Residuum

Photo: Diego Fernandes 2009

The heart of darkness beat
A pulse in my dream
Damp in tropic heat.

Dread Word’s iron hold,
Sweeps me from the wakeful
Toward sanguine fantasy.

Surging through adamantine forests
A great green river swirls
Twixt heart and lungs and head.

Dive I must into that verdant stream
My breath padlocked for safekeeping
My nerve steeled against discovery.

The surface ripples origined
Of an abatis of corpses
Lost to atavistic impulse.

Bodies snagged in the past
Strangers and friends
Gone, dressed in memory.

Destiny, a cruise companion
Had bought drinks all around
Laced with primitive venom.

Surfacing, I found allies vanished
Lights darkened; myriad death
Turned them all legend.

A hero, a suicide, a mystic
Fouled against martyrdoms
In a theater of ages.

Distemper painted souls
Hung drying from sky balconies
To horrify the living.