WELCOME TO THE DARK

by E. J. Ward
The pomegranate is the fruit of hell
As I know well
Its always given to ladies
Who go down to Hades
This Darkness is the realm my dishy Prince
Lord of the Underworld
I captured that bright day when I was picking flowers
They say he captured me
How little they know of dark and light
For I possessed his soul
And saw in his dark thighs the answer to my bright
I am Queen of Hades a shining child
Lucid serene and calm
Feeding off music and starlight
I know no harm
My Lord is in my power as I am in his
I am his answer to everything
As he is mine I am sure of this
Except Oh except that on Spring mornings
My soul aches for dew on the grass
For trembling sunlight caught in the trees
For clouds that pass
And I weep for the swoop of the swallow
For the last twilight glimmer
For the hush of sunset
And the held breath of dawn on a morning in summer
And I listen Oh how I listen
For the tiny sound of the fly
For the soft creak of an ancient oak
For the flurry of homing birds in an ominous sky
Sickened with weeping and wanting
Huddled apart and alone
His great heart melts with pity then

And he lets me go home

But after the months of glory
Of harvest and dazzling weather
He knows Ill come back to the dark of his thighs
To the secret self that belongs to him
For I cant live in brightness for ever
So we are off
Down we go as the great tree
Thrusts its roots deep into the earth
A microphone plunged into the soil here
Picks up groans and creaks and sighs of the tree itself
As it gropes its way downwards into the dark
A subterranean night-time world
With fleeting glimmers of roots
And the constant roar of sap
We have lost all bearings
Blind
Our ears are filled with growling whispers and moans
We are leaving the light of consciousness for ever
Pledged to the night
But do not be afraid
For the deeper we go the stronger we get . . . . .
We cannot loiter here except in dreams
For we can be swept away by hideous currents
Leaving behind the world of colour TV
Going to the pub
Taking the kids to school
Parking meters
But it is too late to return
If we have come this far we know the truth lies before us
And we have an urgent agonising hunger for it
Artists and writers enter this country of the lost
Knowing it is filled with gold
It is the world of Lucifer
And already we feel his tongue in our mouth
Packed with riches and unseen assets
It is the badlands of passion and revelation
Of crazed delights undreamt of elsewhere
It curdles the blood

There is no underlying principle

No judgement or formula
All is a sickening white-hot mix
Of uncensored images and glee
And there is no going back
Beauty and madness share the same bed
All hope is lost for moderation
We must surrender ourselves to enter here
We have an inner need to do this
Or we wouldnt have come
It is beyond the usual and not safe
Here we mine seams
Rich with the birth and death of things
Rotting and fertile
Swarming with life
Pledged to parturition
To bringing forth monsters
Painted with blood and lovely beyond belief
Our blood is hot and red
The only paint thats red enough to dye our garments with
And the deeper we go the stronger we get
And the deeper we want to go.
We need not be asleep to have nightmares here
When we cross into this land
We drag our terrors after us
Their shadows leaping before us on the wall
Disjunction
Violent unrelated incidents
Horror displaced in an intimate setting
The unreal staring us in the face
We run and run but cannot escape them
Because they are of our own making
Mocking us with darkness
That shuts out blinding light
It is a world of shadows where nothing is real
All will blow away with a breath
But we cannot breathe
Our man-made fears have dealt us a mortal blow
We have no-one to blame but ourselves
We should never have come to this place.
But the deeper we go the deeper we want to go

An alien land where every doorway gapes

Nothing is what it seems
The unseen
The unspoken
Confirm that we are being targeted
And just because we are paranoid
It does not mean they are not out to get us
Strange things are happening
We left the curtains closed
Now they are open
The garden bench is up-ended
(By the wind?)
These plants uprooted and left dying in the sun
(By a bird?)
A large tree has fallen in the drive
So visitors cant park
And the washing-line has gone
The tooth-marks of the enemy?
Our lives are intense
Palpitating
Charged with apprehension
Flaring the next discovery
Toxic with suspicion and mistrust
Delusion is our friend
It tells us were mistaken
That there is nothing out there
Its all imagination
But what if it is true?
In this place we will never know
For paranoia is a state of mind
We must go deeper
Oh Sir Jasper do not touch me!
We are in a bodice-ripper
Inflamed and desperate and confrontational
The conflict zone
Always illicit
For were up to no good arent we

Thats why we like it

Never has issue been more clearly defined
At least one of us shouldnt be here
Swooning protesting gasping and moaning
Its unspeakable
Anything this good must be bad
Dont! Oh dont touch me!
But you know you want it!
Ageless clichs
Bald with repetition
This pounding ritual charged with pheromones
Is attracting males from the surrounding area
All the drama is here
This is the best bit
The conflict with the beast within
The thrilling struggle
To control the uncontrollable
The volcano
Tells us for a moment who we are
That we are human
That we are animals
Addicted to excitement
To confrontation with ourselves
To disassociation from the other
For after the bang comes the whimper
Unwittingly weve strayed into another land
The land of Hubris
Of Self-undoing and Self-destruction
Unwarily wed twitched the truth a bit
To improve our image
Embellish our profile
Everyone does it
To show theyre strong
Reliable
A responsible vessel for your trust
Your confidence
Your money
A safe pair of hands

But something went wrong

A decimal point slid sideways
The bottom line slipped somehow
And we slipped with it
Helplessly
Out of control
It was in the papers
On the tele
The story-line took over and took us with it
Onlookers gape as Fate moves in
Plots and stratagems unfold
Trapping us deeper and deeper
Conspiracies and schemes
Unnecessary artifice
Concealments we never wanted
Deceptions and cover-ups alert the tabloids
Things go missing
Investigative frenzy
People go missing
Disappearances
Suspicious deaths
Spy-mania
Foreign agents
False identities
Baffling muddles
Suicide
Headlines the next morning
But not the ones we wanted
Here in the dark our loss is violent
And the thing lost is beautiful.
It cleaves the soul like lightning
Striking with a steel blade at the heart
A heightened cleansing grief
That brings with horror a redemption
The lost thing now is perfect
And redeemed of fault
Its beauty makes the past in its own image
We know it now for what it was
Seeing at last what God had in mind

We did not understand it at the time

With all the muddle going on
But now our anguish is illumined by its loss
Removed by separating glass
Lit but disconnected
The clogging agony
We didnt know we had it when we had it
Now it is gone
Only remains the echo of the pain.
Rapture is not polite and takes no prisoners
We must lose ourselves to burst into the realms of joy
To breach a gap in the acceptable
Where something gives way
Becoming part of something else
A Life beyond our life
A Relationship
Some call this Religion
It doesnt matter what you call it
It overwhelms us and extends us
Making us bigger than we were
We are transformed
Something greater than euphoria
Or drugs
Or trips of any kind
Engulfs our lives and we give way
We cannot seek it
For we dont know where to look
But it may find us in wild places
Deserts mountains arctic-wastes or oceans
Where Nature is uncompromised by Man
It comes when it is ready
From a deep-down source inside
A darkness where light hides
There the dark creates
A refuge to conceal the light
To shield our tiny spark of life and keep it bright

A love for God cannot be synthesized

Down here in the dark
Cannot be taught or handed down
So violent an opening of the heart
So conquering a need to worship
Comes from the unknown within
We hunger for the Sacred here in our back garden
It is the paradise next door
Easy of access
And addictive
For Possession by the Sacred is not far removed from madness
The Greeks thought this a holy state granted by Dionysius
A privilege we should honour and not fear
And maybe it is our birthright
This bright too bright illumination of the soul
But we are only human
So let Madness be a respite on the journey
Not our home
Sons of thunder sons of light
Beyond religion beyond madness
Now we are off the map without a compass
Who knows where
John the Baptist raving in the wilderness
Or the son of thunder John the Divine
Whose instinct for the light illumined those transcendent words
Incomprehensible and charged with meaning
And the darkness comprehendeth it not . .
We are beyond Religion now
Burnt out of us by the white fire of truth
Weve broken through the crust of everyday
Here in the scorching light of the desert
And yet we are not mad
We have been mad
But now we are sane and know what we want
We are seeking an understanding beyond reason
An intimate knowledge slicing through the rational
A short-cut to the truth
Where Intuition opens the door

Deeper and deeper into the dark we go

Towards the opening we know is there
And there are no more words
(copyright E. J. Ward 2016)