Secrets told in ash & mad pomegranate

by Ryu Ando

I. Thesis: Our Better Angels, Enhanced (An Abstract)

It arrives with a stampede of fear:
Mutant beasts & creature shocks
From the unknowable future,
Chimerae, haunt these humid grottos; 
Trampling down our dusty corridors 
We are captured in their future echoes; winded,
They bear the built-in missives of extinction 
	  & unravel before our eyes.

Our labyrinthine thoughts 
String us across space & time;
They draw us out through cul-de-sacs 
Into an onerous coda,
A radio silence bookending 
Our most plaintive swansongs:
	  I sing the body eclectic.

II. Evidence: Circumstantial, Monumental, Eternal, (Circular!)

You harbor the suspicion 
That this taste in your mouth,
The grit of bone & char on your teeth,
This familiar foretaste of knowable
Poison & plumbed nectars,
Has doomed us to circle 
	  Back through the maze.

We look upward at skies 
Full of soaring tsuru,
 
	鶴

Rising & whirling in strange unison,
Like galaxies conjoined in revolution 
But in reverse in the silent dark, &
We wonder what lies beyond 
	 The surface of their eternal curve.

But we find only saturnine undertows 
From leaden worlds tugging at our feet
Compelling us to devour 
Our children's unworn hearts.    
	Same as it ever was.

III. Evidence: Apocryphal, Speculative, (Tabloidial!)

It is said that hidden 
Within these infinite walls regressing 
Is a garden concealing the vast insides 
Of tick-ticking seeds & red-mouthed flowers 
Hungering for that singular, mitochondrial kiss;
They say the Great Attractor hides 
Behind the lights engraved
	  In a dying galaxy's weakened arms.

It is ♄e who draws us in, closer & finer, 
Lures us with ♄is hidden hand 
& the promise of new worlds beyond
Binary limits & the thousand heroic faces
Etched on a thousand impassive walls. 
	So they say.

IV. Conclusion: Final Rebuttals (A Digest, Of Sorts)

But the tree of madness 
Writhes within us, mirrors us,
Mocks our foreheads marked 
By dried mud & shame,
Mimics the contortions 
In our char-cold hearts;
Those internal black suns 
Hide wine-dark pockets of time
And speak of unseen matters 
In empty chambers, 
	  Unknown even to us. 

& still we take a bite, chew the chalk 
Of whitened ash & bits of blood-seed; 
We let it mingle with the knowledge 
& aftertaste of last rites; 
We let it forever linger on the tongue 
In a smooth, ashen finish. 
	(&) in the end there was no end

May 22nd, 2016