Friday, September 21, 2018

Strange Night That Bore Me

Strange Night That Bore Me
© Surazeus
2018 09 21

When I return to the strange night that bore me
from wild darkness of the infinite sea,
I dream of sitting in the room of desks
and traveling to far worlds inside my head.

My bored heart always flies farther away
to become the stranger I hope to meet
out on the road where fish walk on the wind
and tell me why the sunlight knows my name.

I do not yet even know my real name
so I stare at the blazing sun in awe
and feel her watching me with silent gaze
of indifferent love for how I breathe thought.

I exist within bounds of broken bark
and spread thirty arms to grasp wordless voice
while digging roots down to heart of the world
to feel how fast our globe spins into death.

Now that we are laughing bones in the church,
long abandoned on the desolate plain
by the noble god that was never real,
we drink the water of the weeping world.

They promised us that we would rise from death
and live in pleasure through eternity
in paradise of fountains and fruit trees
but our bodies rot now, devoured by flies.

I walk around the shipwreck on the beach,
bound inside frail body of splintered bones,
with nowhere to bury my rotting brain,
so I laugh as I drink the endless rain.

Since wounded souls never go home to die
I float beyond glass walls of paradise,
preferring hymns of flowers in restless wind
instead of litanies for the dead god.

The night talks to me wherever I go
to explain how trees burst out of my heart
so I gather herbs and sit by the pool,
hoping to leave my shadow in its glow.

My bones will carry me down to the sea
after stones explain the secret of light
which I vault at empty sky of vain hope
since lightning flickers from my open palm.

Then birds come with swirls of the summer breeze
to give me water when I will not move,
though they carry the lost pieces of me
to place me by the pond where I was born.

Who could assemble fragments of my soul
but the ocean who explains how we love,
although everything I gathered from grass
hides in shades of red which protects my thoughts.

I coax ghosts of my people from old trees
and ask them to tell me how I was born
so I remember the first flash of dawn
that transformed darkness into glowing things.

When I first glimpse creation of the world
dim glow of savage truth from aching love
refracts my mind from water of strange dark
to brim with multitudes of faceless souls.

I must have always existed like this
if I am so persistent to breathe color
since laughter aches so deep in my wild heart
I cease to feel behind this hardened mask.

Now that I return to night of my birth
drifting in half dream of lost memory
I snap awake at sharp voice of my mother
who vanishes into sunlight on water.

Though I always walk away from fruit grove
to follow cold river far from my birth,
just as I think I find some strange new land
I wake again in meadow of my birth.

The first flash of sunlight slices my soul
to slant sideways into alternate world
where someone ahead of me in strange glow
calls me silver tide of the ocean moon.

Thrown up by wild tide onto solid hope,
I watch stars become faces of my people
who talk to each other by the campfire
yet I lie alone by sea of the world.

So I climb again toward the glowing light
to escape family of the howling ocean
and walk laughing as I cry among trees
who give me apples which hide my real name.

Mist swirls over distant hills of my fear
so I sit on wave-smoothed slab of black stone
to taste water of the soul-shimmering sea
who tells me I should know why I am lost.

I worked for forty seasons in wheat fields,
harvesting bundles of grain for warehouse
where women in white smocks baked loaves of bread
so I could eat bread and honey each day.

Since I am too old now to harvest wheat
the gate guardian pushed me outside the walls,
so they expect me to lie down on sand
of the ocean and become silent waves.

So here I am, sitting on ocean rocks,
waiting for nothing to consume my soul
and change me into light streaming through clouds
that returns me to the strange night that bore me.

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