did you ever close your eyes tight as a kid?
i mean, REALLY tight. Tight™.
so tight that the dark gives way
to deeper dark which, inexplicably,
explodes into starburst sparkles of abyss,
dark-light shimmering like eyelid fireworks
Lawrence’s nethers, bemoaning bavarians
and gloom, black blooms blossoming all
around
keep squeezing. keep looking, head bowed low
do you see the mad shadows now?
at first dancing geometric, measured
soon to vanish spectrally into the void
then – back! now embracing iteration
forward-thinking in their anti-euclidean considerations
midnight backdrop finally filling with colors; form
the first cracks of crimson breaking forth, shaping
it
don’t give up now. I wouldn't. he wouldn’t.
mama didn’t raise no quitter now, did she?
(or whatever aphorism gets you going
just get there) have you? good. stay.
for me, those shards of red form rivers
tributaries of some inner sanctum
a breach in the boundless black on black
static, silent and solemn, shhhhhhhhs
the space in-between paradoxically shifts. Then,
we
finally see it. the impossible pool. the reflection
somehow gleaming through white noise to a
subtle blue-sable flow, rippling ever-outward
can you see yourself? no? keep looking down.
i do, my face embarrassingly younger than i’d like to admit
vanity finding me even here, even at the core of my being
for a moment, all is peace. calm. christ-like in repose
memories flood forth, ajna working overtime
these ones don’t smack so sour, more often than not
in my father's favorite dives, only dregs in his glass
remain
but, like all tides, it turns. the backwash bitter
acerbic, odorous. the brimstone feel of it confuses
i’m half-expecting to be boiled by a burst of flame
none comes. the pool simply calms, somehow hellishly frozen
it is a mirror now, harsh and unyielding. i stayed too long (did you?)
nostalgia holds my neck down at first, but only just. they
rush forth, recollections forming a phalanx. a salvo.
Ah! – but water does better than fused sand can at
justifying a god's ways to man. and so, it gives.
blasting upward, each now an arrowhead, rending rifts across me
traumatic bear trap sprung, Nemesis on Narcissis punishing
a hubris apparently deserving the maximum sentence of
always
i know what happened to Liropie’s son, gazing longingly into the depths
of his pool, Echo’s pining just ringing out for the first time
how his ardent passion, his primordial linage, burned him
from the inside out. he melted, that child of **** and regality
his tears rending deep rifts, a hunter in bittersweet appreciation
for the trap he understood himself to be snared within. he knew
he'd never leave. must have, storied slayer that he was.
a wounded gazelle in denial, bargaining with the Fates frivolously
he knew the score, packed it in. burst forth into molten golds
and whites. rebirthed radicles reaching for a new day
yet the sky above bears down, ever down, to the vengeful mirror below
always is always, ya know? i get it. but i find myself asking
how long did it take? how long did he bow and bleed?
how long before he made himself a karmic ingot? before
sorry.
