by Tenebris

Created on: June 30, 2008

Liminality

The last time I walked that path I nearly froze
though the temperature hovered a degree
or so above solidity, someone had forgot
to tell the wind repossessing my clothes
and the mist inundating my hair and me

No more will I listen to that deceitful breeze fraught
with illusion, like a treacherous lover
painting ghost birds against an eldritch sky:
they hover, with cries more sensed than heard,

gleefully oblivious to that anonymous power
which, giving life, as carelessly lets them die.

Each broad wing is very dark, solitary spectral birds
drifting, drifting, asail on a sea of fog
without a destination or even a compass:
if they wait long enough the unclean wind
will choose their next port for them, be it bog
or quicksand: their very being defines impasse.

Desperate for focus, straining at the thinned
bodies, I blur, definition and identity
lost in the whispering winds that echo back to me
my soul in a rainbow of monochromatic hue:
the mirror, in a moment of unaccustomed levity
shares its dark humour in vague were's and to be's.

Welcome to limbo, my friends: what do you think of the view?
birds of death, is this the first time you have seen
the spiritual debris of a living tomb?
'tis cold, the forked ice bitter Acheron centre-city burns
into my heart but your world is more clean
your eyes pierce obscurity to the womb
but all I will ever know turns

on appearance, we have forgotten our past
soul-shattered, all that remains is the pose

and that won't last.

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