Ch. 2

Pt. II
“The settling storm”

       I’m sitting in the passenger seat. The light green glow from the clock on the console that now reads one twenty-three pulls my attention away from the window. One twenty-three. I stare at the digital numbers, they stare back, maliciously. No, I won’t let them have this power over me, not any more. I return my eyes to the scenery outside the car. Suddenly I remember when I was here and where here was. This was my road trip with Andrew to Telluride, Colorado last summer. We’re on the border of Texas and New Mexico. We had just driven through a series of ghost towns. I’m pulled away from these realizations by the sights I now know to expect next. The sky above the prairie flatlands that ran out to the east and to the west from the lonesome country rode I was riding along, first seemed like an infinite abyss filled only by the blackness of midnight, then in an instant the void was filled in all directions with thousands upon thousands of glowing red lights for a moment, something like a pulse, and then all was black again. These flaming eyes were uniform in height, maybe one hundred and fifty feet above me and were simultaneous in their illumination. It’s as if the sky parted its invisible eyelids momentarily revealing its pressing vision. This would repeat every ten seconds or so, like clockwork. Roaring thunder shook the air and it was dense with vibration. My skin is now crawling over my body, hairs on end, frightened, but I’m still peaceful. The world lights up entirely, day invades the night, for a flash, as somewhere lightning must’ve just struck. In that moment I see three wings for every red light, surrounding me, continuing out as far as I can see and they’re spinning zealously. It’s curious to me that, despite the dense clouds, the blinding lightning, and the deafening thunder, there is no rain at all. Only the powerful wind propelling the wind turbines, and me. I look to my left, the driver is Andrew still, yet isn’t. I see his ghost. I see the smoke slowly ebb out from his nostrils as he exhales his last hit off his blunt. The smoke that fills the cab of his car causes a distortion of the red lights, blurring the edges, making it appear as if red halos surrounded the eyes. I long to be with the wings and the eyes, and out of this jeep carrying me to death, I don’t want to become a ghost, and I know that’s where he’s taking me. It’s now one twenty-four. We continue driving, while the hundred thousand eyes light up, the thunder rolls, the lightning reveals the wings of the turbines, and the wings spin in circles. This continues for an indefinite amount of time.
       I leave the car. This hadn’t happened before. I walk along the road, fighting to stand against the powerful winds. Up ahead I see that the road seems to end, disappearing where a giant body of water appears. I continue my slow trudge, and the water seems to be approaching me as much as I it. I’ve reached its edge. There are two distinct bodies of water, not one. They seem to be wrestling with each other, trying to occupy the same space, but remaining as separate as they are unified. I fall to my knees and peer into it. The water to the left is tinted blue, its essence is blue. I see the past, my past. I see the car ride to this moment, and the decisions that led to this moment, the situations that led to those decisions, and the life that led me into those situations in an instant. In a moment like the approach of an ambulance, when it’s next to you, and then passes you and pulls away, I now am staring into the red waters, the other waters. The future flashes before me, in a collage of image and time. The ground drops from beneath me. The waters are now vapors. Individual little balls of water, floating in space, suspended. Either the water had just separated, or the space between the water molecules just expanded. Yet it maintained its shape. The waters wrestled with each other, friction, a battle, a birth. Lightning. Electricity erupted up from the surface of the waters in front of me and reached far up into the sky. Pulling my neck backwards, and my head upwards. My knees still felt the ground beneath them, but the world had flipped, I was both on the ground and above it. The waters are the clouds over head. The bolt of lightning reached from the ground to the sky and fell from the sky to the ground. It was blue and it was pink and it was white.

This crucible earth spins in waning twilight  - Lives everlasting through fire and water are forged
Until this fog reality fades into hindsight  - And we finally see that which we always stood before
The graceful burden of blood wept by Truth’s Light  - A voice of one calling out from the lunar desert
We build black holes with our paper and ink  - and pour them in your lap, pressed, and measured
Light Fractures through stained glass windows, painting prisms  - Wine pours  from the bastard cup and bread of human flesh
The head that prepared the way, on silver, delivered from prison  - A mass suicide of saviors tangled in strings of barbed wire crowns
(rusting crosses, burgundy seeps into mahogany, agonizing vision)
Baptize me in the churning steams of a towering nebula  - bathe me with the tender kisses of a stellar flare
And I’ll emerge, reborn a warrior of peace  - reciting verse like baby’s breath and angel’s hair
A communion in the cosmos, techno color dream land  - I’ll daily strap myself into this electric chair
and for a neighbor- foam at the mouth, contort and   - vomit ash and thorn- for a stranger unprepared
L S D G zus                                                                           Silken sky, dusky glow
will you please seize us?                                                   Verbose fog
thrilling self fission                                                             light after light after light
Kaleidoscope vision                                                           a thousand days (pass in) a night
spinning saffron and neon                                               slick cement dense with
me sipping saucers of Freon                                            recycled shine
in my mirror home                                                            sign after sign after sign
incense burning as an emerald throne                          weary shifts decompress my spine
as cherry black birds dance back words                        a seraph spread a pinion
across an Ebenezer-esque curse                                     listen, stop. (now) listen.
inhale crystalline, clandestine smoke                            linger… longer…
exhale fire, flies and fumes                                              delicious emission

                                                      
                                                                  Silent cephas

                                                                  Shy messiah

                                                                  Violet vistas

                                                                 Violent Delilah

                                                                Crescent ocean

                                                                 Full lotus lips

                                                                Silent motion

                                                               Malicious ships

                                                                  Synesthesia-

                                                                  -symphony.

                                                                 Azure Heaven  
                                                                  Bleu Celeste     
                                                                  Lapis Lazuli         

                                                            (Neptune caerulea)

                                                                      will you

                                                                  mention me?