AZRAEL.

song for dead time

now the past is untrue

and this breath is a lie

and the sun is an emptiness

that burns through the sky

and this ground it'll slide down

down into the sea

and when this body dies

no man will breath one word

of ignorance

for me

so bury your trust beneath the ground with me

and lay your loneliness down for the sun to consume

now the earth bleeds cold water

in my open hands

but their bodies bleed poison

and they swallow the sand

and we'll walk to the river

where we'll die of a thirst

and my fate is no question

every fool he is broken

beneath the same

unholy curse

so bury your love beneath the ground with me

and lay your loneliness down for the sun to burn to sand

(hymnal singing)

-m. gira

***

When I came out of the dream it was through what seemed like miles of liquid. My limbs were as useless as they always are and breath was short; just momentarily I wondered if I could breathe water. But in the backscattering light that filtered down from a point a thousand miles above me, I heard a voice just like mine coming from a mouth that looked like mine, telling me I needed to push on, to break through, or I would be lost. I couldn't explain. I just kept surging forward, limbless and breathless, and the journey seemed to take long long minutes if not hours, and those hours were stretched and skewed and rewound by the watery prison warden that ran this hell.

And then I was free, and I was so high in the sky, with an ocean of turbulent water from horizon to horizon above me, and I fell into the bright air. I don't know how many miles were between me and that person on the ground, shouting for me to go back. I could see him so clearly and his thoughts were all words to me; I imagined I could swoop in like one of the sons of God and then his little playtime would be over. No water dripped into the vast blue void, and the resistance I'd felt before against my face and hands had turned to a vacuuming force pulling me faster and faster like a thousand dead things which had never been alive jumping on my back and hanging from my wet shirt. I couldn't slow down; all I could see was green that never seemed to resolve into any finer detail.

The man was gone. I stood on a tree stump in a small grove near my apartment and closed my eyes against the hostility of the subatomic world. In my effort to eliminate thought, I thought more than ever, arms out like a scarecrow's, legs crossed, head bowed. I suppose people must have thought that I was always like this, so removed. But I wore jeans and my skin had scars and a suntan upon it, and so did theirs. My eyes felt unnecessary. I didn't even want to look inside. I knew it was another layer of the onion, and that I had far to go, but I was lost. You have to be lost to get anywhere. At last I heard a bird in the sky, and then other small noises of leaves and crawling things, and traffic, and the morning came alive. And I was to be seen no more, for now my body twisted about itself inside a chamber of fire, and the heat was like a hundred biting dogs tearing at a bone.

Once again I saw the man, through the small room's thick window, and he beckoned me to escape, that I would be lost if I couldn't somehow push back the gravity of so much heat and break the glass. I think I could see someone upside down behind him, like a shadow against a wall with a mind of its own crawling around in search of detachment. Then I sank to my knees: I couldn't do it, it was just too much. I was too tired. Besides, it would all be over in time. Time... And then I knew the name of that man outside, who now just stood quietly with no expression on his face, and he was just like me, except that his eyes were missing and the sockets were black, and where his mouth should have been there was nothing at all. I screamed my last scream and waited for the flames to take me back to the world of sleep, where I am writing this, so it could be over.

Over for a day, maybe longer if I was lucky.