Twardowski Ascended

An infernal affliction came upon

me, I was sick, sick to death as I felt

my eyelids peeled back like rolls of thunder,

lost on vast plains of winter-white barrens.

I felt my senses leave me as I watched

 

hidden flames surge across my retinas.

I saw no more, yet for a while I

heard the chirping of alien birdsongs

ringing across dark taffeta sheets,

and I shuddered, because I knew the tune.

 

I’ve heard those mysterious notes before,

The color of oily shadow. I’d felt

that song: L'appel du vide yawning from

deep below me, from the center of the

Earth. And there on the heath of intellect 

 

I beheld Gaunt Old Devils composing

the psithurism song, though there were

no trees. Invisible thumbs like undergrowth

snagged at my pant legs drawing me into

myself like squat candles imploding under

 

the weight of their own nigh expiration.

I fought it. I feigned strength where I had none,

I gritted my teeth as if to grind them

laboriously into meal.  I cried,

I cried despite the struggle and felt strange

 

intervals of give and release. My tears

flited down and I shook free of groping

assailants in the dark, and I ran, though

I could not see where I was going. Soft

soil ate my shoes, it felt totally

 

foreign. Undulating carpets of sand

pulled out as if alive under my footfalls.

I felt light though it was not elation.

I felt light though I was not young again.

I felt light though I was running blinded,

 

and tripping over long stretches of air,

through ski hills of caustic powder and bleak

valleys of nighttime musk. My eyes gleaned no

figures yet, nightmares the shape of horses

pursued me, relentlessly, at my heels.

 

Black tempests of encroaching panic spread,

Filling the perceivable boundaries

with their fluid manes. And off in distant dark

I perceived far hums of churning torrents

Willing great vessels onto greater rocks.

 

O horses of night run slowly, slowly,

we pleaded, those poor sailors from afar

and I. Spring us a year’s distance that we

might cultivate ourselves for the final

sleep. Transform our awkward man limbs into

 

bluebird wings. Give us freedom, though we do

not deserve it. If nothing else open

the way to sanctuary; pin our parts

to the cathedral as catechism for

children. There flew Twadorski though he flew

 

too high and burned up on reentry. His

luminescent wings rest here now,

stained in red and orange predominately.

Look upon him and know human folly.

Look upon him and change your ways before

 

it is too late, before repentance slinks

away. Away like memorial waves

washing the unseen spaces inside my

body. Every sinus, every taut stretch

of diaphragm, every vestibule in

 

my heart. And as those desperate steps propelled

me, I passed over the first obscuring

hill from waterless beaches like parking

lots. I beheld for the first time since my

departure: my home, the brave sapphire

 

rising fast over the lunar surface.

I was alone with the gods and I

wondered, how anyone could imagine

unquiet tragedies for the dreamers

on that quiet planet, perfect in flight.

Reviews

[A hare off]

Thundering hooves of a shadow' dust gather fore this night shall be ended, and I shall resurrect him that hath been downtrodden. Quite a feast for the eye and mind, the imagery you ink in this graphic and story told poem. I fell encased in the fear you projected to end up floating on a sphere in perfect flight. Exceptional job. More should read this