Post by Wolf on Feb 18, 2004 20:34:07 GMT -5
Author's note: This is a rather sardonic, cynical, and darkly humorous piece I wrote in response to a poetry contest wherein the prior years winners had written what was to me self-deceptive fluff... I wrote this, and submitted it to the contest - and much to my ironic delight, it won.
The Super Ape
Walk into the deepening hours of twilight,
in forgotten corridors of your soul where
reality twists slowly and dissolves
into the blackness of eternal starless nights
seen only at the death of the universe...
--Strange shapes writhe and twist by in the darkness,
shapes half-seen, then lost to the abyss--
forgotten scenes from a long dead past...
Faces and names drift up out of moldering graves,
dragged from eternal sleep by the questing soul;
coming ugly and terrifying to deal horror
to self-inspecting sanity--
Sanity peers into the darkened corridors,
seeing a thousand mirrors reflecting empty
futile roles that protect it from truth;
a pandorian horde of terror and numbing fear...
Doors are seen in timeless tunnels, iron-shod
and cold under the icy glare of steel stars--
locks seen faintly crumble at the touch
of the inquisitive mind;
massive doors swing open, shrieking out;
the hinges shatter as oaken doors fall,
releasing Pandora's hordes to the Lord of Night,
and the bitter, numbing winds of eternity...
Shrieking, writhing shapes torture sanity,
making it accept the unacceptable, to see
the unseeable, and bear the unbearable--
to know, to face the awesome truth
of the thousand mirrors; each reflecting
useless roles played by man,
the Super Ape;
to deceive himself into believing
his roles are true reality,
that he is the master of creation--
but reality leers and taunts from the mirrors:
Sanity sees, blind; then seeing, knows,
breaks, and scatters before the icy breath
of eternal nights blowing out of god-forsaken abysses
of loneliness and despair;
the crevasses of dooms unspoken
deep within the tortured soul of self-deceived man...
Darkness sweeps over all; the Lord of Night comes--
swiftly and silently overshadowing all
in infinite nights of bitter cold, embodied only
by fatal Truth and the Ultimate,
beyond which lurks Eternity...
The mirrors shatter, the shards scatter
before the icy breath of Night,
becoming cold diamond ice,
sparkling, gleaming, frosty;
sweeping over the blubbering, quivering jelly
that once was sanity, shattered now
beyond recovery or help...
Yet;
more doors remain unopened
in dark corridors of the mind--
the soul writhes in agony
as the dark secrets of each room
slither past in terrifying hordes;
twisting, shrieking, moaning; fleeing
from immeasurable depths remembered only
as horrible dreams, but;
the Super Ape never conjured dreams such as these,
for these are reality, seen by the trembling soul,
not wanting to see, yet forced by its own drive;
terrorized and frightened beyond the realms
of remaining sanity...
One final door crumbles, as the dreams of men crumble--
within lurks the final truth; waiting silent
in the virgin darkness of new nights;
writhing slowly in ghastly convolutions,
rustling, clicking, slithering...
The soul hears; then sees,
as eyes blinded by self-deception become adjusted
to the darkness of absolute reality and truth--
It sees, and breaks screaming down
the endless corridors in numbing terror
--pursued by its own shadow...
Man--
Lord of Creation--
The Super Ape
© T. GhostWolf Davidson, March 24, 1969
