Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Wires Tightening








THE WOUND

Tom Sleigh

When I woke the darkness was so thick,
So palpable and black that my eyes
Seemed blind as stone staring into stone.
 
The blade that I had dreamed, efficient and quick
As it cut into my thigh, cleaning a gangrened
Wound infected to the bone, seemed poised
 
Above my throat: Close-grained, impenetrable,
The blackness rose before me like a wall.
And then off in the next room, nervous, light,
 
A soft padding as of an animal
Raced like my heartbeat in my temples
Round and round, trapped, stealthily desperate
 
As if hunting its own track, terrified
And captivated by its own odor.
Skin cool in the night air, eyes drilling
 
Through the dark, who I was before I
Slept had burned off like a vapor
So that amnesiac and pure, witnessing
 
My terror that I no longer recognized
As my own, my mind floated beyond me
To confront that frantic, closing footfall
 
As Jacob dreaming met his dark angel—
Though in my wrestling nothing blessed me
Or promised any blessing; but was a mask whose eyes
 
Were all black pupil, blind as molten tar.
I strained to see what paced there, my eyes burning
Through the dark until a pair of eyes blazed
 
Back across the blackness, an insistent, glazed
Staring that shimmered and disappeared.
The shining blade plunged at my throat, my mind
 
Stretched and twisted, its wires tightening
And turning as the creature lunged back and forth
And with a deep-throated yowling, thrashing
 
And thrashing to fight clear of its own circling,
Cleanly leapt away. I reached for the knife
But gripped only air, my eyes pressing
 
Deeper and deeper into the night’s black stone,
Cutting the way the knife had cut into my wound,
Probing for the white shining of the bone:
 
What had I become? What darkness had my dream
Led me down into? Too frightened even
To move, I lay bound and sweating in
 
The sheets, the moon a warning-bell beating
On the glass, its light carving out the curtains
Like the shadow of a wing across the windowpane.

2 comments:

  1. noted blogger ian welsh also has decided that the joys of a kindle outweigh the sorrow of being an amazon customer

    https://www.ianwelsh.net/an-e-book-reader/

    he also is giving away a collection of essays - It Doesn't Have To Be This Way - here's part of the first one


    The Ian who went into blogging ... assumed that people just didn't understand what to do to have a better world -- "Hey, we all want people to be healthy and happy, and while a few evil deranged fuckers may like war, the vast majority want peace and prosperity."

    ...It turned out that we don't all want that, and that when we do want that, we want it with sides of policies, actions and beliefs which make peace, prosperity, happiness and health impossible. The world is a bad place, and America is an evil empire, because that's the way American elites want it, and they've convinced enough of the hoi-polloi.

    Realizing that wasn't an easy journey. I had thought that if I and others could show people they could have peace and prosperity and not be mean and evil, well, people would jump at that.

    We didn't realize that being mean and evil, for a lot of people, was the point, and that for many of the rest being mean and evil (and greedy) just didn't matter. It wasn't worth changing to get rid of evil and meanness and greed that they didn't believe hurt them.

    This hasn't been a journey towards realizing how wonderful and good one's fellow humans were.

    Sorry.

    But it was a journey towards realizing what had made them mean. It was a journey towards realizing how elites had seized power and wealth. And it was a journey towards realizing what genuine change for the better would require....

    So please, walk with me, while I try to give to you the highlights of what I learned about our fellow humans, about the way the world and America are fucked, and about what we can do to change all that.




    from

    https://www.ianwelsh.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Welsh-Ian-It-Doesnt-Have-To-Be-This-Way-.pdf


    and here's a link to "don't give up" as sung by peter gabriel and kate bush

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjEq-r2agqc

    ReplyDelete
  2. The river I will not cross. Don't give up.

    ReplyDelete