75 Darkness poems

The sun time of the year died out and never might return. We made fires big as coffee tables to approximate the sun. I wanted to be a mountain. I wanted us all countless mountains in a detailed painting. Blood is everywhere as always. But now it is blown further and oxygenated for longer. Yet more sad word has come digitally. We contain no blood with which to soften and warm the sad word. Cold wind placed and places the house in its mouth. We met the end numb and almost still. Number meant less motion meant even number meant totally still. The buildings stand still. The buildings still stand. The buildings like the builders take each other by the hand.

When I go into the garden, there she is. The specter holds up her arms to show that her hands are eaten off. She is silent because of the agony. There is blood on her face. I can see she has done this to herself. So she would not feel the other pain. And it is true, she does not feel it. She does not even see me. It is not she anymore, but the pain itself that moves her. I look and think how to forget. How can I live while she stands there? And if I take her life what will that make of me? I cannot touch her, make her conscious. It would hurt her too much. I hear the sound all through the air that was her eating, but it is on its own now, completely separate from her. I think I am supposed to look. I am not supposed to turn away. I am supposed to see each detail and all expression gone. My God, I think, if paradise is to be here it will have to include her.

The maggot dreams of the ear and the wound, that welcome dark between gauze and knee, cheek and skull, and any open moment in the body that will have it. The child- fly wants a mouth to grow into, a burn to salve, a heart to feed on. It calls for sugar and Job and marrow. The maggot loves St. Lazarus, though he walked away, loves the warm cutbanks of the chest. When the maggot asks for wings, we will answer with painted hands, eyes beneath coins, a promise of graves.

(from Macbeth , spoken by Macbeth) Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still, And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, Which was not so before. There's no such thing: It is the bloody business which informs Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives: Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. [a bell rings] I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

This is not morning. There is a nastiness slowing your shoes, something you shouldn’t step in. It’s shattered beads, stomped flowers, vomit— such stupid beauty, beauty you can stick a manicured finger into and through, beauty that doesn’t rely on any sentence the sun chants, it’s whiskey swelter blown scarlet. Call this something else. Last night it had a name, a name wedged between an organ’s teeth, a name pumping a virgin unawares, a curse word. Wail it, regardless, Weak light, bleakly triumphant, will unveil scabs, snippets of filth music, cars on collapsed veins. The whole of gray doubt slithers on solemn skin. Call her New Orleans. Each day she wavers, not knowing how long she can stomach the introduction of needles, the brash, boozed warbling of bums with neon crowns, necklaces raining. She tries on her voice, which sounds like cigarettes, pubic sweat, brown spittle lining a sax bell the broken heel on a drag queen’s scarlet slings. Your kind of singing. Weirdly in love, you rhumba her edges, drink fuming concoctions, lick your lukewarm breakfast directly from her crust. Go on, admit it. You are addicted to her brick hips, the thick swerve she elicits, the way she kisses you, her lies wide open. She prefers alleys, crevices, basement floors. Hell, let her woo you. This kind of romance dims the worth of soldiers, bends and breaks the back, sips manna from muscle, tells you Leave your life. Pack your little suitcase, flee what is rigid and duly prescribed. Let her touch that raw space between cock and calm, the place that scripts such jazz. Let her pen letters addressed to your asking. You s-s-stutter. New Orleans’s, p-please. Don’t. Blue is the color stunning your tongue. At least the city pretends to remember to be listening. She grins with glint tooth, wiping your mind blind of the wife, the children, the numb ritual of job and garden plot. Gently, she leads you out into the darkness and makes you drink rain.

from the cliff's edge, kicking her feet in panic and despair as the circle of light contracts and blackness takes the screen. And that is how we leave her, hanging—though we know she will be rescued, only to descend into fresh harm, the story flowing on, disaster and reprieve—systole, diastole—split rhythm of a heart that hungers only to go on. So why is this like my mother, caged in a railed bed, each breath, a fresh installment in a tortured tale of capture and release? Nine days she dangled, stubborn, over the abyss, the soft clay crumbling beneath her fingertips, until she dropped with a little bird cry of surprise into the swift river below. Here metaphor collapses, for there was no love to rescue her, no small boat waiting with a net to fish her out, although the water carried her, and it was April when we buried her among the weeping cherries and the waving flags and in the final fade, a heron breasted the far junipers to gain the tremulous air and swim away.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light: And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings—the huts, The habitations of all things which dwell, Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd, And men were gather'd round their blazing homes To look once more into each other's face; Happy were those who dwelt within the eye Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch: A fearful hope was all the world contain'd; Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black. The brows of men by the despairing light Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits The flashes fell upon them; some lay down And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd; And others hurried to and fro, and fed Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up With mad disquietude on the dull sky, The pall of a past world; and then again With curses cast them down upon the dust, And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd And twin'd themselves among the multitude, Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food. And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again: a meal was bought With blood, and each sate sullenly apart Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was death Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails—men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devour'd, Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay, Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food, But with a piteous and perpetual moan, And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand Which answer'd not with a caress—he died. The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two Of an enormous city did survive, And they were enemies: they met beside The dying embers of an altar-place Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things For an unholy usage; they rak'd up, And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery; then they lifted up Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died— Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void, The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still, And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths; Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd They slept on the abyss without a surge— The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before; The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

i'm not afraid of the dark i'm afraid of what i think about when the dark makes thinking the only option the dark isn't the problem

When I woke the darkness was so thick, So palpable and black that my eyes Seemed blind as stone staring into stone. The blade that I had dreamed, efficient and quick As it cut into my thigh, cleaning a gangrened Wound infected to the bone, seemed poised Above my throat: Close-grained, impenetrable, The blackness rose before me like a wall. And then off in the next room, nervous, light, A soft padding as of an animal Raced like my heartbeat in my temples Round and round, trapped, stealthily desperate As if hunting its own track, terrified And captivated by its own odor. Skin cool in the night air, eyes drilling Through the dark, who I was before I Slept had burned off like a vapor So that amnesiac and pure, witnessing My terror that I no longer recognized As my own, my mind floated beyond me To confront that frantic, closing footfall As Jacob dreaming met his dark angel— Though in my wrestling nothing blessed me Or promised any blessing; but was a mask whose eyes Were all black pupil, blind as molten tar. I strained to see what paced there, my eyes burning Through the dark until a pair of eyes blazed Back across the blackness, an insistent, glazed Staring that shimmered and disappeared. The shining blade plunged at my throat, my mind Stretched and twisted, its wires tightening And turning as the creature lunged back and forth And with a deep-throated yowling, thrashing And thrashing to fight clear of its own circling, Cleanly leapt away. I reached for the knife But gripped only air, my eyes pressing Deeper and deeper into the night’s black stone, Cutting the way the knife had cut into my wound, Probing for the white shining of the bone: What had I become? What darkness had my dream Led me down into? Too frightened even To move, I lay bound and sweating in The sheets, the moon a warning-bell beating On the glass, its light carving out the curtains Like the shadow of a wing across the windowpane.

Your idea of embracing horror was overwhelmed by the horror: in the mild milkiness of the afternoon, on the bluff that commands a vision of bank towers knifing up far higher than the rising, empty shell of the moon ... on the height where you stand and still can't understand your life as anything but slow dying, your time seeps out as into a warm bath, the way the exemplary career of Petronius the Just—pornographer and satirist- once leaked away.