Ecstasies

Below the concrete and flowers, 
below the snow and tubers, 
below the moist soil, 
below the dreams of broken winged birds, 
below the lava flows and Dante’s infernal laments: 
the underworld unfolds, 
eternal and ever-present.  

A different gravity brought us there: 
the chemistry of desperation, not necessity.  

We were mere clowns, the pair of us,
dancing on broken glass:
willing slaves of Ma Durga
and her Amazing Cascading Circus.
She taught us every trick
in her heavy, black, leather-bound book.

Here, she said, her voice quivering,
here are the cards that show tomorrow
as clear as all your yesterdays.

Then she spilled her box of wonders
on the sawdust circus floor, gifting us
with the hot hands of the shaman
and eyes that could see 
with hideous clarity...
	and we could see, so clearly,
	that no gift came without its price.

	Oh, she opened our eyes
to the acidic light of truth, made us cry
like lost children: for we knew
we didn't know
the Tao of absorption;
and though we could see the door
we couldn't divine
a way of entering in
and being contained...

And how we longed to be contained! 

We tasted the light, but tasted it not.  
Intangible, it was beyond us, beneath us, above us,  
but not within us.

We should have listened to the weatherman: 
the forecast was for a fall.  

There are simple truths and simpler lies; 
and you are anchored by more than you understand, 
to the jail cell of  the familiar.  
Transcendence requires sacrifice:  
not just the burning of dead wood, 
but the slaying of all that is known.  
The holy ones acknowledge allegiance 
to nothing but nothingness itself.  
They are uncontained.  

We were mere bumbling fools: 
novices to the burning ladder.  
Still, we stretched ever upwards: 
nutmeg mystics - hallucinating heaven, 
disappearing into friendless sky, 
climbing high above the safe vaults 
of this crumbling city; 
abandoning the geometry we'd known as home, 
the safety zone that lent us definition.

Wings do not burn if there’s no fire,  
falling is not falling if there's no space, 
navigators know nothing without magnetism
and stars cannot guide the blind.  

Beyond definition, there is no meaning:  
letting go is not letting go, 
crashing to Earth is not crashing to Earth  
and simple gravity is a simple lie.  

Outwith the dimwitted banality of here and now, 
we are transcendent non-beings: 
the perception of our descent, a mere illusion.

Even within the illusion of darkness, 
after the illusion of falling and becoming broken, 
we still conspired to breathe together, 
to grow together -
our petals glowing with crazy hope, 
stamens sending out dizzying opiates 
into the putrid air, stems twisting together 
in a mocking dance.  

Don’t forget, we’ve seen through 
the crack between the worlds, 
we’d say, each to each other.  

But our vanity was in vain 
for the few fragments we'd retained 
could not be pieced together. 
These bits were just bits, 
a scattering of matter,
bereft of meaning; 
	they could not be imbued
with magic, however manically
we waved our wands.
 
Extraneous phenomena were just that:  
hot hands cannot unite the soul with God 
and clear eyes can only see so far.  

What use are these gifts 
if the heart is to shriveled to love?

Oh, we clung, like frantic lovers, 
each to each other: 
desperately trying to blot out 
the knowledge of our separation, 
each from each other.

In the jigsaw madness of pre-dawn hours 
post-coital flowers, heavy and withered, 
drift downstream and drift apart: 
the illusion of union 
fragmenting 
into unintelligible pieces.  

Hands grasp for the intangible;  
not waving, but drowning. 

Slipping through 
the darkened doorway, 
utterly alone,
I hear your voice
distantly echoing mine -
a dried out cry of quiet desperation.