— he died. Though hard I strove, but strove in vain,
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain.
Even from the cold earth of our cave.
— Lord Byron, “The Prisoner of Chillon”
1.
Like an invisible maelstrom, toying
with its own survival, preying on
the Good, pure nothingness in itself,
pain plunges into the recesses
of my ragged hip, races down my thigh,
scorching one side, numbing the other.
Flesh becomes kindling, becomes petrified
wood, all excess bark singed into flaking embers
that flit through my dull, dank cellar, alone.
I push up from my intricate Victorian armchair,
vowing to escape this onslaught, this lightning
torment -- my leg pummeled by staccato left jabs
from tiny gods, which sting like hailstones in
a summer storm, clinging to the battered lawn:
piles of white rocks, of snow and ice, emblems
of the surety that lasting damage has been done.
2.
We all walk into the world with a faltering gait, unsure
of the rhythms of our wandering ways, or the wisest
guidebook to carry for gaining ground. A crooked
back wrenches my flimsy progress, flings my steps
into a crooked dance, off-balance, rude with vertigo,
flailing to regain my footing, fighting to find my
footprint cast in papier-mâché, tissue of the Earth’s
tenderness toward this wayward, mutant child.
Lord Byron carved his name into the limestone
of Chateau de Chillon as his pledge, wielding poetry,
to liberate the 16th-century Swiss prisoner who
lingered there, lost amid his habitually gnawed chains.
The metallic taste never left his mouth, bitter as bile.
Lac Leman surges beneath the isolated dungeon
window, shuttered by three iron bars, defenseless
against the winnowing light that sweeps across
the manacles hammered into a post, now void
of any aching limbs, of any useless fists, the hollow
trophy of the tiny gods’ ****** foxhunt of justice.
3.
Justice has no name but mercy now, the grace
of pardon and rest for the crooked soul. My spine,
twisted into stenosis, choked by constricting bone, pushing
ever closer to itself until it fuses into a gargoyle’s face,
spewing rainwater on the madding crowds below,
striking matches on my sense-less skin, imprinting
rough, blackened stripes with each flash of flame.
I would steal this fire like Prometheus. I would eat it
like a big-top performer with an asbestos throat. I would
digest this fire, then excrete it on the hailstones. I would
burn within like a primal fire, and let the gods burn with me.
Only then would I reclaim my rightful balance. Only then
would I rebuke the grotesque justice that rules this
fire-filled, shadowy fiefdom of my body’s minor gods.
