Epic of the Six Darknesses: XI

Painting by Naza


Epic of the Six Darknesses: XI


XI

The big blue door is thick like life
it is universe thick star thick symmetry thick
it is the door of my becoming
my becoming–open, becoming–hinge,
a plane that separates and stretches into circles
I am between the thickness
there is no thickness without presence
I must be there to be real
where lungs husk the untroubled sun
and polaroid disks winter in the darkness.
Let me be lost in language
that tangled growth of stump and wonder,
lead me through the lobe garden
whitegrey flowers chalky with whispers
untrammeled by the booted soldiers.
Take me away from this inside
always this inside
where the voices speak of ice and dying
while I am hot with memory
the lightning nightmare bright with burdens.

The only way in through the big blue door
is through the keyhole.
The keyhole is the shape of my entire body.
The Fireman points to it like the future, says


Go now
this quest is yours and yours alone
I crawl through the keyhole
it is warm and tight like birth
I crawl back to my beginnings
embryonic and noxious in the womb warm tube

This is where it began
I was never really born
only trapped in the middle
somewhere between two mirrors
or are they doors

or are they roods
somewhere between two murders
only trapped in the muddle
I was never really burned
That is where it ends

I am the poet of being born
I am the poet of unknown topologies

Now I’m pulling myself through
(this is my 1,001st birth
I am tired of being born)
I reach into the cobweb rhizome
spiderlike I ripple across the thin synapses

all the blue doors are broken open

I am naked now and real

syllabic guttural
a result of wind and physics
balloon bag and wingsap
a dam in the flows of energy
a leaf floating too fast
on a surface that doubts all dimension

I am bright with neuronal fire
I bring light to every dark corner
every connection is exercised
every bridge is built
every concept crossed
as I eradicate the fourth darkness like a drumbeat:
I just stop banging on myself
that’s all
that’s all



Richard Smyth

Posted over on Anabiosis Press