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UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY - 05/2012
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JONATHAN HINE Dead Echoes when I was 21 my life was at a critical juncture I was a leaf caught in the violent winds of spirit as fierce riptides of madness pulled me further and further away from consensual REALITY too weak & feeble to guide myself I languished in government housing projects half starved & half mad going through what I would describe as relentless cycles of retribution my lit third eye or bio-electric/subtle energy sensor was receiving scrambled & remote astral signals/transmissions superimposed with the dissonance of personal delusions & hallucinations creating a harsh intensity that demanded onward motion towards some kind of release as the atmosphere grew heavy with sighs & distant whispers every shadow teemed with fleeting specters that dissipated when I focused on them all the atoms in the apartment oscillated according to the hellish harmony of the environment the walls were thin & noise easily penetrated from adjacent apartments the concrete hallway's acoustics reflected every infernal sound right to my door the soundtrack of my own personal hell had all the agonized and furious howling of madness & despondency distressed screams of children would echo from the apartment at the end of the hall the way the child screamed it sounded as if someone was putting her hand to a hot stove at night a hollow sigh would wake me from dreams fertile with private terror the only light in the room was the hall light shining through the two inch divide from the door to the floor and there was a dark shadow obstructing the light DEAD CENTER on the other side of the door like someone was standing RIGHT THERE most of the time I just lay there trying to figure out what could be casting that shadow but I when I had to take a piss I had to face it and would throw open the door and nothing was there I would pass out again, awaken & it was gone just the gleaming two inches of vacant air and then a few hours later the shadow was back this went on night after night until I rolled up an old towel & wedged it in the crack between the door and the floor problem solved until the phenomena morphed into another comparably bothersome form: something was playing with the thermostat I would come home from work in July & the dial on the thermostat was on the highest setting the place roasting and reeking from the morning's garbage I would turn the thermostat off run the garbage to the dumpster, & open the windows I always locked my door & I always checked the thermostat before I left for work only to return home to the apartment sweltering at 110 degrees and the weirdness continued one night I returned from a funeral it was hot so I slept on the foldout couch with the patio door open curtains blowing in the wind the ominous atmosphere was charged with a static energy that crackled & sizzled in the air I awoke to see a dark & solid figure with his back toward me he walked into the kitchen startled, I jumped up & followed him around the corner but no one was there and that was the only door to the kitchen before I could get to the bedroom the door slammed shut HARD right in my face no one in the bedroom by a certain implication these experiences have shown me hints of something far more deeply interfused and in spite of everything I survived those dark days wounded & undermined but still alive Celestial Trivia life seems to be some kind of penance an outlandish atonement designed to burn off all those forgotten sins accumulated from another world it is overflowing with inexhaustible revulsion, pain, & calamity coming at you from every angle and course possible as we try like hell to figure it all out, or at least some of us sometimes it seems more like a bad joke if there is much of a distinction |
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