I dream in black. Visions coated in drops of ink,
lucid black. I can see my groans, dark and infinite,
coated in oil. Memories dark on hidden pages, scars
almost forgotten. Pondering, I wait again at the river
bend for the rain. Black ink sweeping across the contortions
of my face, into the spaces between my gums and teeth,
seeping, coating my every pock. Black ink under my nails,
filling the gorges of my finger tips. I ingest it, watch
it leak from my pours, smear it across white barred
walls, wipe it dripping from my mouth and chin. Nectar
from broken skin. In it my own dark reflections, struggling.
Mesmerizing ink. Intoxicating ink.
It's raw and uncontainable as I attempt: dreams and
passions, collections of truths, lifetimes, devils,
saints, disasters and unruly love. It strays from my
palms, slips from my mind unmolded, creating its own,
like jazz, yet beyond my young grasp, black stars, black
roses, black day, black night. But here it's dark and
its own.
Sometimes it drops off like a hideous dream. Like the closing of a door, like a sinking Aberdeen voice, some eternal vault scraping shut. There it lurks outside, just beyond my grasp teasing the back of my mind with deep red lipstick rouge dirtied in the 3am streets, there by necessity but no passion.
But she always takes me inside again. Back to the
red-wine sunshine at the river bend where empires dance
in drops of black water. Down the crow's invisible highway,
winding through a dream, deeper, deeper, to where the
colours melt, to the corners of a kaleidoscopic psyche,
beyond the hard pavement of grey shallow streets, toward
the rainbow's hue.
From spreading blots of slow, black, sorrowful ink,
to silver ethereal strands: fine, refined by time, steadied
to wild ringlets the colour of near-dead ivy, but alive,
climbing, winding, slowly, musical in the dark. At the
river's bend, covered in black ink, she comes to me
in tiny splashes, ordered rings in a disturbed pool;
Dionysus' glint, with almond eyes, conjuring Death's
entangling arms. At the river's bend I waited for the
building rainbow of colour, the pinpoint of perfection;
hands steadied by time, altered and scared; like the
X over her heart, by memories.
Oh black ink and early days winding wildly in blown visions, forced breaths saturating the skin of my pages.
Miguel Strother is also on the black couch in the basement, still.
