shrieking under folds of blackness
hands clawing at the fabric of an unlit tent
veins swelling in a vacuum, empty eye sockets wide
the midnight of your memory full of monsters
what we know as horror: the crossing of death into life
the corpse walking with a blind smile, the marionettes jerking at their strings
your mother's bloody grin, holding her own head by the hair
and you ran out the door into the apocalypse they promised you
the destiny of the destroyed atom, and a trillion ghosts
left to roam a nightmare planet in unfinished visions
slicing yourself for the feeling of bright sharpness, the reality,
sky on a frozen winter's day, the cloud diamondcutter,
the clarity when you first loved her, when you first recognised her
and became a river running to her; or the deathly fear
when you lay awake in the living night-time, presences
crowding in your awareness, afraid to turn over;
when you took the elevator to the basement of your mind
and found the mutilated man, madness shining in his remaining eye;
the boy in the abandoned house who swallowed a living scorpion;
tongue numb with venom, his skin turned black and livid;
but inside he became a storm of daisies, summer light and wind
someone who would love the demons and angels alike -
an alchemist, at war with the dead physics of his universe.
Strange notes from the other side of a drugged mind:
"what the fuck happens when we die?" and the feeling
of crossing into an unknown land - my only journey:
miles of roads lined with bodies and flowers, tiger paws,
daggers, vertigo footage from cameras falling off cliffs,
or, like faded newsreel, spotted and flickering, set to the sound
of muttering, whispering voices, old showtunes:
my last words, spoken on a sunlit evening stretching into neverness.
This is original work