I am gazing at the planets looping overhead

From this other wide angle

Down my telescoping mind

Minding, mindful of the gap between my proper place

And this, dislocated;

Tapping my Muse awake

“whaddoYOU think/sense?

whatdoesIT look like from here, not there?

Aslant, as if I were elongated and morphed

Into something quite other

Switched, swapped, inside out.

 

What singularity ordains?

 integrity, inviolate ONLY in its original connection

implacably fixed and stained with dye

form, context, immutable

like sentry demons stirring the tempest elements

-their witchy brew –

 

As if locomotion in itself was an absolute.

 

 

Across these wide, alien spaces

 

I hear a woman cry out

 

In the ancient anguish of her state

 

Regardless of time or place.

 

The croak of her soul-woe

 

Twangs the fibres of my gut

 

What drunken, lout husband

 

What servitude, what living torment

 

Erupts here – as much as anywhere –

 

Whatever the hovel or palace

 

This earth-wide, infectious plague-curse

 

Manifesting through each individual horror-tale

 

To global, endemic.

 

 

How frail and thin, my armour

 

That separation from collective hell.

 

Her cry shatters any platitudes, solitudes, complacency

 

Not just haunts, belongs.

 

 

 

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