Inspired by 'The Fall Of Phaethon'
https://soundcloud.com/bid3/bad-trip
‘The boy stood trembling and marvelling at
the strangeness of it all…’
i)
Now I
know there was no palace, where your hair glittered
like
sea spray and you offered me a message written
on
blotting paper, said I’d find sunshine in an ink stain;
an orb,
a strobing disco-light-mirror-ball, a revolution.
You
removed the oh and you removed the you, replaced
it with
A & E. Taken in by its golden
means, I thought
the haloed
footlights were dust flowers and that the lit
air was
swimming, with tropical fish, I tried to catch.
A
revelation.
They fell through my
hands like quicksilver.
ii)
While
pointing at the moon with a crooked finger, you
showed
me a fire escape, said it was a ladder to the stars,
a
resolution. Was I the solar-powered progeny climbing,
rising,
coming up? A solution.
Raised
bright with polished waters and shifting
signs, I
could
not digest what I felt. Those pounding speakers
boomed
their melodious beats as the drug took possession
of me.
An empty-mouthed soothsayer spoke my lips,
avoid the bull’s horns, the Archer’s arrows, the
Lion’s
jaw, the scorpion’s cruel pincers and the crab’s
claws
One by
one these vicious zodiacs dissolved and a punishing
bpm
pounded through my blood. I was a gleaming, shining,
ball of
confused atoms, an immortal mortal, radiated.
this
buzzing but terrified, unable to handle not knowing
where the
track was or how to control the mercurial dragon
that now
glowed and seethed with a renewed internal fury.
iii)
My immeasurableness
drenched black with venom,
I saw
monsters everywhere that threatened to wound me.
My teeth,
chilled stars, grew hot. My unlucky eyes, robbed
of their
shadow, throbbed, tried in vain to douse themselves.
My wits
dropped into horror. I ran unchecked through
unknown
regions of air. Momentum took me. Striking against
the fixed,
hurrying heights, headlong, down.
Drawn to
the surface, I became a desert; my visions,
scorched
swans. Light broke apart. I could not bear the sparks.
long
trail. And somewhere, on the periphery, something appeared
to fall.
