A Single I

I caught the darkness baby,
from your little ruby cup.
Leonard Cohen

A single I atop the pyramid far above the sand,
One point blazed into itself at the fleshless start.
Time folds into the quenched flames of possession:
Four surnames like foundation markers raised,
Squared as if to complete the golden mean,
First defence against the quadrants of the Cross.
That central self starts to manipulate the empty walls,
Shifting like a stage design into a child’s dream
As if you were hit by the tail of the dragon,
And woke inside a vast, star-filled pentagram.
Each side a receding, glowing, shifting decade,
Rippling with scenes, fading and intensifying,
Waving figures in a circular, bleeding world.
No form intact, no shade indelible, the stage darkening,
The spotlight held on an amorphic mask.
That seraphim dance through multiplying stances,
Forbidden rest, the flame burning down in the ruby glass
Blown by those who adore your flooding energy at its core;
Firing the desert pyramid of five thousand years;
Five simple decades stitched together, polished, cut.
That wild raven spies your gingerbread heart,
That ravenous wolf sniffs the staunching of the blood.


To mark Jolen Whitworth’s half century on the planet.