Ruddy Sticky Sanguine Mess [poem]
As I slithered through the wormhole
which, as things turned out, was just a womb
a canal and place of vulvic charm
a voice said in my head unsoftly:
“Now your life’s an open book
so write whatever thing you want
and it will be as you will soonly see”
though somewhere in the darkness
of my unformed mind
I heard a grim alarm.
So then upon the whiteboard in
the void which was my new home
(don’t know how long for —
could be a few days or a year or more)
I wrote a single word. That word was
l o v e
and in my neonately state I had a
vague remembrance of this word
as something to be treasured
blessed and gifted from above.
The ease with which my finger
(once I’d dipped it in my blood)
was able to engrave the word
imparted through my arm
a flood of dreamlike frisson
and my shoulders juddered
just as if a lightning bolt had
left the skies and for a while
I, rudderless, was floating like
a sigh upon the ether’s breath.
But as I looked in fondness on
the letters that I wrote with gusto
on that board I saw the ink (my blood)
begin to drip in crazy lines and
jagged prose and o was changed to i
and flipped around and right before
my eyes that blood of mine as red
as vintage wine just flowed around
the whiteness till the ruddy sticky
sanguine mess had frozen to the void
and pressing down with gauze
upon my open bloody wound
I thus prevented any more from leaking
into useless causes —
flawed implausible entanglements —
worthless wrangles
where the blood is milked of iron
platelet-free
another tragedy.
I think I’ll never give my blood again
And to those words a chorus said Amen
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
The Naked Troubadour 