A.C. Evans
Fault lines
He favoured fault lines, the zone
where the light was thinnest.
- Iain Sinclair
Flowers of fire. Resurrection. Fault lines.
Infested wounds.
We stand all night, frozen, starving, maimed,
Staring at the pitiless sky.
I saw flowers of fire.
The interloper carries lilies, incongruous
Amid the mud, the poisoned water,
The decaying bodies.
The execution stake was a blackened iron pillar
- stark, upright. An obdurate shadow.
He or she approached, like a nimbus absolving darkness,
As I clawed the air. I collapsed, I crawled, I cried,
As I writhed and shuddered, as I rode the fever’s
Molten cascade.
His or her hand was so white, almost transparent,
Veins vivid green, skin (not flesh) slippery membrane,
Fault lines in the eyes,
A skeleton of silver,
Darting gaze slivers of pain.
Beneath my feet a congealed morass of blood,
And discarded atrocity images.
Somewhere, a rumble of thunder.
In the distance a flare lit up the clouds,
The beseiged city groaned in torment,
And, racked, I clasped the fiery flowers to my body.
I was detritus no more.
No more, this endless enchantment of shame.
I fell forward as the darkness crumpled, enfolding
Me
Like a cloak, the embrace of numberless aspirations,
Figments of hope, all our wretched, lying invocations.
Prayers? Hah!
No, just the excrement of consciousness.
Page(s) 154
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