Learning the Secrets of Acid

What remains of us We, the consumed Denuded, expended To chasms cast, where meaning was They leer at us, those roiling nulls Like scornful empty sockets That cradle ghosts of purpose All is shadow and space All is terror and shame No color, no structure, no weight No order, no reason, no shape Beyond the snowblind eyes of gods Whose cruel designs in nightmares crest In these great pits, we come to rest What rot shall rule these oily voids? What remains of us at all?

Clots form clots Tumors beget tumors Cavities clogged with Recursive extrusions Swollen shut A fecund place Hairs choke off exits for waste The sins deferred Come due at last Membranes part Before the offal mass Bursting with life’s true fruit

The way shall be made clear The portal shall open No fear of what lies inside No reproach yet spoken Orifice, yawn bright Storm-port in the nightmare Of torn throats, pitted eyes Hands that grope in the darkness Oh, swallow me whole Devour my life Reveal the world within Wonderments that silent hide Beneath the shadowed skin The world without, I deny And gladly go unto ingestion To learn the secrets of acid And know the embrace of absorption Orifice, yawn bright Save me from the darkness

I was never meant to see it The endless cells in chalk-scarred cliffs Beneath the naked night Ranks of trillions, each soul eclipsed By the endless splendor Of some holy blight Their faces rapt in worship Streaked with tears of agony Hosannas cried with voices stripped Of all mortal agency The wheels within wheels Seven wings, seven eyes The ranked trumpets’ peal Fouled horns; crowns vile Arrayed to please the mind Of that fatted narcissist Who harvests what fools die Dreaming of some providence That makes meaning of life So to reward with servitude And mockeries of paradise Now that I have borne witness I pray to be left behind