Koko the oud is cumin flecked cheese but balanced by girl’s weekend resort elements of candy and mohitos whereas in Kuru Kawa the oud is tobacco-leather bandaid boosted into earthy machismo by cypriol and patchouli darkened further by jammy elements of rose and berry.
Liturgical Burnout Behold the head priest, ushered down the aisle by terpenic gouts of olibanum smoke coughed at each limit of the thurible’s pendulum swing. From the aspergillum ball he scatters liquid— side to side, vacant eyes—with wrist flicks whose dribbly oomph suits both his face (less seashell than nutshell) and his prostate (less walnut than lemon). He has been over it— the wand routine, all of them—long enough to have gone through every station of over it: sexual lashes, shaped in a cockeyed chiasmus (an exorcist weaponizing his flask until nothing holy remained inside), that the tween’s parents would look insane to allege—even if they had photo evidence of his nasty lip bite—were meant to replicate bukkake (the clear interpretation); vindictive splashes, horizontal arcs right across the baby’s eyes (once, twice), since it was bound to wail through the goddamn sermon anyway; dry dashes, the ball fake-dipped into the situla with the legerdemain of the midlife magician— his doppelganger, like the Santa too (a triune)— in the dead mall, leaving congregants feeling gypped, especially his target Mrs. Sanchez (whose superstition, dollar-store Mary candles able to heal cancer, long tested—long after her death—not only his patience but his faith). Nothing now can spice him up. He has become who he will be until the end: a creature wise in acceptance and humble in surrender, yes, but too hollowed—in-between winter husk and 60s robot—to romanticize as having come full circle, back into the bosom of the Lord.