To bed I took, in habitual slumber,
cursive prayers die at my cynical tongue,
all pinned badges of the day cast-off
to the floor, only for my sorry soles to
impale upon, come morn. ‘Come morn!
I called, to the chasted walls;
‘come morn!’ I sang,
hoping to fill the thinned curtains
with a filter of light.
In oil paints, old dreams coloured themselves
in patient, kaleidoscopic hues. Though
withered of form, they delight in me,
promise to deliver in utero joys,
connection to the Great Mother;
all that was lost in the fall.
The fall of man,
so gravely reported, and so
limiting to humankind.
I fell. I fell to sleep as Romans did peace.
With grudge, with dissonance; mind-silence apparent
only upon the death of the day.
With stubborn regard, my ears tarried in vigil,
I awoke to each pine of the hallway,
each tremor of heart, pulse of thought,
and Lord of sound.
‘Come death!’ I sighed,
to my life’s rushing blackness,
‘come death!’ I cried, to my stars.
In cannabis, I attune, only to calm;
to bask in the light of some meadow-less dawn,
and in pains, I pray only for dullen thoughts,
to poison my days in some indolent mess.
And of Ávila, Teresa
shelters my mind. She comes to me
in sorry demise.
‘My child,’ she calls, voice echoed since,
‘fellow child,’ she pines, entrusted sphinx.
Spawn of Thebes, she riddles through centuries,
all panicked pores, all sickening spirals,
forgotten in the present, all-eternal.
A shepherd am I, amongst my thoughts,
she calls thus that I am not my mind,
rather, a chosen observer,
the sum-of-parts;
to be confused not upon the
idiocratics, more, ‘what is.’
A lowing at my window, she calls unto me
in reverberated tongue, nutritious tone,
a cyclone of holistic power.
Bright glimmer of light, she calls once more, ‘my child!’,
she cries, ‘my fellow child of the Lord!
Please, rain unto me your sorry state,
lack of appetite,
cooling plate. Oh, you that live so solemnly,
you who knows not of the arbour of life.’
I call not in terror and I call not in my fright,
upon the window, that ghostly glimmer,
she heals the walls in half-light, swimming
in opal reflections of ripples and chimes.
And, she is calling for beauty,
she is singing unto me,
‘come morn!’ she weeps,
‘come morn, and with it, the tidings,
of your blessed life to be!’
Stumbling, I trip over the apparition’s words,
she speaks not in life’s shadows and sinister plot,
but only in those that speak like a God.
In the awful haze of light-polluted skies,
auspicious streets and government plot,
her prophecies fair, but yet
not practical.
‘Come now!’ I say, in no hope, ‘come
now,’ I say, an adult.
‘There’s no space for me here in this lifetime,
there’s no soil for my roots to embed,
in painful years past, I’ve been in sorrow,
and I’ll be expecting them in all the years, hence.
So what, if I’ll join the army,
or some other capricious,
malicious intent?
All tributaries lead to the river,
as all humans to their torturement.’
Teresa, she radiated with colours,
and Amy, who lived within my chest,
they called out as one in my silence,
as a union, a conquest of the childhood mind,
to abolish the present tense.
As one, they sang unto me,
They sang, ‘be born!’
under the moonlit streets, ‘be born
to all that you are, and ever you could be!’
And from this dream I came out in denial.
From this dream, I appeared to awake. I awoke
to the song of the starlings, and to
the precious pleasure of life’s augment.
With this groggy thought I’ll admit that,
in separation I fell apart,
I call, ‘come out!
‘come out and greet me!
Old Eden, my eternal womb.
The union of mankind and nature,
and the union of our pasts combined.’