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Written by Anna Chua & Edited by Monika M
thirty summers gone and a minute past and
here I am still, my hands clasped that shake the cloister and
in the whisper, unchanged. This is no Elysium. It is gone and I am here,
bowed before this dis-torted visage of man, beneath
nothing that is the sky, and in nothing
light through the window that pours past wooden floorboards and flows over walls and stain-glass,
spilling away
nothing that remains of you and I. yet untouched, and perching
upon ruined foundations,
do not begrudge me your ugliness, says the stone,
I see it in your eyes, hollowed-moons, and in
a thousand nameless faces,
the shepherd gone and sheep starved,
that which I know not and cannot say.
who shall speak for us now? I only have this body, (a body),
useless body,
some
body are you listening? Watch closely. Witness the horrors,
submit yourself. Time that moves the minute, too quickly, and in the turning of an hour,
history unmaking itself, grinding gears
systems upon systems,
fractal snowflakes, insignificance
consuming itself, suspended in equipoise the weight of the earth flung
into my impotent hands, the way syllables
dribble and
plop
past the chitinous shell I have built around
this beating tumour. Yet, growing still, uncontained. Watch
fallen monarch, insides calcifying
insides – twisting and crawling in darkness – the soup of me that oozes and
congeals, scraping along halls and bowels, ossifying
cartilage, encasing bone and slow-creeps
patchwork skin such that in the cocooning and reforming,
an imperfect copy affixes the copy and I,
wingless seraph, failed transcription of man.
here is the rock and no water. It is gone and we are bleached bones on the shore,
cords that vibrate and make no sound.
pity the recapitulation, butterfly dreamer,
we are bracing for the end after the end, the end to end all ends
or else endless continuity, and the
steady march
that
fells buildings, rubbles
streets, dynasties that tumble and
disintegrate – fragmentation in a new theme – blurring
divisions and ways of being and rituals spun from air, compresses
lives, erodes unbelief, covering bodies with ash, unyielding
chrysalis – only decay within – and too fast the past fades,
heavens unshifting under hollow pillars,
and so stumbles soul-wearied pilgrim, lone and
levelled upon the wreck and the barren sands
that cascade over existence inchoate and
promises unbegun and
over dry plains that
crumble. Rooted upon this cactus land, I stand here now and forever-more
bereft as you, church without a steeple,
open-mouthed
grotesque and cast my throne upon
a sea of glass, new dawning star and the dust you brush from the window-sill.
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