The Word in Focus with Dr Larry Taylor

Dark shadows hover menacingly in the

Black and white world of nonbeing

Where screams are silent as nightmares and

Fear settles uncaused across the barren

Landscape and out over cold turbulent waters.

Desolate wilderness inhabited only by deadly

Pythons, scorpions, and hungry jackals;

Why, he wonders, do the black vultures circle and the

Wild jackals stare when he, so weak he cannot stand,

So thin he is not worth the bones, 

Lies under the scorching desert sun?

Tempestuous chaos where Kraken swallows  

Ships laden with gold and sailors laden with rum

On icy vapors, a de-masted barque drifts

Down sorrowful currents of regret;

Caught in a vortex, it disappears into the depths.

All dissolves in the airless outer darkness of 

Nothingness, the black hole of nonexistence

Having lost all power in the last decade,

The space station glides silently, unaware of

The ever-increasing gravity until

Molecules rip and substance ceases.

There, left with no one and nothing but himself, 

He paces alone in circles for all eternity

Waiting for the bus that never arrives.

Unknown and unknowing, locked in a damp

Dungeon far beneath the city streets where

Rats scurry and cockroaches swarm, the

Stench of rotting flesh choking, gagging, I close 

My eyes awaiting the bus that never arrives.

When the septic tank of my mind exploded

Spraying vile liquified feces all over me,

I cursed my very existence, ranting at an

Unjust universe where rats gnaw on infants’ ears,

Brains choke on mercury-laden air, white cops

Sit on black necks, dictators invade, and

Murder, kidnapping, poverty, hatred, war run wild;

Only to hear demons laughing at my ignorance…

The vile shit is within me

Ever climbing the shiny stainless-steel ladder

Vertically upwards in ethereal space, absence of light

Ladder from nowhere; ladder to nowhere.

Another identical ladder parallel on which the

Large white cat nimbly ascends, head first, tail first

Deftly, defiantly, mockingly, challenging me, but

I ignore him and continue my climb to nowhere

Until, at rest on a tiny landing, I realize

The way up is down; and so, taking my

Cue from Jung, I climb down my thousand

Times ten-thousand ladders to the 

Little clod of earth I am. And, there, in the

Dusty earth, in the briny sea, amongst the

Self-sacrificing Cochineal and the curious sea bass,

I let go the jousting of windmills and dismiss the

Phantom Cheshire Cat in order to grasp both 

Soil and Sea from which I came

And as I do, I begin to see that under Gehenna’s 

Muck and stench there lies a precious gem.