I
king of the hostile quasar !
stelliferous beast without origin
anechoic void-crown usurper of the throne without end
upon a tundra in the cosmic septentrional :
fantastically obscure to the naked human eye
and shrouded in the asterism of shadows !
gatekeepers of the GN-z11 realm,
amethyst-fanged beasts of the farthest space
pursuing from beyond the ultimate meridian
to battle the flame-born basilisks of Alpha Scorpii
the star-beasts battle in constellatory theatre,
a timeless outing of the yet another
anniversary cosmic implosion
II
hostile whorls in the night-sky
spin into mass hypnotic effect
cruor of celestial bodies splatter
alizarin spasms across the death-black vista
which emanates across the heliosphere
as hallucination becomes reality becomes hallucination
lines between
cosmophobia and cosmonoia
are blurred
mystical systems of glyphic code
etched into bedrocks as star-maps
guide the madman into liminal states
between this and the great obscure other
I Almost drowned,
which is to say,
I fell upwards into a darkness
that contained no earth or sky.
Ten years old and a strong swimmer,
but that lake only buoyed up
its own natatory denizens,
it allowed some to swim,
some to glide, dip or delve,
but it consumes skinny 10-year-old kids;
that being the cloud spawn of an alien shore,
must be dragged down and chewed,
like the pale moons reflection.
The muddy waters are one creature,
a sucking swirl, a single stomach,
it throttles, it snags with cuffing weeds,
clogs with the intestines
of convulsive ghosts.
I am drowning,
then they pierce that lusus naturae
with a long pole thrust from a skiff;
yank me out of its crushing press
like bait from a basilisks reeking maw.
Years later I still awake
from that heaving ‘lac sombre’,
an infection of the imagination
I’ve been harboring parasitically
inside the moil of engulfing dreams.
Perhaps incongruously,
it takes some time before I will enter rooms
with too high a ceiling.
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