Down Here
Down here at the bottom there is no pain
surfaces are smooth, hard, frozen in time
steel, cinder block, scaled and serpentine
the angles are unmoving, like fossil between sheets of stone
I mold to the floor, head on a steel ladder
feet against the silver belly of the toilet
seatless, lidless, mouth eternally open
hungry for rain that never comes
We spend lives clinging to the surface
white knuckled, wild eyed
driven by a great fear of falling
but when at last, we drop
we find a strange relief in death
and we make discoveries only the dead can know
that our eyes, like little moons, can shine in the dark
and our hearts glow brighter, luminescent
than they ever did in the daylight
and the skin that burned away, as we fell
has revealed the folded wetness of newborn wings
soft, silent, waiting
for us to learn to fly
Down here in the heat, in the sweat, in the tears
where even the wind wont go
cages black as snakes coil and hold
turning men into animals
and those sounds, the voice of nightmares
lonely howls, snarls of fear, the lunatics laugh
testimony of mans inhumanity to man
they echo through these caves like bats
ceaseless as the waves
Freedom, you lovely, precious thing
who is your nemesis?
what is left when you are gone?
are these madmen, and their machines of misery
the price of your absence?
do these tombs, these towers
make up the landscape of your leaving?
for of all the loves in this world
none have greater heartbreak in their loss
than you
But now that you have left me
I will lay down
and in these rags and bones I will hide
I will bend to the shapes of confinement
and forget your face
I am still, silent, curled inward
a fetus in a cement womb
for this I know: only one red path remains
to find you now
and it spirals inward
inward
to the heart
Down here, underneath the everyday lives
below the smiles and plastic and lemonade skies
down here in the guts
there is only truth
hunger, pain, desire, violence
spit and shit and blood and bone
life circled by death, skulls free of skin
the jagged face of our humanity stripped naked
torn from the mask
Down here you are eaten by lions
in a jungle of steel trees
and what they leave behind, shimmering
is your essence
Down here I am destroyed by divinity
Down here
I am born
