Monday 22 April 2013

Bad Trip

My 3rd poem written for the 'Transformations' project, coordinated by @ArtiPeeps http://artipeeps.wordpress.com/category/our-transformations-poems/

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.

Rushing out, they tore through my mind-mist. I was lifted by
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.

Lifeless bodies floated face upwards on the deep ravage of this
long trail. And somewhere, on the periphery, something appeared
to fall.