Showing posts with label night garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label night garden. Show all posts

Monday 24 January 2022

adventures in the underworld

 
 
 
 
The fix is in, the fix is in!
 
The shaman, the black-clad night-tripper smiles and beckons me to follow. We enter the garden together and stand chilling in the winter air. He lets my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness and I wait, heart pounding.
 
A lightening flash. A bare-bone skeleton tree sears my retina!  It splits in two, opening the gate to a new world beyond.
 
 


I fall to my knees before a shrunken shrub resting its head on the night soil. I'm captivated by its charms.
 
 


The shaman stands to my left. He claps his hands three times. At the third clap a shaft of light emerges from the ground. It races the length of a far away tree before it disappears into the blackness only to return a moment later to repeat its journey over and over again in a hypnotic tic-toc loop.




I'm locked in now. Unable to rise to my feet I crawl slowly on my hands and knees toward the distant tree.
 
My body absorbs the textures of the ground beneath as I edge ever closer. I look up. A spectral pattern of light veins the night sky.


 


I rest for a while, holding my hand to the intermittent pulses of light.  Strange iridescent forms start to course back and forth across the surface of my skin 
 
One final push and I'm there. The tree greets my arrival with a shower of myrrh-scented needles. They prick open my flesh and enter in.
 



The iridescent skin formations crystallise, turning me to bark at the moon. Now the fix kicks.
 
 
 






 
 
Dancing among the death of last year. Strange hues and flash backs. The shaman draws near, in his hand a single preserved flower. 'Look' he commands. 






I look and the flower explodes into tone before reaching forward to bite off my head.  And now things get seriously weird.
 
 



the world spins around me
 
 
  


all colour drains




until there is nothing  left
 
but
 
the smallest spectral trace of my life
 
as it passes
 
from the garden