Arcane Surgery

Arcane Surgery

A Story by Gene Von Banyard
"

Prose Poem.

"

Sitting alone, staring in a four-cornered cell.

A sanctum sanatorium or prosaic prison?

The carnival turns within as the Sphinx weeps nihil.

A mask is worn but what is hidden within and what is lost without?


On an abandoned wharf within a four-cornered box, desperately trying to attain shelter from the tempest without, sits a small, sad boy. He clutches an ever flickering candle in his hands but receives no warmth from the elusive flame. In front of him lies a broken puzzle-box with never before seen pieces scattered around. No one can hear his tears fall nor his bones chatter and no one will save him from this Arcadian cell. White. An incandescent, flawless perspective without boundary nor end. A White the East associates with the Plague and the West with the End. This is where you awake and where you realise that you are totally alone. Then, a wall of monitor screens appear before you. Visitors from a venerable nowhere, they stare at you with a soulless blank. A hundred and one doppelganger penetrating you with their cathode-grey stare. Sequentially, they switch themselves on to show you a grown man making his way down an empty alleyway. His past manifests itself before him in the form of smoke and shadow within the gutter of his mind. Immersed in the blackness of night, in the darkness of a killers soul, he stands agape as a refraction of light beckons him from below. He has no choice but to accept the illumination's offer to descend. A suspended ladder attaches itself to nothing and the cold of below caresses but the chill he now feels in his chattering bones stems from the sound he can now hear. A soft, impalpable sigh or series of sighs that in unison form a welcome or a warning? Dust, how could she stop coughing with all this dust around? She know libraries were meant to have a certain Arcadian charm to them but this is ridiculous! Looking up and around her she became overwhelmed by the magnitude of precarious, towering tomes that teetered above and around her. Hang on, how did I get here and furthermore, how do I get out? With purpose burning her heels, she began to search for a way out, well, at least she tried. Every corner she passed, every precarious, teetering tower of dust covered incunabula she creaked by, offered no gap, no hole, no means of escape by which she may find exit. But a book does not speak nor show, it stores. It stores mysteries, secrets, tales. Every tale is a mystery and every secret a tale shrouded in symbol and bound in archetypal imagery. She knew that to keep a a tale truly secret and to render it as mystery, to never let it see the analytical light of day, is to take it into the dark with you and keep it forever in a four cornered cell. With that in mind, she opened the closest book to her and opened the very first page. He reached solid ground and breathed a sigh of relief as the illumination flickered momentarily then vanished.


There is without and there is loss. There is manifestation, arcane creation and sacrificial action. Arcadian ritual, where that which has always been may come from below to greet the within and creak and chatter the everyday. Indulge in this practice and then, and only then, will Arcane Surgery become clear to you.





© 2015 Gene Von Banyard


My Review

Would you like to review this Story?
Login | Register




Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Request Read Request
Add to Library My Library
Subscribe Subscribe


Stats

101 Views
Added on September 16, 2015
Last Updated on September 16, 2015

Author

Gene Von Banyard
Gene Von Banyard

Australia



About
Poet & Performance Artist. more..

Writing