Milk In Fridge: A Journey To Elysium

While I die
I practice being dead in the dark -
there's not much else to do here.

All around me death encroaches.
The cold stems it off
but I wish it wouldn't try to:
I am ready to separate.

Sometimes I tremor with the
shudder of something distant:
it passes right through me, then
nothing but darkness -
the waiting goes on...
(Isn't there more to life than this?)
...But the waiting goes on so long
that I tell myself I was only
imagining the tremor, and I
return to my thoughts, placid...

I don't think you'll
believe what just happened:

one moment I was
pretending to be dead,
and the next there was a
sudden peeling of suction.
I lost my balance in the
shake and sway: this was
death coming to take me away -
then the light came and drenched me.

Was it a miracle? What is a miracle?

Another quake, and a squeeze of
air, and all was dark again, and I
sloshed from side to side, slowing,
until I was still - which was when I
realised that I wasn't dead after all,
just back to waiting for death.

~

It's all gone very quiet since the light
came and went. Sometimes I wish it
hadn't come at all - there's so much
more for me to worry about now:

What was the light? Where did it come from?
How did it appear? Why did it appear?
What made it appear?

With all these questions I can't
pretend to be dead nearly as
much as I used to.
The light doesn't seem to have
affected the others - they're still here,
dying slowly. I suppose I am too,
but somehow it feels that I've
more to live for now I'm thirsty...

There's something else: when I saw the light
I knew it was light the moment I saw it.

How did I know it was light? If I
knew it was light then surely I must have
seen light before, right? Which means I've not
always been here in this dark: I came from
somewhere else... Now I think of it,
I can remember my birth - is that unusual?

'Life-giving, I was teased into the world:
I mirrored the morning moon, divine, as I
struck the bucket-basin with a splatter.
It was a wet baptism.'

Wow, that was vivid!
Did I just have an out of body experience?

Air, sky, the moon: I am the
colour of the moon. I've never
thought about what colour I am before -
I don't think it matters.
Anyway, I transcend the colour of skin.

~

'We've all become so good at
pretending we're dead that we've
forgotten how to stay alive.'
I've been meditating on this
and have had my epiphany:
I don't want to pretend anymore,
and I don't want to live
surrounded by others
who are pretending. I'm not
content with slow death, so

I'm clotting - speeding up
my end: crusting over,
churning myself into the
smell of a corpse. Please,
I don't want you feeling
sorry for me - I love the
feeling of rapid change.
The others don't seem to
understand - not yet -
but I'll have the last laugh!

I am separating: stagnant, potent.
Now there are stages of dark within the
darkness when I know nothing. I drown in
myself, clogged to the throat. Heavy, bleary
shadow... A familiar convulse of
thunder rips through my death: light has returned
at the brink: divine illumination.

Weightless, I am hoisted from my sleeping
grave - I fly the flight of bliss; I dollop
into searing heat, am stirred into my
Elysium. She takes me to her lips,
blows the kiss of death...a sudden choke, and
I am propelled, airborne, through light, towards
my destiny, laughing my final laugh.

From the Costume Rack

I am a final layer of skin: his arms
fill mine, his chest is my heartbeat - we pause
between worlds, we muster breath on the brink...

We step into the white glare: I transmute.
The forever drizzle of dust, arid
heat and blur of time; forbidden fruits seep
from divine light: the juices soak us through.

Exiting right, I feel him bleed into
shadow - death is in the slow of his stride,
his shoulders crumple. I know the sag
of lonely bodies only too well - the dull

ache of reality. He paces black
wings like a prisoner in his rib cage:
an eagle mourning the loss of its flight.

Edge of a World

He waits for me, threadbare on the costume
rack, lifeless in the bustle of fabrics.

I stand alone on the edge of a world:
a clean-cut cliff-edge above darkness - but

he is there in the mist... I seep myself
in the sweat of the lights, I breathe the dust

between thoughts. Air hangs heavy, laughter spreads
in a wave of tremors, dust hovers in

angel beams... then back to a midnight of
secrets and wires, the re-absorption of

shadow and pulse. Is this body alive?

Gangrene

the sword chose me -
she wrenched it out
with a twist and
treated the wound
with a poison.

She was an artist
who specialised in eyes - she
conjured green tear drops.

Scar

the scar is deep,
it doesn't settle -
injury lives in the scar.

raw, tender - it's raw
to the core, be careful
what you wish for.

heat rifles through the scar,
it freezes numb,
the scar is deep.