Not a cloud in the sky,
High up in the mountains –
I can see the valley of Heaven on Earth
Below me.
Soaring next to the Sun,
I see its wings unfurled,
And wonder aloud,
How beautifully mundane it must be?
We all by nature,
Take our world for granted.
The falcon that flies freely,
And the falconer, a prisoner, grounded.
The connection is the key.
Heaven and Earth conjoined,
In the one finite moment,
When the falcon comes to rest.
The stairs inside the tunnel are steep,
Narrow, and winding.
Mysterious the descent,
Yet I cannot seem to turn back.
There is a light up ahead,
A firelight that burns shadows
That dance upon the cavernous walls
Surrounding me.
At the bottom of the very last step,
I am met suddenly,
By a gray-faced man,
With ashen skin and cold, cold hands.
I try to back away,
But I cannot retreat
From his eyes, transfixed upon mine,
Pulling me toward something unknown.
As the cavern light dims,
And the weight from my fear
Becomes heavier,
He stretches out his hand
Toward my chest,
And my heart seems launched from within,
My knees buckle,
My eyes are glassy,
And everything is numb.
He makes a fist,
And I feel myself, for the last time,
That anxious feeling of wrong,
Resonating around and through me,
Leaving a stain on me
As my eyes open,
And I awaken to an empty room,
Wondering,
Where is she?
And, what has happened?
Dreaming again,
In a fog of woe and fear,
And the night drags on,
And somewhere,
She too, is scared,
That there is no escape.
The madness is seaping in through my skin,
I can feel its microscopic mouths screaming
As it invades me,
The inhospitable parasite!
A hand rises up from beneath my chest,
Its nails digging into my brain –
The other hand squeezing my heart
Threatening to crush it as I strain for breath.
My eyes roll back into my head,
Waves of burning confusion
And the hopelessness engulfs me,
Leaving me a wreck.
The walls outside my shell crumble,
Topple inward on me.
I cannot escape,
I am doomed…
The darkness wrestles command of my senses
Away from my own helm,
Steering me into the abyss,
In the hopes that I acquiesce.
There is a tiny voice
From just outside the cacophony,
Urging me to hang on
For just one more second.
And as if I am a ship caught in a gale,
And huge waves crack over my bow,
The storm recedes from wence it came,
And the seas calm again.
The storm though exists in my head,
And the madness is what is churned up
In the wake of the Leviathan
Risen from the deep,
And I stare back into those dark clouds,
Facing the demon of the psyche,
Wondering if the storms will end,
And my mind will be as placid
As any sane soul would hope it to be.
History has a funny way
Of running around in a circle
Staring at itself
As it follows the same path,
Over and over
And over again.
The Angel of History,
Spreads his wings,
And flies backwards
The wreckage it propagates,
Never revealing itself
To his puzzled gaze.
How does God view History?
Does He watch like TV,
Only holding down rewind
On His omniscient remote control?
Or has He fallen asleep,
Allowing the static to come on?
I feel as though
Any divine intervention at work,
Is merely a feeling of deja-vu,
Leftover New-Age happiness,
I read somewhere
On a bathroom wall.
Treading lightly across a tightrope
High above my mind’s language barrier,
I feel the vaporous wind rising up
From the valley of Death below me.
The stench of disinvention
Wafting up from the corpses
Strewn with reckless abandon
By silent ne’er-do-wells.
Each treacherous step across the wire
Covered in my guilt and apathy,
Are but foreplay for the machine
Grinding the cable in its jowls.
This technicolor dreamscape,
Invented by my shivering mind,
Recoils from the mere thought
Of my mortal coil plummeting forever,
Down into the chasm below,
With nothing for the spectators to recall,
But shrieks of terror,
And the indelible image
Of my gelatinous form,
Leaving streaks of imagination
Dripping from vantage points,
And a cavernous goodnight.
The twilight bell rings
In the distance
Or perhaps in my head,
I cannot tell the difference.
The storm has rolled east
And I stand here soaked.
Finding my way home
And the night overcomes.
There is confusion
Awaiting me in the doorway,
Calculating,
The surprises in store.
Life is a perpetuated accident,
Without rescuers,
Who will save the day,
And circumvent Death.
Exercising My Demons 