1.
A subterranean terrorsphere,
large, circular and perfectly smooth
but the still air on the inside humming; a voice
which rumbles quietly, whispers low piercing moans,
intonation like swaying counterweights in upset clocks –
the floor breathes when this thing is too heavy,
undulating around ankles, a blanket-skein of silks
falling backwards up the body;
it becomes the skin – a warm sensation
crawling over back, towards all extremities,
tingling in the pores of the skin like goosebumps
sighing flat, stretched out on the forearms.
It reaches the lips, curls into the mouth and under the tongue;
it moves them with harp-like chords:
‘Be yourself for me.’
2.
Fluid on the floor, thick,
begins to bubble – little grey-brown domes
splitting, spitting dust thin,
sending distorted wheezes through the haze,
hot-distant-imminent. This creature reaches
for the mites, the gasps,
holds them in its iridescent palms,
then returns them in their fistfuls
to the fluid they came from,
moulds them to the floor of the sphere;
the bubbles settle and the liquid is still
as the mites and the wheezes huddle together,
pulling at their chests, cramming in their legs
until they morph; from out the peculiar amniotic soup,
another creature, standing, dripping –
it looks – the other looks; heads tilting like mirrors
at their twin, their counterpart, they’re familiar, similar.
They see, bowing slicked backs like ballets;
this creature called human.
3.
From the surface at their feet
rises plumes of deep purple;
dense gas like heavy fog, filling
their chamber, lifting the hum higher,
closing their eyes. The humans
learn to speak, in broken crumbly-noise
broken tv screens scrambling
broken codices of hieroglyphics – they try
to communicate in vague unwieldy sounds; words.
Cannot touch, cannot feel
the waxy, aqueous slick – their skin.
Cannot, under-stand. Each other. They cannot, see
each other; they weep, waxwork faces drooping,
attacked by heat-strokes, degenerative candle lights
sitting in the oil spills – faces amongst invisible masses,
inside lilac veils, they drift apart; obscured by clouds.
4.
Silence licks the walls, the floors
feeling for faces, failing like the humans
to find anyone other than silence –
nothing so serene or violent;
soft on the earlobes and the eardrums,
tentative on the flesh – nothing so sensual.
Craving contact breeds unquiet
relentless echoes in the ball-room;
human calling whines, cries
voices like screaming lambs, howling foxes.
Blind fumbling hopes
for discovery, mustn’t search too deep
for fear, hands might reach in
unfamiliar and furry, slimy
from the inside of the womb;
a dark and crimson thing
smelling like gut; primitive urges –
the creature-humans lie down
separate and symmetrical,
begin to recall to learn to place
this place; is completely warm
an uncomfortable state, is it really
something like home?
5.
The other mites arrive en masse
from their bulbous mothers, fathers;
a mass of morphing, buzzing wasps and bumble,
bees of blinding and subtle vibrancy,
a cloud of yellow, drifting inside the nostrils
to mellow out the black, make room for the heliotrope –
diluting the air to clarify their chorus, their voice;
a trillion tiny mouths opening, silencing minute wings
for the soothing sounds of cradle song vibrations;
their choir moving the air softer than silence,
caressing the humans, the quivering humans,
‘We are creatures too,’ they whisper behind the ears,
‘be calm, you will learn to speak soon;’ the mites exhale,
and sink through the air like dust, blanketing the floor around
the humans – arms and legs sweeping through their sheets,
child-sized dust-angels – ponder
the fading hum of the philosopher mites,
‘reality is just an illusion.’
6.
Cracks in the ceiling-walls form,
shed light – skin-like –
dim and granite-sepia; into darkness,
bounces from slopes, slides
finite beams scattering
the vacuum slighting dashes,
hairline brushstrokes – hair
grows from humans’
bare scalps, curving up,
mingling with God-rays,
wilting, curve down
and tickle their napes;
bodies stand-on-end
at edge of cervix,
lungs like gills;
breathing backwards over water
humans stumble, breathless,
away from openings offering
unfamiliar, smells lifeless
and pale blue, feels all over
with stiff-wiggling appendages
like stubby-rigid worms.
Humans don’t like it;
they cuddle one another,
retreating, scrambling back, back
into the belly of the sphere,
cowering amongst the flesh
of fractured light and void.
7.
Noise falls into humans’ home,
strange sounds – air moving.
Home sounds loud now;
big flat unseen paddles slapping
eardrums, ready to pop.
Noise-pressure crushes fractured light,
breaking open cracks – broken light,
so bright, voiding darkness;
humans see through squinting lids
each other, their brother, they’re brothers –
they hold their tiny hands, already
holding hands, arms, they stare
bewildered little faces, confused
little faces screw up, heads tilting,
heads rearing – ‘we have a problem’
booms the bitter pale-blue;
human-human squirms, wriggles, runs
but legs just slip in slime – nowhere to hide,
rolling around as pale-blue reaches in,
human- struggles to breathe, new air
gives -human his voice, harp-like cord
is not so harp-like anymore, more like rope
noosing human-‘s throat, tightening round human-,
pink and purple boa constrictor; human- looks,
a fixated stare, -human cries; pale-blue multiplies,
two bony arthropods seizing brother,
-human tries to speak again,
can only weep, and weep, to think
of all those nights alone, was not alone
so where had he been,
on every empty evening?
8.
White washes brothers’ pupils with bleach,
-human is blind, mute, deaf, distraught;
human- is limp, -human feels his brother,
limp – pump isn’t pumping, mother
isn’t awake, pale-blue shaking
slicked with womb, lady-clinical
wields weird objects, crosses
threatening tongs, glossy all over,
commences cutting, snipping; -human
yells severing tones, can’t feel mother,
can’t feel brother, can feel
clipping, splitting, pulling, parting;
-human watches human-
mauled by pale-blue twins
taken away, fading down corridors,
yellow folding red dripping
purple turning black.
Lady-clinical cradles, rocks little baby -human,
leaves him alone
in a see-through box, trapped
inside their psychomachine
Splendid Fred Magazine 