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Obsidian
It was so dark
That even the random neurons
Firing in my staring eyes
Would conjure nothing.
It was night as I had never known,
All wind died within my compass,
My dream of darkness turned into
A blacker truth.
Here was night where
Darkness could be breathed
Like a mist, ingested
Like an unseen meal,
Soaked like water or oil
Into the pores.
Falling into oblivion,
From grace
For the very last time.
Touching rock bottom,
The hard metamorphosed surface of stone.
Blackness as it had always been:
Heavy, hard and precious,
So impenetrable that light slid off it
A blind liquid.
This is space black.
This is dreamless black,
This is black, the congealed blood of ignorance
And the colourlessness of lack.
This is stone
And geology,
With knowledge ripped out.
This is the earth
With her entrails taken
Her living skin flayed into nighttime.
Black
Obsidian,
Jewel of the innocent ground,
Drawn with the colour of our guilt and sin.
It was so dark that I understood,
At last,
The truth about imagining.
Human visions cast shadows
Even when there is no light.
In metaphorical darkness,
Semi-precious, dense as obsidian
Our shades of distorted meaning
Still take shape.
Still they taint our sight
Despite being thought untainted.
It was so dark
That I knew my way at last.
I cast illusion finally in my own shape
And owned it for the lie it was,
Owned it for my own.
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