Maiden fair livens at the blue-white gleam of moonlight
And stirs
Under the shadows of night.
With downy hairs perched upon the nape like writhing snakes,
Burning black as soot,
Her lips pucker and spit foul-speckled air,
And her head will spin and spin and spin
Until night turns to dawn
When the infernal sun will eat away at the soiled bits
Of the wild, dour mess.

I adore you
With your forward brow,
Eyes of nightshade and black treacle.
Your image floats and unfurls in the ****** spaces
Between marks posed in gazette.
You stare back at me knowingly,
Cunningly,
As though watching the course of my life unfold.
You have stretched your hand through time
To let it fall in a cold gust across these pages,
Betwixt the folds of my cerebrum,
Your spectral lips prompting faintly
In the nook behind my ear.
-O goddess, O muse!-
O fellow soul…
You have found me.

I never thought to tell.

I swallowed each heavy feeling
Like a chore
With the hope of making the weight
More convenient
And each gobbet of memory sank and churned
In the pit of my stomach.

These pond stones
Which hiccuped in the gullet
Vanished from sight,
Yet they did not pass.

The weight did not pass.

I want to shed this blanket of skin
That binds this frame.
I wish desperately to slip out
As easily
As I would a sock
Or shirt
Or shoe.

It is *****, it is dusty, it is
Eaten away by moths
In some places,
Stretched and torn like cling wrap
In others.
It reeks of must
And the over-sweet smell
Of cheap perfume.

Heavy, insufferable, and vulnerable,
It subjects me to the whim of Man.
It is smothering me,
Demanding that I keep it up
-The con, the jig, the ruse-
For (it claims) I exist
Only to tend its membranous form.

If I could, I would
Simply strip it all away
To reveal my true, incorporeal self.
It is like nothing you have ever seen.
No, it is hotter than the deepest pits of Hell,
Heavier than every star, collapsed,
More blinding and more absolute
Than the birth of a universe,
Deep inside of this skin.

A large, leaning figure of a man
in tenebrous coattails,
slight and mantis-like,
waits for me
at the end of a long, dark hall.

A phantom,
he does not speak,
yet he allures me
silently,
letting his stillness attest
to his presence.

His featureless shadow of a face
screams silently of hunger,
greed,
a desire for my liveliness--
for my ability to walk freely in the light.

Peer into the looking glass
Through to the shadowy pit
There is a figment curled tightly
Just under the lash at its periphery
Look deeper.
Past the mouth
Past even the bottom
Of the crater
Into its hidden systems
Of tunnels, streams
Cellular clusters of caves

Right...there.

Can you see it?--

That which makes you twitch and sway
And grasp at phantoms?

These are the inhabitants of the mind
The cold, pitiless
Dendritic eels
Feeding on the sparks
At each synapse

Gaping mouths grow from the craters etched
Into the plaster walls.
The bulbs in the ceiling sockets flicker and grow soft
And softer still,
Until I cannot be sure of whether
Or not
I am really here at all.

Honey,
Bloodwood sap,
And sweet orange marmalade flow
From the cracks, ooze
From the lips with murmurs,
And mingle with the air,
Coloring the low glow in such a way
That as I lay my eyes upon myself,
I do not see my flesh,
My hands
My feet.

Rather,
There upon my lap lies a form
Sculpted from the dead weight
Of terracotta clay,
Pushed, pulled, molded, pressed
Extruded through a die
By some unseen, unnatural force,
And set inelegantly on display.

In this moment,
I try to claim it as my own--
To move it in some way that feels natural, real
Or complete.
And yet,
To strain against this heaviness--
To splutter and wheeze
As the murmuring tide of warmth rolls in
Is to be swept up and drowned
In the undercurrent
Of my own mind.

Thus, I will float, just so,
And the walls,
With their dribbling mouths
Will seep sticky-sweet whispers
Into my hair.

Feel the moment pass.

Feel the air settle.

Soak it in

Like paper in a pool.

This is so much bigger

Than you.

Do not think now.

Do not let your mind

Be your universe,

Though there is life in it.

Feel,

But do not perceive.

For, this moment

Is

And has always been

Connected

To both the past

And the future.

Thus in some form,

You always have been,

And you always will

Be.