Epic of the Six Darknesses: VI

Epic of the Six Darknesses: VI


VI

Next comes the fifth darkness of mixtures,
seeking the gut nipple
deep in the gut
that place of poetry
from which words emerge
stillborn and sexless
home of the amygdal lizard
always so afraid and angry.

Here it is unclear
where one thing begins
and another ends:
the darkest darkness of them all,
where mother becomes son
and son becomes husband
where looking is touching
and the body is language

no boundaries
bounodaries

Flesh melds with flesh
lungs join hands
tubules fuse
blood vessels tangle like vines
the bodies a trellis for organs
groping toward the light
but, blinded by darkness,
they come together
grotesque and hybrid,
a gothic monster:
darkening rod of identity.

These are mixtures
elementary minglings
all the broken symmetries of
ten dimensional minutiae
a mathematics of fracture
measuring the curve of Humpty Dumpty’s


broken shell
while dancing in the yolk
the broken embryo mashed in the mud
measuring the weather


or the shoreline
or the hand that measures
Nothing is solid
nothing is fixed
even solids shiver
rub off like masks

Into this abyss
the fifth darkness dives
sliding down the tongue
over the gullet
breaks through the esophogeal sphincter
goes deep into the gut,
that place of poetry.

Here it coats the lining of the stomach,
drinks deep the secret acids
then sucks so hard it swallows
the whole tube of the body:
from mouth to colon
all of it reversed
now inside the darkness
the darkness swallows all of me

I am stuck inside
an extradimensional sphere
some object of topology
that baffles mathematicians

All along the walls of these viscera
are braille graffiti
that speak of healing.


Richard Smyth

Posted over on Anabiosis Press