O morning star of life, where
were you during my darkest dark?
It was there I needed you
most: when I was holed up
in that cave, underground, where
I could see no moonlight:
there I needed most your shine.
There in that tomb, buried
alive, one comes to think
that perhaps one has entered
the realms of the dead,
that he is forsaken of the sunlight,
that he is lost from the hours
of the waking world. And
it is as if the dreams are what
are real, and what is real
the dream. Where were you o
morning star of life, where
did you go? Or is it perhaps you
stayed lit, far up there, hoping
to see me again, me clawing
through the dirt when I dug out,
you to shine upon me again
when I emerged from shadow
and dream, to greet me
as I breathed fresh the air outside:
with your million friends, a sky
of a thousand myriad stars.
dh
4:25am sunday, 11th january
Ophelia
Fluid memories pierce her temple
In a coolness of reason and thought
Her skin tightens around her forehead,
Squeezing the ebb of her life
Pressured, disturbed, pounding,
The last beating of the heart
Pleading to be hit hard with a fist
Not to revive, but to punish.
Stagnant and green with age
It is never clean in dead forest pools
The living thoughts claw their way out
Tearing, injuring, bloodying her
As they ooze from her lips
And drag her fingertips
Across the white foam
Staining it with accusation.
Breath is strained and gasping
As tentacled hands and voices
Grip and encircle her swaying form
Cinching hard around her breast
Suffocating her grief at living
Prophecy and foreshadowings
Boil and rise from her lungs
To kiss the lily of her mouth
Rising to the surface of the forest pool
Ophelia’s whisperings bubble forth
Swirling in the enticement of a final breath
Her poetry is exhaled.
dh