The Awakening

Cycles of the abyss, it was fire against my flesh
The end of the world and I was the catalyst
some people and some places we are meant to survive
wading across the dark caverns of evening
again and again I sought the light—
all down darkness wide
I was alchemized in the pyre of sunrise
transfigured by delight
A killing by the rival
Desire as annihilation
I chanted your name
A prayer against the dark
The awakening!
After Babel, the flaming languages
Apotheosis—I wanted the gods dreaming of us
all down darkness dawn I wanted and I wanted and I died
dreaming of twilight’s violet corridors
how crushing the center of the universe
I was smoking in the midnights at the ends of the Earth
Madonna of the ash ages, wayfaring the dark places, my life was aimless
(once I loved and the rest was remembrance)
Hour of the apocalypse 
I wanted to remember and I wanted to forget 
Sappho rose in the violet corridors of twilight 
she said try not to die by the lance of sunlight 
Desire I was paralyzed by heartbeats
every second was a voided eternity 
to witness war in the Heavens
and walk the wasteland as a scavenger 
fragmented Sappho, what do you know?
the pavement was like black agate 
in the crucible of the mind 
I died I died I died 
Cycles of the abyss, I witnessed—
A lattice of white lightning
Caught again in the storms I was born in
The terror revels, I was a goodfellow of shapeshifting chaos 
Not Titania’s enchanted glade but a billboard wood on Melrose 
The flames were serenading me from the darkness grave 
This was the splendor of undoing 
Buried in a cloak of black rains
From the midnights that kept surviving 
I called out to you who witnessed the first light
The singularities came for me
and I panicked—
I was through and through
Cycles of the abyss, it was fire against my flesh
some people and some places we are meant to survive
wading across the dark caverns of evening
again and again I sought the light—
all down darkness wide