Revamped; A Featured Post

Eyes Cast Downward- Memoir Excerpt

Originally hand written in July 2015 Late Spring of 2014.  Just Months before liver failure Our eyes are nearly always cast dow...

Saturday, May 14, 2016

A Transcribed Narrative of 'The Between'

I can hear this marching,
How I knew I failed –




With sound- then rivulets -the dark would come –
A door I kept avoiding –
Pleading with gods because I knew I failed
but never why – gooey, black rivulets of tar
seeping through that door, seeping through
where the hinges were –
darker darker darker –
silent mercy cries –
tiny light flicker taunting,
not to guide, it’s how I knew
I failed – like the sound made
When someone dies, the death toll –
The varied tests – decisions to save
This or that person –
This young beautiful girl – with a man,
It was revealed she was his mistress,
They both died in a car crash,
Illusion of her innocence stripped away, (that’s how I knew
It was real because they were total strangers, how could I know)
They were two souls passing through
the realm between worlds when I was, several others, not all at once-
One of many (tests?) – loyalty test, patience test, perseverance test –
“how long til she collapses from exhaustion?”
they were relentless with their digging – and terrified,
what was I doing wrong? Maybe a childhood imprint –
when the light I couldn’t look at went away – a darkness
not to be believed, an entity underneath the darkness,
light, lush grass and full blossoms wither- receding under that dark –
stuck in a tunnel, they’re drowning me, to test my will to live,
a flooded sewer system – a maze – rising water – move move move –
I got out – but – anyway – eventually succumbing
To spiritual exhaustion like invisible ropes,
They slowly lowered me – surrounded by blank morose people –
Lost souls? – watching me being lowered on a pulley – they were people
From many ages, watching in the bygone fashions of all eras and regions –
Someone (merciful fellow soul in limbo?) pointed me in the direction
To go –  then I Came Back? – after hundreds of failed tests –
In soul trouble, doomed – I gave up on the taunting tiny flicker –



-The deities expected me to figure it out
And they kept leaving me to grapple alone –
I wasn’t prepared to go with that thing
Where all was and was not – the nonexistence
Of fear and suffering but everything else too, a force
More powerful than the dark that wouldn’t stay with me –
I kept failing – I’d see people I knew, to test where my loyalties laid –
I was told my daughter was in an accident, car crash, urgent,
But all my street friends were going to die – had to choose –
The government was going to blow up their squat,
Instant demolition, Nickels was in there – had to choose –
I knew war songs by the time the EMT was there –
My body foul but I am not in it – I’m singing
These nothing battle songs I could’ve never heard before –
I said, “Lights in my chest, long as they’re there I’m okay,
They’re guiding me,” (the nurse didn’t understand)
Thought I saw a rat
But it was darkness
Chasing me –
Melodically humming then the hospital –
I was wearing my Zeus T-shirt –
Holding it, a circle not a circle –
That sound, those sounds, those eyes –
Manipulative eyes – speaking in language
I somehow understood – tricking me, being something
they weren’t – they said I had to do
ihis One Thing,
and that this thing, and not the light, would protect me –
they did a ritual, they were all dressed in ( I don't know) Asian attire?
I’d never seen before in life, closest thing I’ve seen were those monks
over in Chinatown asking people for money for this or that
Noble Cause, they concealed what/who was behind them,
didn’t tell me whole truth of what was behind – I shrunk back
(if the spirit can recoil in horror that is) finally I saw it –
couldn’t look away from its eyes – such power over me –
it revealed its non-genitals – “Now take of me" - don’t know
how I got away – O my God – that’s what I’ve been doing?
So wretched, so horrified, and it tricked me, it wore
Gold, shining, necklaces, the false ornaments
Of another world, like industrial chains, false bright
To seduce me with how easy it was (undeserved respite?)
The light off him came from artificial source –
Male not female, they were all male, those taunting beings
Giving me the test, lusting after me obscenely, awful,
There was even one when I was supposed to save
A demolished building – I chose wrong – “my daughter
doesn’t want to see me anyways” they all fucking died, all my street friends –
I chose wrong – anyways – severed corpses, dead after all,
Nickels- other streetboys, friends- that I knew from real life.
It speaks to you in your own language see?
The thing behind all others, hidden- 
the circle’s movement -
sounds like helicopter blades whipping through wind –
Force yourself awake! Thought it was a dream
But I couldn’t wake from it –
Thought it was D.T's but it wasn’t –
Horrifying – no one will believe this –
Just toxins in my brain? – everything.
Dark damp dreary – like being under a ship, moist,
Unpleasant, there were no smells –
Straw perhaps? everywhere, straw beds, people watching me –
On straw pallets, they were not scared or sad just watching,
another one fall- a human form.
Pulling me downwards past them – 
humming that odd between worlds song –
If I didn’t keep humming that song (chant?) making those circles
With my hands, then this golden light
That still kept me bound to life –
Some ancient shit –
Would snap, darkness kept chasing me –

Language doesn’t do it justice
Even if I use my entire lexicon-
It was just was far more vast – no words –
Have to use simplistic words –
Words that don’t quite cut it –
They are just closest words
To describe-
everything 
how the blossoming light would vanish and why.
Everything it touched became so pure, pretty –
Pretty’s the wrong word but there isn’t a right one for this,

---------------------------------------------------------------------

What was the trick? The darkness? Or the light beneath?
All I know is they were in total opposition.


Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen
Transcribed by Erin Burley

1 comment:

  1. This is the most intense thing, Mary. You're a mystic. This is a vision

    ReplyDelete

Anything to say on the subject?