Portal (NaPoWriMo – Day 7)

“What do you deserve? Name it. All of it. What are you ready to let go of? Name that too. Then name the most gentle gift for yourself. Name the brightest song your body’s ever held. Summon joy like you would a child; call it home. It wanders, yes. But it’s still yours.”

I’m sick of words.
I’m sick of Facebook.
I’m sick of San Francisco.
I’m sick of California.
I’m sick of this continent.
I’m sick of this planet.
I’m sick of this galaxy.
I’m sick of this universe.
Hawking said there were more universes.
Where the fuck are they?
Point me toward the portal.
I’m ready to wormhole
my way through existence.

Oh that portal…

that strobing blacklight striptease
peeling back the skin of words
reflecting the mirror in the mirror
tintinnabular, diatonic, melodic
ascending sixth in the question
descending sixth in the answer
all F-Major in 6/4 beat
crocheting triads, rising and falling
then falling and rising again
Gravity is its bitch.
Time, its slave.
Celloing reality,
string by string
brane by brane.

Its temptation is a vituperative
fanged beast…. ready to strike.
First, its hard cuts against
your soft. Then it’s all penetration.
The attack is sweet on your tongue,
and it won’t let you go, this you know,
you consume it, it consumes you,
a viscous vicious perfume napalms
your mouth, lashing down your throat
it pushes -it pulls, boast of raw muscle
flexing before it takes you, you’ve got
nowhere to go, fire shoots through
your veins, you’re the ass-end of every cliche:
the swallowing up and out, all juicy-fruited
you taste the richness of old lovers
phantom tongues bud and blossom
their tribe caving in the maw of your fears
you melt inside yourself, all slippery & smooth
grilled fig and black fruit, currants ripen
in your blood, hickory smokes your lungs
your bones ash into salt pillars
flame licks this mineral promise
pylons readying worship at the altar
of sacrifice; your body is no longer your own,
you’re not sure it ever was,
the submission is to a thing formless,
fiendish, mindless, ruthless, sightless –
your skin is the Braille in its chemtrail –
ten thousand searing fingertips groping,
searching, kneading, stripping you down
until you are feather-light, petal-soft
until you are nothing but a sprouting of wings.

You rise

h
i
g
h

then

h
i
g
h
e
r

Praying its finish never ends, you plunge
into the silk plush, rivulets of could’ves would’ves
spiraling their way down the cascade you’ve become,
slink in a scape of dreams, this staircase navigation
churns a labyrinth that stutter-steps along, you’re tripping
over yourself in a raze of perfect basal cleavage, your mica
embedded in igneous rock – but what happened to the flow?
Trees root in your nerve endings, starlings murmurate
into lavender clouds of tears you cried over him.
His voice is the wind. His face the stars.
You haze over in fog. You’re lost.
Welcome to the cartography of want.
The map is the territory.
The map is a maze, it goes in every direction;
dazed, you don’t get to choose the path. Not this time.
Are you going up or down? You can’t be sure.
Your bones roll like God’s dice, snake eyes peer up
and jeer at you. Eden’s walls close in, you keep moving.
You just keep moving. You feel the compression. Your skull splits.
Your memories are extruded sculptors, plastering impressions
thick as religion’s lies of a life you’ll never remember to live.