Monthly Archives: February 2012

Somniat 27 – the lolling tongue

She drinks the blood
of those who have gone before her
and her tongue wallows in the wounds
of those life has left behind
as she tastes their defeat
and thrives on it;
she is time
and she is death
and it is ill advised to walk before her
unless an angel has lent you her strength
and guides your every step.

A narrow beam of light
is all that we have in the utter dark
and there is not a sound that can be heard
except our own footsteps that echo across the walls
and slowly die
each time we stop to pause and listen;
oh, and then, what we see when we are still,
in our narrow beam of light.

I’ve heard so much about this stairway,
about the effort to have its artwork painted over,
whitewashed;
the painted walls and steps were an immediate embarrassment
to those who had commissioned the work
and they had literally gagged upon first seeing it;
complaints from the city counsel soon followed
and at minimum they demanded that the edges of each step
be marked in black and yellow stripes;
but deaf ears, big money, and smart attorneys all worked in concert
to preserve what many said was a rare work of exquisite art –
they said, it would be a sin against humanity to have it removed;
so instead of repainting the steps and the accompanying passage walls,
two signs were put up, one in the subway and one in the promenade,
warning those who traversed the stairway
to take care and not fall prey its visual illusions;
yet even with the signs
each year there would be new injuries
and even occasional deaths;
the controversy never really ended,
it just faded away
when the trains stopped coming
and the subway station finally closed.

Where my angel shines her light
we see small circles of darkness;
a series of small floating lopped off heads
strung out like pearls along a necklace,
each with vacant eyes that stare out at us
with an emptiness so solid, it fills us with dread,
a sinking sense of doom;
and over, around them, beyond them,
there are long powerful feminine arms
that stretch out nearly the entire length of the stairway,
each with skin the color of a thundercloud just before it bursts;
and each ending in a wide hand of scarlet,
and each of these in turn clutching a separate and distinct object:
a trident with thick stylized threatening teeth,
a wildly curved falchion fresh from the kill,
a severed head that drips blood down into
a bowl shaped out of a half skull that rests in yet another hand,
– this bowl lets off an eerie colored fire
and when we pass it, I feel sure I can feel its heat;
there is more,
a hand that holds incense I can almost smell
– sweet, cloying, fragrant quietus;
so many arms, so many hands, so many destinies;
and they all converge on a single point.

My heavenly chaperon now shines her light forward
up the lolling tongue
which is what they always called the stairway
because it was painted in such a way
as to give one the visual sense that they were not walking on a stairway at all
but instead upon a smooth, wet, pink plane, that gently curved inward;
and though surely the width never changed
from the top down, people were sure, the surface became tapered and rounded,
while from to bottom up, the effect was just the opposite;
and on either side of the lolling tongue
dripped the depiction of dark crimson streams
that unnerved all onlookers.

As we near the top, we see it,
my angel shines her light upon it,
the famed face of the demon goddess –
so hated in her era and by so many,
yet after all this time
still here, glaring down at those who approach
with eyes that change as you move
so that if you shift just the right way
you’ll see compassion,
but shift a little more, and there’ll be contempt,
love, passion, hurt, anger, lust, scorn
ribaldry, irony, and back to contempt,
a kaleidoscope of feeling,
I try it again and move more slowly,
this time I catch shades of shyness
and ripples of jealousy,
just a taste of euphoria
but a slap of impatience;
no wonder so many slipped on the smooth stairs
as they shifted and wondered
what was it that this goddess really felt;
and then there was and still is
her third eye, up on her forehead,
a vertical slit that stared out empty and void,
unblinking, it followed you,
so wherever you were on the stairway
it was there on you;
its touch, palpable.

Finally, we reach the stairway’s summit
where the lolling tongue drips from its egress,
so that to step into the subway station
is to go through the mouth of the goddess
and be devoured by her.

As we advance on the last steps
what starts in me as a slight shiver
at once becomes an uncontrollable shudder;
I look up at the goddess
and through the darkness I can see her eyes;
she glares down at me
in a preternatural hate;
my world begins to spin
and I fall backwards
in a weightless vertigo;
but my angel has caught me
in the cusp of her arms
and for an instant, I’m sure,
we are hovering over the stairway;
my angel has wings that glow a cold fiery blue,
so bright,
I have to shut my eyes;
and when I open them again
we are safe and on our feet
in the subway station.

You almost fell,
she says lightly, almost laughing,
but I caught you.

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somniat 26 — what the gargoyle saw

Over its mocking mouth
and over its misshapen, oversized nose,
the gargoyle’s eyes are all that’s left of its menace;
huge, deep, and hollow,
they glare down the entire length of the promenade,
carefully crafted and put into place, back when everything
down here, so far underground,
was still fresh, and the amorphous walls
still wet and dripping in their peculiar molds.

Back then, each shop wasn’t just a curiosity
full of the trite and the worn, the camp and the discarded,
but instead each was a boutique
that represented the cutting edge,
small studios that featured the avant la lettre;
whether it was in painting or in fashion
or even in odd forms of miniature architecture,
it was here first, deep under the earth,
where creation was overflowing,
bursting at the seams in stunning innovation;
it was even here that Umhala Marsuya
turned in her first public minuet at sixteen to an mere audience of ten,
long before she danced at the Bella Vista Theater to an audience of a thousand;
and it was here that you could come to stand within inches Roy Murad
as he painted each stroke of the Cherchez la Femme
that now hangs in the Nirgendwo gallery
behind a wall of glass, where it can only be seen
by appointment and by the right people.

But time has outlasted the promenade,
where with the ending of so called great economy
the artists packed it up and went elsewhere
and the trains stopped coming
and the wide mouth of gargoyle
that led the way to subway was patched over
with wide planks of plywood that were painted the color of ash
and gave the once menacing monster comically unruly teeth
which eventually gave way to the bright spectacle of graffiti
along with bits and pieces of words,
poetry that had accumulated over the years.

It is under the haunting eyes of the gargoyle
that we move toward our destination
at a pace so languid that on any other day
you would mistake us for a couple newly in love
taking a stroll somewhere out-of-the-way;
but even as my angel holds my hand, tenderly,
I know
we’ll never be lovers
and we’ll never be friends.

We are finally there, so close,
we stand under the gargoyle’s eyes
where they can no longer reach us;
my guardian with one hand in mine
and the other holding our light
searches the graffiti for something,
I don’t know what;
but she stops her light at this or that place
and reads aloud little bits of poetry;
her voice is solemn and unexpectedly sad:

Love sets us free
she reads, and
tears such as angels weep
and
where flaming wheels begin to run
and
the time of youth has fled
and grey hairs are on my head;
she closes her eyes and sighs,
where is it?

I see it before she does,
and I point it out,
Mercy, pity, peace
is the world’s release

That’s it,
she whispers,
and she almost smiles.

She puts her flashlight down
and faces me;
she lets her fingers trace briefly across my cheek
I’m letting you go,
and before I’ve protested
she lets go of my hand,
and soon is at work
on the piece of plywood where I found the message;
it is lose,
parts of its edge must have worn out long ago;
it doesn’t take long to pull it free
and then we have to step back quickly
as it nearly falls on top of us both;
the clang as it hits the ground
echoes down the promenade
and we look up at the gargoyle
half expecting its eyes to have shifted.

My angel take up her flashlight again
and shines it toward the new opening,
we see a long wide pink surface leading up
toward the old and unused subway station;
she puts her hand back in mine
as we duck under the board above
and slip out of the promenade;
but I stop her for a moment
and I look back
to remember it
one last time, before whispering,
good-bye.

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