Black Sludge
Black Sludge
by garland middleton
The Black Hole
is back.
It comes
every so often.
It sits
on my floor
in my dusty room.
I walk in and
my foot slips.
Suddenly
I cannot
move. Paralysis
sinks
in.
This time
it will
be different
(I promise.)
I will
be strong
(I swear.)
But
I turn my
phone off.
I lock my
door.
I allow
black sludge
to crawl up
my pale
sensitive leg.
I allow it
to enter me
from all angles.
I allow it
to trap
my lungs
and drown
my brain
with memories
of losing
my virginity
or
wiping blood
from my lip
or
walking past
crosses and
gray people
who call me
a murderer
bound for
a hot afterlife.
I am
by m y s e l f
in a
dimension of
suicide and
self loathing.
It starts to feel good.
And I decide
to stay in
the black sludge
a little longer.
Ah yeah, best visual poetry i’ve seen in a long time. It’s good to see someone playing with the parameters as well as the dark matter that constitutes our ordinarilly demented perspectives.
The part about losing virginity as a ‘dark memory’ stumped me at first but i think you can always find a negative twist about something we imagine to be so ideal in our heads that the actual may not even come close. But then again, the best piece i ever got was still awesome. Depends on how you look at it. That’s what the whole poem’s about after all–that downward spiral. Once you were up above it–now you’re down in it. When you stare at the specs that’s what happens sometimes. And it is kinda a relief because having hope and faith can make one a nervous wreck.
Thanks for sharing!
like a fiberglass insulation blanket on you when you don’t know the temperature but the thermometer that your ex is holding says 30 below and though you wisely don’t trust their warning you might as well not risk compromising that jagged warmth, so like you cuddle into scratches.
A tour de force of sludge. I think a million black fireflies are clapping right now.