PERSISTENT DREAM

Make light more light !
 Stand back and let the splinters and shards
Fall on floor of  this  dark cavernous place

I hold the hammer and  I hack and chisel
At the mysteries of this impenetrable
Inescapable  dark.

But it’s fortress is as inaccessible as a witches’ womb;
And so much more uninviting.
Beyond the catacombs of unfathomable intensity

Lies - yes ! That unrelenting thing that clasps with a drowning man’s despair;

Conscience !
 
Sneering ! Always sneering.
Throwing up chink -mail armoured cobwebs in my way
Until I peel away  unwittingly to.. Towards -

 Integrity.

Here confronted !
I am blind and doomed and lost !
With compass swaying this way and that
As my needle searches True North

The North ? Of what  ? it mocks
The opposite of True South ? It sneers and hectors me.
But my sightless eyes seek insensate fingertip

Plodding like a drunk
Blindfolded ; shackled
Muted as in a robe of dank  sackcloth made.

I am senseless of self scrutiny and know
Only an arbiter of sober memory
Seeks leg and  limb to stabilise
The delirium ; so deep so delicious
So deluding

Crack the light  beat the drum
Of hiccupped heartbeat  
Reach out the shards that shine like spears
Listen for the bell that chimes
Let the waters of conscience
Not lap nor  lull nor bring lullaby

I see past memories
Black and dark and hostile , As the hob of hell,
Furious as the fiery furnace where  tempers rage
Tearing with tumultuous  wrath

But let them enrapture ; entomb
And surrender all to the eye that sees All.

And that hand that guided
And that ear that gave listening
And the tongue that  gave tastes
Oh tasted , so much sweetness and pleasures sublime.

Surrender to the scrutinise eye
Of the one that looks back  with a merciless gaze
From the mirror of all that is ;

Self.