EPIC OF THE SIX DARKNESSES

by Richard Smyth

Here we go again
here come all the darknesses

the first darkness of birth
the second darkness of breast
the third darkness of verse
the fourth darkness of doors
the fifth darkness of mixtures
the sixth darkness of stars

They are gathering in the gut
that place of poetry
from which words emerge
stillborn and sexless
nothing grows there
only dark things—
mushrooms, crows,
vultures, the carrion clowns
moonshine blue in the forking night
an absence of shadow
the boneyard blitzed and stilted

The word is squeezed out like a tear.

When does the world become easier to bear?
When will the white tiger abandon the blood
leaving me whole and unbroken?

Here come the darknesses
they are black like death
they fill me with their absence
swallowing all my strength

How can we keep going when all the light is gone?
They drink the light like children drink milk
they take my six nipples in their lips

seed nipple
mouth nipple
(left) hand nipple
mind nipple
gut nipple
soul nipple

The six darknesses suck me dry
I have nothing more to give now nothing.

II (listen to mp3)

A darkness is approaching; I don't know which one.

The darknesses are violent
like Jacob’s angel
it is time to wrestle now
nobody warned me nobody

This darkness is the color of tears
perhaps it is the sixth darkness of stars
seeking the soul nipple
needing grief to grow
excess sorrow remaining
from the decade’s dark plunge into the blood.

Then the Fireman comes
riding on his little red engine
the color everybody calls blood
but we know what color blood really is.
The Fireman speaks,
his voice is the voice of stars
of universes, of creation:

This is not the sixth darkness.
This is the first darkness.
You must face them one by one.

I have never seen the Fireman
he is the color of heat and fire
he is like a purple gold sunset over the water
he has eyes like angels
the color and taste of warm milk
sweet like mudmilk
I taste his eyes before he rides off
on his little red engine
back to the stars

Suddenly I have strength
I lurch toward the first darkness
the darkness of birth
we grapple in the gut
while all around
the burble and gurgle of gutjuices
a volatile lava

It is seeking the seed nipple
it would take it whole into its mouth
suck out the stuff
until nothing was left
but I am strong with salvation
I deny his desire
I rise up I rise up

Then

suddenly it swallows me
takes me whole into its mouth
I am swimming through its innards
I am lost like first light reaching
across the universe
searching for a source
only to find
I am my own source
I am the life that will fill this darkness
I am the light that will swirl and burst like stars
I will burn for billions of years
satellites will blossom like flowers around me

I crawl through the first darkness
its skin becomes a tight cloak
I break through
the darkness curls away
peeling like paint

I am wet like a child
just come from the womb

III (listen to mp3)

No time before
the second darkness is upon me
wet like a white tear
quiet and soft
but dark as mother’s fig nipples
and swollen like eyes are swollen
when tired of the light.

I take this fig into my mouth
suck the mudmilk from its pith
dark milk filled with muck
this is where despair comes from
this black seed planted so long ago
I had no choice I had to suck

But then the breast ballooned inside of me
I took it deep within me
down into the depths it went
it coated my insides
like the secret maths of forever
it puddled in my lungs
alveolar sacs full of breastflesh
I learned to breathe the darkness in

Now when my blood pumps
it is nourished by the breast darkness
not oxygen but milk
my body learns a new way to survive
cells are rebuilt from scratch
based on the chemistries of breastmilk
each one now has little lips
my veins are filling with milk now

And so this darkness writes its poem
with my body.

IV (listen to mp3)

Many years pass
before the third darkness emerges
seeking the (left) hand nipple
sinister sinister
the third darkness of verse
one of the darkest darknesses there are:

this darkness has five mouths
one for each finger
a ballpoint proboscis inserts into the fingertip
then the darkness wraps around the hand
like a tight glove
sucks straight from the gut
thrives on gutjuices

I try to pull it off
yanking with my right hand
but you can’t see darknesses
they are disguised by normalcy

The ballpoints are sharp:
I write all over my right hand
words torn into skin
bloodmilk spilling on the snow
no sign of the pain

white milkblood spills
spelling doom for the future:

sexton berryman brautigan plath
all succumbed to the third darkness
they grabbed the pentips with their mouths
ripped one out and swallowed it whole
the pen tore through the body
the soul opened like a zipper
slipped out between the bones
and raced toward heaven like a fallen star
rushing home to its black hole
where gravity sucks from the universe
all the light it can find.

I know the answer I know the answer:
dissect the left hand nipple
spill the milk onto the snow
hurry now hurry while it’s winter
so nobody will know will see
all of it spilling out
leaving me empty
heart gaping like a fish

but

then there’d be no more poetry
so I will suffer

V (listen to mp3)

The fourth darkness follows soon after:
the fourth darkness of doors.
These are doors with no doorknobs,
the kind that shut you up in little rooms
because you won't stop shouting:

Door #1 is the womb–door
locked tight against the world.
Nothing comes in, nothing gets out.

Door #4 is the drug–door
on this door I float outside myself
outside the world
like a magic carpet or
a balloon umbilical ripped from the hand
cut loose from the universe.

Door #9 is my mother–door
and I bang on it bang on it
let me out

Door #16 is the skin–door
when the cells grab hold of bone
so the marrow boils bright

Door #25 is the fever–door
the delirium of poetry
as words light their fires in the mind
and the poet rattles the signifying chain.

These are the doors of darkness
come to suck the mind nipple
drink deep the dopamine
wallow in the mud madness

each one takes a lobe into its mouth
multifoliate like a rose
lips with infinite surface
a topological triumph
they enwrap the entire brain
so that every thought has to knock
upon a thick woody door
before crossing the fleshhold
into the synapse
that place of the between.

VI (listen to mp3)

Next comes the fifth darkness of mixtures,
seeking the gut nipple
deep in the gut
that place of poetry
from which words emerge
stillborn and sexless
home of the amygdal lizard
always so afraid and angry.

Here it is unclear
where one thing begins
and another ends:
the darkest darkness of them all,
where mother becomes son
and son becomes husband
where looking is touching
and the body is language

no boundaries
bounodaries

Flesh melds with flesh
lungs join hands
tubules fuse
blood vessels tangle like vines
the bodies a trellis for organs
groping toward the light
but, blinded by darkness,
they come together
grotesque and hybrid,
a gothic monster:
darkening rod of identity.

These are mixtures
elementary minglings
all the broken symmetries of
ten dimensional minutiae
a mathematics of fracture
measuring the curve of Humpty Dumpty’s

broken shell
while dancing in the yolk
the broken embryo mashed in the mud

measuring the weather

or the shoreline
or the hand that measures

Nothing is solid
nothing is fixed
even solids shiver
rub off like masks

Into this abyss
the fifth darkness dives
sliding down the tongue
over the gullet
breaks through the esophogeal sphincter
goes deep into the gut,
that place of poetry.

Here it coats the lining of the stomach,
drinks deep the secret acids
then sucks so hard it swallows
the whole tube of the body:
from mouth to colon
all of it reversed
now inside the darkness
the darkness swallows all of me

I am stuck inside
an extradimensional sphere
some object of topology
that baffles mathematicians

All along the walls of these viscera
are braille graffiti
that speak of healing.

VII (listen to mp3)

Inside
always from the inside
I see the sixth darkness
like a spark,
a small star,
the shining lights when I rub my eyes.

This must be the darkness of stars
the source of our soul
as Plato’s Timaeus tells us,
but something happened since the fall
the center collapsed
the light lost its drive to shine
some fundamental desire for life was lost
inward energies overcome
by the deathwish
all the sunshine equations of chaos
and the higher math of fractals:

the outside pushed too hard
—bully boy
—bully boss
—bully world
beating beating beating
the power struggles are over,
no more waking
no more dark dreams to cry us
the six insides give in to the pressures:

balloon heart
breast wrinkle
penis sissy
gust bubble
a word unspoken
a poem unpublished

This is the sixth darkness
seeking the soul nipple
swallowing my light

This is where I turn and stand

This is where I turn and say
no more rape
no more milk

so far deep inside the outside,
outside wrapped tight like tomato skin around me
but here there is no one but my self

I wrestle

take the milk back in to me

fill the breast once again
blown up tight like balloons

penis stiff with desire once again

so it pumps like a paper bag

I wrestle

I am Dali’s eggman reaching out
into the world

somebody somebody
take my hand.

VIII (listen to mp3)

Somebody grabs the hand
a warmth comes into the body
still inside the egg
gluey yolk covers the eyes
cracked shell stuck to the face
but the warmth melts it away
emerge emergence emergency
sirens
born again
a smooth jelly coats the skins
all around the inky darkness
except the glow from the Fireman
and his bright red engine
the real hero the real savior
super–human full of flame
skin red like ripe cherry or bright blood
his palms are small candles
he touches the wick within me
the lifeflame takes
flickers like a small sun
with this light I will fight the darknesses
their dense nectars and honeycomb wonders

I open my eyes
all around the many spaces
of the deep inside
black hole where light retreated from its calling
forgot its purpose

We are at the edge of the universe

the Fireman is speaking
his voices are superstring harpsounds
music of the extradimensional spheres

We are at the edge which is the center
curving back on itself in a moebial fold
we are in the middle and on the outside
here it is that the light got lost
looping itself into a wild knot

the Fireman’s eyes glow like bulb filaments
as he speaks of these mathematical mysteries

We are both as far out and as far in
as we can be
Now we must came back from the shoreline
step into the river that rushing by
let it swept us away
go between the dimensions
go back to the beginning
before the splitting before the separations
before the universes were spoken
and speak the world anew

So off we go on his little red engine
riding like bikers in the violent night
I hang on to the hoses
as he roars against black hole gravities
stronger than any light

but

not stronger than the Fireman
father of all lightlife
photonic fingers reaching forth
puncturing the tomato skin tight like drum
penetrate the membrane
bust out of the outside
set our sites for a far–off galaxy
so many soul–years away

The Fireman drops it into fifth
punches the gas
guns it across the galaxies

IX (listen to mp3)

We’re riding in the distances
between the spaces I’ve created
the new universes
borne in the belly
the pus gut
I ride the red engine like a surfboard
skim the surface like a seabird
the manifold implications folded like clothing
sloughed like skin in the slippery night
then a moebial roll roils in the fluid tube
and I am falling falling celestial satanic
forgetting once again that anguish is optional
when the Fireman grabs me with his big big hands
the hands that hold whole galaxies in their palms
he pulls me through the phase spaces
the multifoliate complex jettisons dimensions
a calculus of survival

I will cling to the hoses folded intestinal
as the Fireman continues coursing through the night
heading for twilight

We must go to the middle of the between
where the darkness of mixtures exists

We burn on
his hair is orange blue and burns like a blowtorch.

X (listen to mp3)

Now we’re riding up the spine
gyring skywards
the Fireman shielding me from
storms electric
I am grounded in his presence
safe from the excess

We ride right to the base of the brain
where the amygdal lizard is wrapped
like roots around the stem

The Fireman dragons downward,
hornets around the reptile head
where forked tongue hisses like myth
I swing down western and epic
holding the hose like a vine or a spiderweb
and, grabbing onto the forked tongue,
I go inside the lizard’s mouth
crawl down the ropy throat
and wear that lizard like skin
a ritual mask for dancing
the angers and anguish of living

Now we wrestle
angel lizard cold like fear
ice blood blue and viscous
but outside the Fireman torches its surface
while I do my jig on the inside
dances with lizard
reptile thick with history
the warrior sugars blind like neurons
I howl in fear at these deeper darknesses
all the spaces I have come to discover
all of them bonethick in the alien night
I rage rage against the flaming of the light
I’m at war with the world with life itself

I lunge at the Fireman
I will douse his flame in my bluecold blood
put an end to it all once and forever

then

the Fireman reaches into me
dips his fingers in my holy water
rubs a cross between these lizard eyes

in the name of the former
and of the latter
and of their holocaust
all men

and suddenly I know
God dies with every death
God screams with every scratch
God stuttered when he spoke the Word
little cell god little molecule god
atomic god lepton god
immanent in photon and chemical
morphogenetic in the diamond chaosmos

Suddenly everything clarifies:
lava unfolds into earth and fire
tornadoes untwist into linear winds
lungs untangle from the lunar matrix
flowing water crystals into ice
diamonds snap like soldiers
every word has a single referent
and no meaning is unclear.

The Fireman climbs up on his truck,
revs the engine like a racer
calls me to this feast:
I slough that skin like a lizard
jump on the truck
and we forge on to the memory palace
cross the drawbridge
and bang on the big blue door.

XI (listen to mp3)

The big blue door is thick like life
it is universe thick star thick symmetry thick
it is the door of my becoming
my becoming–open, becoming–hinge,
a plane that separates and stretches into circles
I am between the thickness
there is no thickness without presence
I must be there to be real
where lungs husk the untroubled sun
and polaroid disks winter in the darkness.
Let me be lost in language
that tangled growth of stump and wonder,
lead me through the lobe garden
whitegrey flowers chalky with whispers
untrammeled by the booted soldiers.
Take me away from this inside
always this inside
where the voices speak of ice and dying
while I am hot with memory
the lightning nightmare bright with burdens.

The only way in through the big blue door
is through the keyhole.
The keyhole is the shape of my entire body.
The Fireman points to it like the future, says

Go now
this quest is yours and yours alone

I crawl through the keyhole
it is warm and tight like birth
I crawl back to my beginnings
embryonic and noxious in the womb warm tube

This is where it began
I was never really born
only trapped in the middle
somewhere between two mirrors
or are they doors

or are they roods
somewhere between two murders
only trapped in the muddle
I was never really burned
That is where it ends

I am the poet of being born
I am the poet of unknown topologies

Now I’m pulling myself through
(this is my 1,001st birth
I am tired of being born)
I reach into the cobweb rhizome
spiderlike I ripple across the thin synapses

all the blue doors are broken open

I am naked now and real

syllabic guttural
a result of wind and physics
balloon bag and wingsap
a dam in the flows of energy
a leaf floating too fast
on a surface that doubts all dimension

I am bright with neuronal fire
I bring light to every dark corner
every connection is exercised
every bridge is built
every concept crossed
as I eradicate the fourth darkness like a drumbeat:
I just stop banging on myself
that’s all
that’s all

XII (listen to mp3)

What now?
What to write now?
How to write when the third darkness of verse
colors every word with its poisons,
how to know what to say
when it’s the very saying
that makes me bend in pain?
How to dream when the nightmares
gather like witches and show you every death
you can die? How to live when you're already finished?

The third darkness of verse has inserted its five probosci
into me
they have long tongues that reach through the bone
bore like drills
lick into the gut like music does
good, simple music
the third darkness tastes of the gutmud
and calls it all good
while I ponder the chemistry of blending

Perhaps write nothing.
Perhaps say nothing.
Perhaps be wordless.
Shut off the voices in me
turn down all the radios

And when I do nothing but breathe
I sometimes feel my blood going into my fingers
maybe that’s the third darkness withdrawing,
the tongues withdrawing from the trough in my gut
my hands feel like they’re floating
floating like small white angels
who have descended one last time
to remind me of my home.

XIII (listen to mp3)

And as I breathe the slow breath of meditation
the second darkness of breast is threatened;
as my heart slows due to the peace that passeth understanding
shantih shantih shantih
as my brainwaves slow and change
seeking frequencies more in tune to the universe
the slow song of survival sung by every molecule
every cell every organelle
the life wish manifests in my very body
accepting every breath as a gift
participating fully in a life worth living

I am transformed

I am transformed at the level of the body
microscopic changes begin to occur
the milk in my veins unfolds and pops
each milkcell becomes a white blood cell
as the red cells return from hiding in the bone
and these white blood cells gather together like an army
like a people gathering to sing of liberation
and they storm the cancers growing in the brain
all of the ugliness and confusion and despair
these are no match for the new warriors
fighting for life
all life must fight against the entropies
I am a new soldier now I am ready for battle

Now we are racing back toward the heart
through the lungs
where the second darkness of breast has lodged itself
deep in the lungs
alveolar sacs full of sagging breastflesh
now to root out the mother from the place of breathing
the source of life fire the place where outside becomes inside
where we become one with the universe
this is where the final battle must be fought

but the breast is withering
it is no longer tight with milk
it no longer presses against the flesh
as if unable to contain itself
I gather it together like a grounded parachute
climb from the caverns
fold it multifoliate like a rose
push it out of the mouth
the way the earth pushes flowers out of the ground
out from my mouth a thousand flowers

XIV (listen to mp3)

And so I take a deep breath
and the breath is mine and mine alone
no more darkness in the body

Just one more darkness to overcome:
the darkness of birth
sucking on the seed nipple
bulldog tight
as though holding on for life

But there is already life
I have already been born
at least a thousand times
(I am tired of being born)

So I say out loud
for the first time
“No more birth”

I speak the song of the first born child
adamic
edenic
music
naked like lava shot forth from the earth hole

I sing the color of rain on drought ridden desert
I sing the blue tube of fusion
arterial earthworm plunging through the mud
unmitigated syllables burbling through the ocean
bubbling upward like islands
calling all airborn seeds to dive down deep within me
plunge like both hands deep into the beach
hold in one hand the dry sand
hold in the other hand the wet
squeeze each hard like hearts
until I feel diamonds sharp and bright in my palms

I have been born and never will be born again

No more eternal nurturing
no more umbilical prisons
I have torn through the matrix one last time
It is time now to grow
the way all things grow
toward death one day at a time

No more will I be wordless
mouth full of titmilk
I will speak and be separate from the mother
I will take my milk from a cup
I will breathe the air
and know that I am breathing

From now on I will write my own poetry
From now on I will light my own fires

Now falling to my knees
surrounded by sacred trees
fully formed and ready for the world
I look to the stars
see the Fireman descending slowly
a shiny new firetruck in tow

He dismounts his own battered mount
the one I clung to like ice
as we rode through deep spaces
the treacherous curves of the manifold universe

He is still as bright as god was bright
when he first appeared to Moses so many centuries ago
He hands me this myth and speaks for one last time:

Take this all of you and read it.
This is the text of my body
spoken through you
the text of a new and everlasting poem.
Do this, then forget who I am.

With that the Fireman burns bright blue
flame orange as the sun sets in fire
he mounts the sun before it dips below the horizon
and rides it into the night.

I mount the shiny new firetruck
turn the ignition
rev the engine hard
like a teenager on his first drive

cruise like the sun through the stars.