Chant

||: Dew drops drip down, down into the dark :||

||: The bees buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz around my brain :||

||: Whish, goes the wind as it whisps around the bend :||

The world grew dark, and dark, and dark

on command of the enveloping twilight.

Lengthening shadows chased me well,

trying to touch me whilst in my flight.

The noise grows louder, a messy crescendo

growing heavy on my eardrum, lead

slowly settling onto my brain

as each thought vied for attention inside my head.

I turn up the radio, hoping, pleading

that it would quell the images, vivid;

my heart broken, blood and love spilling out.

Those things that made me livid:

Pain, and incompetence, terror, and apathy.

Serpents hissing behind self-made shields

of grass and fig leaves. “Where is your brother?”

“I left him in the fields.”

My heart aches in cowardice,

restrained by fear, and ambition,

growing colder and musty,

rank in its own detention.

That’s why I spill it. I want to know it’s still warm,

still wet, still beating.

“Teach me how to love!”

My cries become pleading.

The gregorian chant drones upward

from the engine, hot metal.

And despair closes in, hot and sticky;

I sink my shaking foot straight into the pedal.

The world is dark, and dark, and dark

by command of my twilight.

My shadows chase me well,

reaching out through my flight.

And in my despair, I finally remembered

that I am a human, susceptible to stings,

and wind, and water, life and death,

and the blessing of dreams.

I’m so small, and so not in control,

my car groaning against the force of my will.

There’s something bigger happening here.

There has to be.