Amen

Remember. Come on. You used to love this .

you used to have no trouble to orient yourself. The white, or in this case, the black of the page.

All you had to do was throw the first stone, and hear how the sound of the pebble bounces around the walls, the shapes, the people. Where the water's edge was, and who was drowning in it. You could hear the sound of seagulls just from that one stone sailing through the emptyness, encountering Something.

You were that Something, in a way. You were the rock. You were the ocean. You were the wind the birds would struggle with, would be lifted up by. that struck and stroked the ocean into waves. You were the one who crumbled the shore into the deep, who flattened the castles. You were Time, immemorial. What happened? How can you be asleep, when all you did was dream?

Where did your love go, and what did it cost you? What made you content with silence? What made you suffocate that voice, that first longing?

Was it really as simple as that, dimming your own light not to upset people with their shadow?

Some are afraid in the dark and some hide there.

but which were you?

Six years. Five years. No less than that. it's almost like you were frozen, except that time went by. Time in which you didn't make a sound, or a friend. Time in which you barely had an idea worth pursuing. It was time, I suppose, that you tried to someone else. normal.

These were the dark ages. Yes, that is what I will call them.

Haha, so now! You will have to shine doubly. Make up for lost time; Burn the candle on all sides: No time for wicking, drip by drip: We cast them on the top like logs. Let it roar, hot and brightly! Let the soot cover the ceiling, and then you can write your name in it. Light up the stage with your heat and your fury. Show us your grotesque face, show us all the crumbling monsters you have hidden underneath that slimy exoskeleton. What sects your joined, what in-sects you devoured - and what you let yourself be devoured into. Let it show

no matter how ashamed and stumbling, no matter how painful or green the cut - no matter how hard of healing in your old age you may think you have become: we will glisten. Remember this is not your mothers tongue, so make it yours. She can't hear you down here anyway. You don't have to pretend anymore.

Come on , spill the details,

Where have you been hiding?

I had no answer for the snake. All I heard was slithering, the clattering of tiny feet, the creaking of scales that weighed lump of coal hearts against eachother, the snapping of jaws,the slow drip-drip-drip of crocodile's tears - and the darkness swallowed everything. Something inside of me - which immediately appeared right beside and started spewing it's mouth off, said: "This isn't real. This is some kind of illusion, just another layer of mixed metaphor that you've got to let yourself silently sink past. The real thing, the test, or the lesson, or the reward, is beyond this, this.. charade. Ignore it. Let it fade from your care - even as you seem to be stuck in it - just let it fade. The same way you arrived here, isn't it? By letting it all fade. Your room. The walls. The ceiling. You made this place, and it's just staging ground. This is the backstage nonsense to your original reality. The real thing happens deeper." I'm sure he would have gone on - large head, small wings, one tuft of hair on a comic-book-look brown velvet full of white stuffing - had his legs not been ripped off into the blackness by something with teeth. What's left stopped moving, fell slowly to the floor like it was being placed gently, face frozen in mid-sentence. A puppet again. Just a puppet. No real help. The only thing with any definite vision. Why, why did it have to be a tunnel? Why could I not have cast a stone with some Light behind it? Did I feel so unworthy of fatherly patronage that I would descend, unaided and unlit, into the the blackness? I suppose I should be grateful that my feet were dry, and had some floor to stand on at all.

I would let my eyes get used to the surroundings, but i had no eyes, and the surroundings were the same they'd always been: My mind, but this time stripped of all apparant meaning. Just the chaos of the dream we cannot wake from.

"Jesus," I speak. "This is such dark shit." But as I say it, a clear light does shine throughout the hallway, and turns this underground lair into some kind of trainstation. The alligator, the scale, and my better angels: All toys now, being played with by a little boy that I used to be, and I'm standing next to him, and he's on his knees and doesn't really notice me at all, and I look over at Jesus, who looks like he was drawn in a cartoon, but feels the same. In my look is the question, and in his is the answer, and in his outstretched arms, not for a hug, but for a 'Come, follow me' like he is showing me the way, and all I have to do is walk with him, and leave the child behind, here, their train will be on time, but even as i turn around to check on him I feel my feet turn to salt, and back again to Jesus, who is fading, saying: "Faith, surrender, Trust, love. Come again, when you have surrendered." And now the child noticed me, and looks up and says: Will you play with me, father? And I say: I will watch over you, and I will make sure you catch your train." And i know they would, without me, too, and that I'm not his father, I am him, but what is there to tell to a kid, all caught up in stories? And a second ago i seemed so sure that the truth was an acquired taste, and now I wonder if that's not something i've cooked up to go on pretending.

https://ol.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/8bbn52/i_wanted_to_hold_my_own_pulse/dx69n0t/

https://ol.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/89or7e/nighttime_winter_wanderings/dx69thc/