The ghosts surround me and lead me off. They escort me I know not where. Why are they taking me away? What have they come to me for? I can hear their whispers but I cannot make out their words. They know something I do not. Will I come to understand? Will it matter? They are preparing me for a ritual. A sacrifice? No, they need me alive. A message? A reason to live.... I have been scorched, seared, and tempered in the process. This conversation consumes me, this corrosive, continuous carnal collusion. Madness is a creeping afternoon shadow, the flowers turn in slowly, the air picks up the slightest chill... the darkness begins to envelop the mind, and slowly enough so as not to alarm, night falls... But what a night! The stars laugh at me! (They wink, they tease, in and out of sight like shadows in autumn light. They do their dust-mote dance in unchanging patterns as if my watching mattered to them not at all.) The rain tries to trick me, to tickle me, and to lick my eyes with its tears. The dreams which in sleep cause poor rest I tremble before, still wide awake, the words make no sense, the meanings and movements slip and slither in and out of perspective, one idea becomes another and the chain only makes sense for a moment - a moment's respite of order in this crowded, darkened room. They are not even my dreams! Whose they are, I do not know, or care to ask. They come tiptoeing out to visit, I have to feed on them, suck on these fevered productions of arrested and broken minds, I have to assimilate their proteins and make them mine, make muscle out of their raw flesh, make something... but now they are gone... and all is quiet. What did they want? 6/29/00 
© Huw Powell
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