Saturday, November 19, 2022

Writing 200 Blog Post 19 - Viscera

Leave behind these phantoms

These weightless shapeshifting images

That fill you vision and leave you wondering what lies beyond

Yet too scared to even look


Leave behind the soft embraces of these quiet deaths

That pull you in closely, whisper that you’ll be okay

That you never have to leave their caresses

That you are where you need to be


Leave them. Throw their arms off yourself. Run.

Plunge into the cold soft viscera of the world

Into its labyrinthine crevices, its echoing canyons

Into the sun. Bask


In the shade of a grey overpass adorned with metal trees

Whose limbs will never know the feet of birds

Then venture further and find the things themselves

Their tangled wood and moss and dead and dying leaves.


Find that the sum of a million imperfections and shortcomings

Is something no human mind could conceive. Something 

That lacks nothing. Not a representation, but real.

Find that you stand amidst it, that you are swallowed up.


Reach out and touch the solid roughness 

Of the world. Feel the undying energy of the river

And the slow unstoppable flow of the seasons.

Weep for each death and celebrate each new life.


And return. The phantoms still haunt you,

Still wrap their clinging hands around your neck

But they’re faded. No danger lies in their eyes

Only emptiness. Finally, see the vapor of their promises.


Know that they can be escaped, if not killed

That they can be ignored, if not erased

That you can live a life in which they recede into the shadows

All but gone, all but dead.


And know that they will never tarnish the things that are real

That their insubstantial essences are impotent

They writhe, shadow-boxing. You stand apart

A part of the world of people, places, things.


The images are dark and twisted but is that the fault of the world?

Somewhere these ghosts become not photographs

But paintings that feature your fears of what might be

Fears that forgot what is.


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