Began this at 3 am, so give me a break ...
My hands are clasped around six rings of heated iron, and they burn me as I hold them to my bare chest with a noise that transcends the pain. It is the hissing, and my tremulous voice shouting, that reaches me in the sunken climate of my mind. The palace walls are near, and before the gates six thousand slaves revolve around millstones that may or may not move something in the nether depths; but as I watch them I would stake my life on those grinding wheels turning the dead slaves themselves, like puppets in chains.
Brightness hovers near me, and opening my mouth I let them count my teeth while my mind swims deliriously in the narrow path of the seeping light, the light that seems to flow through my being, that seems to have at its core the depth of my mouth, and the light gently brimming.
And then I am bereft, and the ochre colours rush like breath back into me, and seem to encase me, as I take up the next piece of iron and pierce my thigh through with it. The pain is intense, and the spear seems to nest within the broken shards of iron welted into the rasping wounds each sealed with the heat like rosebuds blooming inwards within me.
I look up to where Jesus seems to sway on high Golgotha, directing thousands of us with the spear he has torn from his skeletal side, and it is only the reticence of my mind that fuses me to him and the fires that burn under his gaunt brow. Sometimes I think it is that he is weeping, and it is the spotlights they have shone upon him that make the tears dance like flame. Such is the narrow angle of my heart, almost-blind and maddened by these thought-encrusted depths. I look up again and he is gone, and only the twisted stone of the ceiling remains, and the remnants of a diseased mind dissipating in his wake.
This is the human abstract; we below haunt ourselves to chase the blessed of ghosts, and it is on us that they must test their weapons, so useless against unflawed skin. Within my roots, there is an ecstasy of weakness, and in that weakness there is the Word. My body bangs within its unhollow trunk, and the holy flowerings begin to spread with the anger that flows from the rings around my heart. My thoughts are trapped within my shades, and labour under the ecstasy of love as an amputee writhes under the hacksaw and strong naval whisky; but oh, heed my fruits, fear my fruits. They are soft enough to break your mouth open and split your entire being down to its last unblemished sliver.
Brightness hovers near me, and opening my mouth I let them count my teeth while my mind swims deliriously in the narrow path of the seeping light, the light that seems to flow through my being, that seems to have at its core the depth of my mouth, and the light gently brimming.
And then I am bereft, and the ochre colours rush like breath back into me, and seem to encase me, as I take up the next piece of iron and pierce my thigh through with it. The pain is intense, and the spear seems to nest within the broken shards of iron welted into the rasping wounds each sealed with the heat like rosebuds blooming inwards within me.
I look up to where Jesus seems to sway on high Golgotha, directing thousands of us with the spear he has torn from his skeletal side, and it is only the reticence of my mind that fuses me to him and the fires that burn under his gaunt brow. Sometimes I think it is that he is weeping, and it is the spotlights they have shone upon him that make the tears dance like flame. Such is the narrow angle of my heart, almost-blind and maddened by these thought-encrusted depths. I look up again and he is gone, and only the twisted stone of the ceiling remains, and the remnants of a diseased mind dissipating in his wake.
This is the human abstract; we below haunt ourselves to chase the blessed of ghosts, and it is on us that they must test their weapons, so useless against unflawed skin. Within my roots, there is an ecstasy of weakness, and in that weakness there is the Word. My body bangs within its unhollow trunk, and the holy flowerings begin to spread with the anger that flows from the rings around my heart. My thoughts are trapped within my shades, and labour under the ecstasy of love as an amputee writhes under the hacksaw and strong naval whisky; but oh, heed my fruits, fear my fruits. They are soft enough to break your mouth open and split your entire being down to its last unblemished sliver.