WITNESS THE MONOLITH.
Cracked stone winces at a setting sun as
red twilight inks into swollen clouds. That ribcage
hangs cracked open like an un-ripe fruit–
a thumb-split apple–
echoes the visage. Columns stretch beside furniture,
suspending an absent roof–
that mosaic entrenched in the eye–
gone now, wrought ash in firmament
as the air breathes shallow, smelling of
old figs through yellow teeth.
I spill another glass onto silk flowers,
the sun swims mauve as my head droops low,
I remember our first kiss,
less memorable than our last,
though I recall the bliss–
like a divine eye shone down upon me,
saying “Be free at last,” and the gates
to my soul were thrown open
and all I beheld was you.
But now look at you–
that cracked stone is a coffin of the soul,
to who– to who–
I go on walks in winter nights,
when the world is still and somber
and the iris catches the gleaming
souls of the wood; the prey sings to me as I
dream up the vessels that embody the voices,
the void swells with the sounds of vivisection.
All is hidden in paradise–
the mind became creation
at the creation of the mind.
Upon the road
she cocks her head to headlights,
And in the mud
I lunge at her oily throat,
And from the waist
they gnaw at her blemished gut,
And on the shore
she bobs with bubbling rot,
And from the streets
he breathes the acrid air,
And in the papers
he speaks a thousand tongues
with each voice a vivisection–
the prey sings to be seen,
they too are instruments of creation.
Returning from my walk
I pass the aging Monolith–
inside, the wise man hears
the prey of the world
and thinks himself above
the coils of sewer shit
and deer’s mushed-fruit gut
so he instead confides in
the coffin to sanctify
what wrought these four walls.
Outside, the sky weeps red wine
as I seek out the singing chorus.
I find her washed up on the oily shores beneath
a red and white lighthouse bleeding mercury, her carcass
looked after by a vertical cliff face that once stood
as the gateway to an invisible Zion. My fingers slide
beneath her skin to seek the wellspring of new life
embedded in the rot–
I find the father of the pine barrens
the flayed man of the maize
the hunter as the horned god
the saṃsāra
kabbalah, tree of
souls
spirits
pernes
gyres
the absolute order
osiris
osa
ọlọrun
the el
allah
yahweh
serpent
satan
the ever-spinning shibboleth–
I see all of creation beneath the skin.
I see him–
beneath the golden glow of
sodium streetlights,
between weaving labyrinths of
the restless city,
upon the shelves of
supermarket aisles,
in the penthouse, the drug den,
the crackpipe, the cocaine,
the curb-side prophets,
concrete angels breathing
oil-slick kaleidoscopes, reading
prismatics like thrown bones,
seeking weal and woe, guiding us–
the starved, the hungry, the overwhelming
yearning yearning yearning! of it all–
all-encompassing, all I want, all I need,
all the world beneath the streetlight suns–
son of sin, son of love, sundered monolith,
that thumb-split apple where juice flowed and
all of creation sang as the mind cried out in ecstasy,
“Free! Free! Free!”
The pilgrim walks to the edge of Earth,
passing between the trunks of two trees to see
an empty eyrie connecting the branch labyrinth;
an archway of briar–the pilgrim walks under.
All at once, the world is awash with a thousand bird calls.
The prey is everywhere–
singing a chorus for our souls,
a symphony for the vivisection.