It Might Plunge

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

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Reminds me of the color of storm,

the sick green tinge to everything,

the wind a mixture of heat and freeze

that could shake in a tornado. But darker.

My demons have given me no time to slink

down to the cellar, close the windows

and avoid breaking glass. I’ve read about the place

of fire and brimstone, maybe even joked about it,

laughed at the Halloween costumes with pointed tails

and long red horns. But there are no red cherubs with teeth

and wings. No fires burning or lakes of lava.

No river of skulls for me to cross by a man

swathed in black mist, his paddle a scythe.

It is the green of natural terror, the green that borders on

purple like an angry bruise—I don’t know how it got there. Everything seems to be climbing downward,

like old sink water plunging through the pipes

into the belly of the city. I forgot to pay the rent,

and gravity is calling in his debts. Naked terror as I fall

through the decades and reigns of scientists and kings.

Tumbling from fading gray to demanding,

judgment-day black. There she is, the woman

I thrust in a cell, my own prison—I hold all the keys here.

While she idles on the other side of the metal

she doodles, storytells over the phone, paints

her fingernails three different shades of red.

My fingers tighten around the bars. She will suffer, not

me. I will force this premeditated agony on her,

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give her a taste of her own tragic cooking.

I will not forgive or forget. I spoon-feed lies, judgment, withheld love or money or work or food,

hate and polite indifference. She downs it all

without complaint, attention elsewhere, gazing beyond

me to a fiery star that threatens to burn through this

hell. And as my anger rises and falls into despair,

self-loathing, I crack open the safe and lock myself

up with her—we will rot together, two diamond-sized

blocks of coal scraping the bottom of the Earth,

and the things that prowl beneath it. But she continues

to level with the light like it owns the place, owns her,

owns me. I dare not look—the shadows here

are cold and bite like chiggers, ripping

into the skin like sticky fire. Tangled shadows

and shades, mud up to my throat, assassins

with painted faces: grinning abandonment,

armed pain, wealthy betrayal and haggard

unworthiness. That light does not call to me.

But it doesn’t take eyes to see the burn and blaze

of the light on my back, through my spirit, threatening

to run me through like a hot, celestial blade and erupt

through my heart. The color is still storm,

but a storm that refuses to break, a heat

that will not be released by torrents of rain

and heaven tears—do not cry for me.

I raised the concrete blocks, curled the barbed

wire, jammed the bars into the floor and fashioned

the jail keys. Years and decades of molding

a permanent dwelling for my enemies, real

and pretend, assumed and appointed. But my prisoners

do not linger on the walls or chains linking them

to me. They all focus in on the light

like so many telescopes training their sights

on a new set of galaxies. The blaze hurts

not only my eyes, but my pride and plans.

I will make them pay, vengeance is mine—

Plucked, lifted from the wreckage of my obsession

and war. God’s eye view. A long line of prisons

beside mine, shouldering each other like stone

soldiers, guns loaded and pointed straight between

the eyes. Point-blank range. No escaping this one.

But every prisoner looks at that cosmic flare,

that mighty star that shakes hell’s sandy foundations.

I’ve hurt, I’ve pierced, I’ve lied and cheated,

murdered or mocked, I belong in the trap

of my own making—

Radiance destroys me, burns through my skin

and thrusts me out of humanity’s fall.

Forgive yourself, or be turned to dust by the fury of the universe’s love.