The World Eclipsed Me – 4

words by barbara doduk


4.

and

in a blizzard swirl of lights

like a hurricane blowing

around the sticky room

looking into the idiot grins

with eyes wide open

pupils dilated like big rim filled coffee mugs steaming

and

spinning quick then slow

the music garbled

belched a familiar melody my mind wrapped around

like a blanket of

rose thorny wool

steel rubbing me raw

and yet

the sofa was free

soft uncontaminated from fluff

laid about flopped to the side

and upside down

the World seeming somehow just slippery clean

as it devoured ingested

tossed me around the entrails

bloodless and pure

in the bowels of the Eclipse

and

morning always arrived like

an unwelcome hangover

hung over the rail

vomit dripping sour chunks of reality

looking for a bacon

egg and toast

grease breakfast

and

the blue eyed sky stared blank

while the World shit out the last of us

onto the gravel parking lot of life

and the stone rolled

as the burn was on

and the clouds blew me over

while annoying children pointed smirking fingers

and

howling with bitter laughter

at the wasted youth of an unloaded hand gun

wanting for the bullets

to shoot you down

but the stench of it all

was nostril curl and eyes watery bad

after all

the end was always around the corner

waiting for me there

and

as the funeral piled into the silver hatchback

heading back to the banquet

the morning rose into a summer day

and into fall

winter

spring

no conceptual birth

or baby body smearing over the sheets of time

this foetal mistrust of indignity rising

then grew without much thought

and then –

one blah day

in a rush of metal legs

and bone brittle brakes

I stopped

in a crush of bloody messed up

mashed up

smash

it came to a halt

the end was always asking for the lights to green for me

not amber

not red

that Sunday afternoon dinner time arrived

with a Royal guest chair empty

and

in a Columbia hospital mourning

over the sour sweet iron taste

I drank it down

and swam around the morphine pain

and ended all that was the full of me inside

then came to

like sprout from seed

to begin all over again

another me

and I was only then nineteen,