Performed by Hannah Ehman
AI! AI! AI! (A Tartarus for Youth), by David Estringel
I.
AI! AI! AI!
Sated with stolen life,
emerged from mother’s Night,
there is longing to be free
from the warmth of darkened humours–
to be crowned by The Light of Artificial Gods.
Our worlds quake and rip,
tossing us upon gory shores
beyond fertile crests,
illuminated by a cold Sun.
Messengers sweep down in clouds of winged oblivion
to wet lips with Lethe’s waters
upon cruel fingertips.
“Shhhh.”
II.
AI! AI! AI!
Blinded,
light brings pain
in rushes of movement and sound
that sting the flesh.
Icy
with invasions
of steel and sterile prodding,
souls rouse to profess philosophies
in cries and screams
that crack the air,
unheard
like the falling of leaves upon the ground
from distant trees
III.
AI! AI! AI!
Swaddled bodies,
searched in vain for the safety of familiarity,
tell much, tell little
like symbols in scrying mirrors.
Their fictions, written with sweat and tears,
anointing
foreheads, eyes, and lips
with benedictions of shameful regret.
As if it were better to have the heads of babes
dashed and bloodied
upon the Rock,
than to suffer Spartan destinies, impaired.
Left only to linger—a world apart—
in bloodless mediocrity.
IV.
AI! AI! AI!
What are these ragged paths
to be stumbled upon
under tender foot,
with stones that cut
and scratching thorns from the briar
that temper flesh,
supple and pink,
making hard what was once soft to the touch.
Fed by an earth
that feasts on cuts,
bodies devolve to walk upright—and alone
upon roads, paved with the hands and backs
of brethren.
Knuckles crunching beneath soles like so much gravel.
V.
AI! AI! AI!
O, the passion of attainment,
upon which the masses engorge,
aimless in its metal
and promises
of faceless adulations
and the settling of laurelled wreathes
upon heads of cartilage!
How empty, these violent strikes against the Self,
incessant and passionless,
carving out pounds of flesh,
victory for victory,
‘til nothing remains–
all for narratives
that are not their own.
VI.
AI! AI! AI!
How thirsty are these–
the razor-tongued buds of spring.
Driven
to the drinking of others’ tears
for satisfaction of sanguine thirsts.
To revel
in the tearing
of white petals
from tender stems
with poisoned fingertips,
delighting in themselves,
as if masters of ceremonies
at blood-lettings
and vivisections.
VII.
AI! AI! AI!
The sooth of touch’s fidelity
has melted away–
soured–
like cream in the sun.
Replaced,
the quality of distance
makes, explicit, one’s worth,
across arid plains
of air and silence.
Fallen away, the allures and charms
of communion,
only to make room
for the play of shadows
on Plato’s walls.
VIII.
AI! AI! AI!
There is a science,
oppressive
and cold,
behind the collisions of heavenly bodies of light (in love)—
clashing
explosions of atoms
over chasms—
the spaces in between—
that define and separate.
Souls, burning brightly,
cannot coexist
in their starry majesties
without a surrendering of fire.
My Ares takes your Aphrodite.
IX,
AI! AI! AI!
Upon paths paved with gold,
under the azure
of a fanning sky,
herds
are driven in blithe procession
to the precipice.
Cast into the maw
of their society.
Without the iron shielding of wings,
they perish,
masticated,
like everyman’s meat,
leaving them shades
that stain the wintry air.
X.
I, I, I,
will crawl to the grave,
worn
and weary,
upon the Earth I have salted
with tears,
violent and hot–
but harmonious–
in Time’s own poetry,
where I will find
the Peace and Solace of Rest,
drinking from a forgetful cup,
enshrouded
by the arms of my brother—
The Undergloom.
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