somniat 49

The angel stands off by herself
in a world of her own;
she faces away from the group
and stares out into the dark forest
that crawls its way
up this side of the mountain;
an old blanket wrapped around her shoulders
is the only reward she’ll ever get
for all she has done for me;
her mission accomplished,
what else has she left to do now,
except to die?

They fawn all about me, these strangers;
they congratulate me
and for what I don’t know;
they are armed and masked,
and their goggles might not all match
but are they any less menacing
than the enemy I’ve just left behind?

They set me upon dry blankets
and lean me up against against something hard;
one probes my eyes with a flashlight,
while another takes blood from my arm,
yet a third gives me a shot that spreads
a creamy warmness through me,
and still one more removes the shrapnel in my thigh;
when I look down at my twisted legs and feet,
I have to wonder how it is I still breathe,
and then it occurs to me
it’s because below my waste,
I now feel nothing.

Through it all,
the woman with the sad, familiar eyes
sits near, watching me in contemplation;
she is old, and I’m sure that I know her;
even the way she breathes, I recognize;
she reaches forward
and pushes some hair out of my eyes
as she has done countless times before;
beneath her breather apparatus,
she murmurs words of comfort,
but above the noisy bustle of the others
I can’t quite hear her,
but I catch her eyes, and I tell her,
I don’t know who anyone is;
I don’t know anyone’s name;
who are you?

Gently she asks,
you remember nothing then?

Now and then,
it comes to me in waves,
sometimes more, sometimes less,
it’s like the tide at the beach
sometimes surging
so much so, I’m frightened and startled,
and then at other times, it recedes
and I feel like I’m being sucked in
someplace deep that I’ll never get out of;
there was something I had to do,
but I can’t remember it;
did I do it?

Their actions seemingly finished for the moment,
the group pauses pensively
and looks to the old woman with the sad eyes;
she places her gloved hand on mine
and begins,
you’re the key, Adam,
your blood; it’s composition;
it’s like a cipher;
it’s where you hid the secret;
it tells us how to make the somniat,
but only once it’s been contaminated;
we learned they were planning an attack weeks ago;
you said you would help us, so we sent you in –
you weren’t alone, but still, we had no idea
how many they’d send …

I take her hand in mine
and lift it, and despite the glove
I find myself tracing the lines of her veins;
I remember holding her hand for the fist time,
how warm it was, how soft and intimate,
I remember placing a ring on her finger;
you said they’d turn on us,
you told that to me, I remember …
I’m so sorry, so sorry;
I thought I’d lost you forever,
I wanted to make you whole again.

Behind her goggles, tears fall,
her eyes shimmer, the way they did
when I first met her and fell in love,
the world will know now, Adam,
thanks to you;
they’ll all know the secret;
there’s be no more lies,
no more killing,
not if others have the secret,
not if there is no secret,
they can’t, they won’t …

It was always the same with her;
I want to tell her bitterly
that now we’ll all destroy ourselves,
but I don’t,
for once I hold my tongue
and realize maybe I’m wrong,
maybe she’s right,
maybe the world can change,
so what now?

You don’t have much time left, Adam,
I don’t know how you lasted this long;
we have to hurry, and we can’t take you with us,
she reaches for a kit she’s kept by her side,
and she opens it; it contains small syringes;
she takes one out,
we’ve got your blood now;
you don’t have to suffer anymore;
I’ll give you an injection, you’ll sleep;
it’ll be gentle, better than waiting
here, alone in the forest
until it’s over.

I swallow and nod,
That’s fine; you’re right;
you’ve always been right;
it’s what’s best;
and if it needs to be done,
then I’m glad it’s you.

She nods back at me;
she strokes my face, one last time;
she roles up my sleeve,
then uncaps the syringe;
I watch as the needle comes nearer,
but she stops;
she whispers something under her breath;
she drops the syringe and reaches for her mask
to pull it off, but before she can the angel is there
holding her arms in place,
it’s too soon for anyone to die yet,
the sun’ll rise soon, it was beautiful yesterday;
I want Adam to see it; he’ll be safe with me;
I’ll protect him.

---

Sky, a poem, follows next. Somniat begins here in the poem, underground.

somniat 48

When the angel pulls me from the pool
I’m almost lifeless;
the world passes me by only diffusely;
she places her lips on me,
they are doughy and hot;
she breathes life into me,
then she massages my chest;
finally she slaps me hard in the face
until I murmur,
stop.

She almost but not quite laughs;
she throws me over her shoulder
like the used up ragdoll that I am;
then she runs,
a mad dash across wet pavement
that glows in eerie shades of claret
so that in it I see
reflections of devils and demons;
I close my eyes
and feel my angel dip down low,
wiring scrapes across my back
and the ground below my angel’s feet
shifts from from a hard solidity
into an empty metallic echo;
I open my eyes but for a mere moment
and I see through rusted iron grating,
down below, to a rain of fire
that falls across endless chaos;
soldiers abandon their trucks and run
along with a host of others,
all of them scattering, like lost filaments
on reverse course from a magnet.

My angel sucks in dense air
and blows it out again,
while her legs pump,
like pistons in a steam locomotive
they churn, a destiny unto themselves;
then finally she leaps
and I feel us cross a chasm in time;
then we hit hard dirt
and we lose one another;
I’m left rolling
across the side of a wet mountain
and when I stop,
I dare to open my eyes again
as I hear cables begin to snap
and I see the bridge,
the entire structure the pool was built upon,
beginning to gyrate wildly
until it breaks away from the mountain,
all the remaining cables snapping at once
as it drops in a mighty swing
toward the flame engulfed hotel
where it smashes into its center;
the hotel leans forward
and mysteriously holds for another instant
before it completely crumbles forward
pouring out concrete, iron, and flames,
that fill the streets below
in a miasma of horror.

I lean back and stare at the sky;
the clouds have cleared
as if they never were,
and the stars light up the sky;
I wonder what it might mean
that I’ve come this far
that I am here now
on the mountain;
I feel its strength below me,
its eternal presence flows into me
and accepts me;
before any of us, there was the mountain;
and when we are all gone,
there will still be the mountain.

There is first one
and then another,
goggled eyes that peer into me,
fingers that begin to prod me,
whispers and then shouts,
frantic exchanges of words;
someone leans in close
and she has sad familiar eyes;
with her black gloved hand
she strokes my cheek
and tells me,
you’ve come home, Adam,
you’ve come home.

---

Stranger, a poem, follows next. Somniat begins here in the poem, underground.

somniat 47

Rain beats against my face
and wet pellets sting my arms and legs;
I hover in a space
that is not a space,
where absolute meets abstract;
I float above the golden wings of an angel
that spread out
toward the end of eternity
to a place where reality meets dreams
and bends.

Out of the swirling mists of the sky
I see faces both old and new
and they ask me questions
for which I have no answers;
a plurality of possible me’s
that could have been
woven into a möbius strip
that we glide upon
never reaching an end.

The wind howls in my ears
and pulls at me in every direction
until I am flattened and elongated
floating outside of myself
and watching me fall, paper thin;
answers play on my mind
but they only yield more questions,
regression, mind dialysis,
something I thought I knew
until it got left behind;
the touch of God
breathing life into me
only so that I might suffer
for just one more answer;
a war that pulls me apart
and sets me aflame;
the ashes, swept away
in the rain.

We smack the water
with such an unexpected violence
that it sends tremors through me,
vibrations that shatter my feet like glass;
before we plunge
down
deep;
I gasp for air and all I get is water,
but even before I can panic
she’s curving us upward
but not fast enough
so that my shoulder slams something hard
and then I’m wriggled about
twisting in ways I can’t explain
until I see through the bottom of the world
deep down into hell
where wild winds stoke long flames
that lick across the entire length of the hotel;
fire trucks retreat, having given up;
police cars search for a way out
through roads crammed with fleeing military trucks;
people rush from the building and into the streets,
hither and thither, helter-skelter,
a swarm of deserting ants
that topple over one another in their panic.

Before any of the blurred images can congeal,
I am suddenly swept up
into the arms of a warm lover
that works with a silent determined fury
to unravel straps and buckles
that have tangled around us both;
then holding me close and tight,
she pushes against the sky, itself,
and thrusts us up
so that we burst through
the surface of the water;
and even as I flail my arms
coughing and gasping for air,
this angel calmly wraps a strong arm around me,
and leans me into her soft chest,
then with her free arm
she strikes into the water
her legs propelling us forward
across the long length of the pool;
I relax into it,
her steady stride,
I close my eyes and feel her strength,
her mercy,
and when I open them again,
I see upward, to an opening in the clouds
that reveals the stars;
and it’s then that I notice her
hovering near,
a sapphire shadow
that whispers into the breeze,
you see, I promised you,
now, don’t be afraid,
you’re almost home.

---

Stars, a poem, follows next. Somniat begins here in the poem, underground.

Somniat 46

I walk back into the room
away from the sliding doors
and sweeping gusts of wet wind
to the angel;
she looks up at me
with eyes rimmed in black tears;
I reach out my hand,
please.

Her eyes lock into mine,
and what is behind them,
I can’t fathom,
permutations and combinations,
infinite calculations,
my destiny there
in those wet pools
that drip black ink across her face;
her life’s history, her story,
one I’ll never know,
but its ending
everything I depend upon;
and then it happens, the shift,
a decision is made;
she reaches out and grabs my hand;
she is so strong and so vibrant
that she nearly pulls me down
when she stand up,
and then we are there
face to face in the dim light;
she raises a hand
and gently caresses my cheek,
I’m not an angel,
you know that.

You are, I tell her,
now show me what to do.

She bites her lower lip
and looks away from me;
then she goes to the bed
where there is a large vinyl bag,
from it, she takes out two sets of harnesses;
she throws me one;
put it on;
somewhere in my mind
I trace out the outline
of a shimmering fractal
and my hands do the rest;
it’s as easy as putting on a shirt
or tying a shoe, each snap and strap
fits into place exactly where I expect it to,
and when I’m finished and look up,
the angel is ready and waiting.

I take a step in her direction,
when suddenly there is massive gust of wind
that sweeps into the room, howling;
so strong, the walls rattle
and the floor begins to tremble,
until it reaches a point of cathexis,
somewhere deep down, under the room
there is a reverberating boom
that knocks us off our feet;
the whole room feels as if it is sliding;
the lights taper and go off,
we scamper across the floor
and grab one another and wait,
both of us sure, this is the end,
but amazingly it passes;
she stands first, then lends me her hand;
the entire room leans slightly
disorienting us,
and the angel says,
the building, it must be collapsing,
if we’re going to do this,
we have to hurry.

We move in dark shadows;
the way out revealed
by the black outline of the curtains
that lift in the wind;
I see beyond them into the night;
out on the balcony there is no railing,
this angel having removed it long before I came,
so that when we step out onto the patio
there is nothing between us and infinity
except the stormy night sky.

We look down into the vast grayness,
and my angel shouts above wind,
this isn’t going to work,
I can’t see anything down there,
and the wind,
if it gusts at the wrong moment,
it’ll pull us off course –
and even with this downpour,
there won’t be enough water.

Memories stir,
the killing won’t stop,
it’ll never stop unless we do something;
who is it you lost?

I stand behind her
and begin to fasten my harness to hers,
snaps and buttons that bind our destiny;
finally, we’re fully attached and move as one;
and it comes as second nature, a routine,
the shrapnel in my leg brushes against her own leg
and it stings; she yells back to me above the roar,
a small boy, he was just a small boy,
but it doesn’t matter now, not anymore, does it?

I cry out to her amid the blasts of wind,
as she leads us closer
to the slanted edge of the railless balcony,
hundreds of feet above the ground,
it matters to me, every one of them,
I think about them every day, every minute,
I can’t shut my eyes anymore,
I can’t sleep.

She eyes the beyond
swirling eddies of dark mist;
the wind picks up and the cold rain pelts us
before it dies down once again,
I can’t see anything.

And then I notice it,
the outline of an angel far below,
in a halo of sapphire,
there! Look there, it’s there,
don’t you see it? The blue,
she’s waiting for us,
dive for the blue.

And then it happens;
and I see that her wings are the most beautiful of all;
for from this angel, wide glowing eagle wings of amber
extend outward from her,
she leans in, her legs so powerful I’m pulled of my feet
and left dangling;
she back us up almost all the way to the room,
then she runs, skips and finally jumps off the balcony,
and into the swirling gray of the night sky
we fly.

---

Mist, a poem, follows next. Somniat begins here in the poem, underground.