Ten Thoughts on the Necessity of Escape I Caught in this room, this cage, cool and bright. Here a long age. This is not the sun's light. II Outside, an unseen blue being climbs a may-ladder swings the lamp-sun of spring. III Did I dream or did I see (they are the same you will say to me) the moon last night rise howling with antlers growing above her face of light? IV Trapped here in this chair, the body reverberates with two distinct words: Movement is life (whatever that is, it is what it must be) and then you said: Life is rebellion against time (this is why you must dream bright dreams for the dead) V Now the magus hand, numb, with a wild motion, signs an invocation, a sharp slap to crack time's head. VI The command, the counterspell: You, look up! The walls are rippling. Your eyestones are echoing, having fallen down the well. VII The great jonquil world, the blind flower, unfolds. Warm and fecund hills, the earth's flat palm-plains, forests where the laughing fox lives, mountains made of aeons, all rush upwards towards the mind's eye, hang there, encompassed by the first and only ocean. One moment's vision: continents of tangled green. VIII The sphere of time floats in the drinking-cup of my skull. IX I look past these strangers’ faces all flamed with hell-fire. Give me back my happy solitude. X It is a new doctrine I will teach. The white bread of the clouds fills me and the belly-warming wine of the sun inebriates my life.
Bryan Edward Helton is a poet and fiction writer from Georgia, USA. He spent his early years writing songs and studying Theology and Philosophy. His work has been published in various literary journals including South Florida Poetry Journal, The Squawk Back, Heartwood Literary, and the Orchards Poetry Journal. He is the author of The Manic Joy of the Dead from New Voyage Books.
Amethyst Review 