Dark.
Deep, draining, demon-filled
Dark with no promise of dawn,
Dark with no moon, no stars,
Dark with no hope.
Dark so thick that nothing can invade,
Save demons.

Demon investing, simian grabbing
From behind,
Feet into stomach,
Entrail-dragging.
Hands crushing shoulders, neck
Until stretched sinews scream
And brain cries out for oxygen denied.

Demons leach-like fixed upon the mind.
Silent demons
Needing no sound to break the soul,
Sucking until the spirit voids
And heart beats in an empty chamber.

Then, when darkness shows its blackest black,
Come pictures, visions, voices, images.
Pictures which would better be denied,
Clinging to the psyche
Hard as barnacles upon a salty keel.

Pictures! Visions.

Visions against black,
Unyielding, total light-absorbing black,
Negatives of shadows from a flame,
Flitting, flickering, tantalising,
Almost within range unreachable,
Almost to be touched untouchable,
Almost to be lived unliveable,
Almost to be loved unlovable.

Visions! Voices.

Voices siren call to turn again,
To make of stone the bread, to jump the drop,
To catch self on, to get a life,
To live, to love.
All inaccessible.

Voices! Images.

Images of Evil, in half-sleep,
Crawling, slimy, dark reptilian,
Grasp, enmesh, embrace.
Anaconda of the spirit,
Coiling, and squeezing and draining
Until emotion's well is dry.
Encircling in the dream,
Until with remnants of the dying spirit
Is bid be gone.
When Evil's ravaged face with one last roar
Dissolves,
Save only growing, glowing, piercing eyes,
Like red-hot embers on the pillow,
Searing themselves upon the scared mind's eye
Leaves only waking sweat and wild heart pounding.

Calls of anguish rise and without echo
Die, no resonance beyond the closest stalls,
Nor would it matter if there were,
With no-one’s listening.

Dark grows bigger, ever bigger,
All-encompassing and awesome.
And id grows smaller, ever smaller,
Whirled in a blackened vortex,
Tossed in lightless maelstrom,
No roots to cling by,
No anchor to hold by,
No rudder to steer by,
Only dark, and dark
And dark.

Where is the light?
There was always light.
There must be light again.
But when?

April 2001