Anchoress

All I know is I squandered my body

I stumbled, foundered the sound, it awed me

I begged for my rites, they were given, I entered

The hole of my soul for foreseeable winters

I turn to the shred of a song I remember

A shocking ember, a penitent thunder

Vanishing violent flicks of the finger

I’ve been through the ringer

I’ve been through the ringer

It was cold

It was dark

It was excellent

I was bold

A lit spark

A testament

I query the crowd to consider your eye

Discard everything else, keep only your eye

But all of your vices, your vitriol, venomous

Bursting, absurd, from a sopping-wet sky

Oh it is agony!

Raging polyphony!

Learning, unlearning the jump-skips of time

Slowly unspooling the thinking and schooling

Debriding the inside my old rigid spine

It was cold

It was dark

It was excellent

I was bold

A lit spark

A testament

In all my delirium, sixteen showings

Brief brittle knowings appear on the wall

A pink magisterium, rushing, blood-filled

Writes in a physical, animate scrawl

Brave little windows, sweet gummy silos

Leaking their contents all over the air

Far-flung, weightless, earnest and shapeless

Thrown in the ether as sharp as a prayer

It was cold

It was dark

It was excellent

I was bold

A lit spark

A testament

A quivering dawning escapes from the thicket

Stained glass amasses, at last, here’s my ticket

Interdimensional currents of ether

Christen the hopeless believer

Christen the hopeless believer