The writing on the wall at first will bleed
Clawing at the crawlspace
The pulp! to sculpt!
Picking, gnawing until each ruby drops one by one
Like big gobs of blood
Fingertips raw
Because I thought I saw Jesus within the pulsating wall
A prophetic drawl
Pathetic bawling
Incessantly crawling back beneath the dining hall into a little fissure in the wall
I thought myself an Oracle
A categorical misfit
Wedged beneath
A Babylon
A spider strung
A demon stung, little needling thing
Ghastly and withdrawing
O negative, provocative!
That its little prick might bleed the human out of me
And plop me in pieces onto little plates with little forks and little spoons
That whosoever hungered shall commune on me
I thought Lucifer a black beetle with wings
That buzzed around my head
Until I felt intoxicated
And I tried to force my own death
With a blunt force to the spleen
Hands clenched to beat the demon out of me
What’s wrong! What’s wrong!
I hear a blurred voice beyond
Rounded out and heavy, like a bowling ball
That might come crashing through the rafters
Would I like a skylight, with plaster
Blown out that I might shrink beneath
A sunlight, too heavy
To be redeemed
And sprout wings like angels
Glowing in between
Days between days between days
Be tipping the tables
Till the servant’s aplomb
Ready to be spat out and birthed
Unearthed from this hellish pit
I’m like a nesting doll built
To rip open that I might find more of me beneath
I’m nearly bursting from the seams!
Folded petals cascading endlessly
I’ve given birth to a hundred versions of me!
The Oracle of Delphi can see
Shapes along the cavernous wall
And she carves out the grooves in the shade of
Marooned renegade
So degraded beneath the bedrock of the fall
She’s got a feast for eyes!
But not for taste or comfort
Distorted between that space between
The rock and the hard place and that glistening wall
A scrawl like the caveman drips in oxblood
Swollen to the brim of reason
And bludgeoned
Then caked like mud into the crevice in between
To stopper up the bleeding then
To choke out the convening and
Prophetic dreaming of Belshazzar
I’ve a mind to whisper his name three times
To see if he might reappear before me as if to give our
Incantations a nice punch in the underbelly of the earth!
Because beneath the carmine and the wine
And the crimson rose
Is a sacramental Merlot
And a rust flavored ode
Where I erode
Brick beneath brick
Stuck beneath stick
And I lick, lick, lick at my wounds!
So pallid and cool
Beneath a devilish hue
I’m the Lady Godiva!
Unveiled but too intangible to describe a
Half shade of throe
I’m too alone to strike martyrdom
With my little fists and my little toes
My little fits and my little throws
To crack the earth in two just to get beneath this!
A double-fisted punch though might do!
To wrench the heart right out of the ribs of God!