A Purgatory Outside

(draft from Storyboard 10 of The Cavern)

Standing on the fissures

Steel spun rope

He looks down slowly

Sees the red plasma

Whose Feet are those
All black and bleeding 

Standing on the edge
Of a razor blade judgment
From the end of days

When did this happen

How did we begin
Why this bloody bronco now?

Standing on the line

The wind blows down icily
The air a blast of reality

I try to cover my face

But how does one avoid
The winds of truth
Flung from the dying heavens?

I am reminded of a poster I found

In the olden unbroken days
Of the Internet years

It had a volery of birds
Sitting and chirping happily
On steely lengths of rejection
Shiny coiled barbed wire

Only here it appears that
I am the bird and the wire is rusty
And more barb and less wire

Than it could ever be

While limbo wraps fatally around us
With loving arms of acceptance
Knowing that death and silence
was what we wanted at the end

The wind says a Hail Mary

And blows its stones at us
We walk against the gale
We stop and wait for more

outside of me outside of you
And look down staring
At a waiting death in arms
at crystal shards of voices
At the musical remains
of hope and vocal chords
Wonderingly we ponder who stole

Our shoes and our spirit

Did we ever have any
in this world,is this a world?

Or was the warmth just a dream?

Thoughts of the Cavern abound
As we negotiate the hail
And the icy lava
Wondering if the gates
Would even still exist
When we called him for help

In the nick of time
Guard-space opens up
And we shift into it
With relief and gladness
Leaving the hopelessness
Of this hell behind

A purgatory outside

We will start our own fires
The warmth is wherever we go
Even if we die
We will survive


-Anne V