AN INSTANT OF MIDNIGHT
Fragments of midnight
Drip.
Fears congeal.
But wait and watch,
Hold,
Turn not away.
See them stretch
Long shadows,
Return to only
Small knotted memories,
Hopes lost, misplaced,
Strategies discarded.
The grooves of tears
Gnawing cascades
Down ravines
To the slow, dark plateau,
The lake of now
An instant of
Midnight.
****
Move past the words
And there is just
The pumping songs of blood.
Down velvet streams to pools
Where washed cells
Glow golden in caves
Of pleasure,
Delighting in organic dance.
Enwrapped,
Swing upon the breast of being itself,
Resting in motion
The way a leaf belongs
The way a star belongs
The way a moment belongs.
In eternity
Held forever.
****
The names of night
Are scribbles
Within its own darkness.
Scattered fragments
Of midnight
Glint, investigating
Endless variations:
One pattern, one sound
A horizon to hollowness
An edge, slurred, smudged,
Scumbled.
Each form extruded
Attempting definition.
Continuous recitation
A rope between emptinesses.
Each, despairing, spins
Vanishing to void.
Choosing a new name,
A new path,
Emerging, bubbled into being,
A roar of foam,
White noise of silence,
Ocean vastness
Vast, holy darkness,
Rumbling hum.
****
one thousand
And eight names
Of returning night.
****
simonhlilly 
Wow, this poem pulled my inner pathos all over the place! Your thoughts and words are laid out as if mapping a story within a story within the universe. The black and white illustrations also lend themselves as props to the narrative, illuminating the emptiness of space and the vast void within our souls. At once, I felt like a stranger to my own shadow, finding familiarity in phobias of what I do not know. Thank you for sharing, Simon! Hope you are having a relaxing weekend, my friend!
Cheers,
Tyler 🙂
Thanks, Tyler! Just got back from visiting various bouncing, crawling, cake-destroying babies via some friends near Stonehenge to pick up some wooden bowls I work with, so got home late. Had a quick look at what I had written over the last few days and found this piece, or pieces. I hadn’t posted it because it seemed like fragments of a bigger fragment. But I thought if I left it longer I might lose track completely, so here it is. Glad it chimed.
1008 names? Is this based on research or a figure you just liked?
In traditional Indian Hindu metaphysics it is common to delineate the qualities of any deity with a thousand names that can be chanted as a religious practice “sahasraranama” (thousand names). Often this is extended to one thousand and eight because 108 is a sacred number that encompasses completeness – in the same way that in Taoist China “ten thousand things” symbolises all manifest creation.
Really! Could you recommend a book to read about this? How did they arrive at 108 as being sacred? I know the sacred lotus has 1000 petals.
Not sure i could recommend a single source. Try putting it in to Google. There are some good (somewhat dodgy English) 1000 Names of Kali, Laksmi, Siva and all the crew on the web if you want to take a look.
108 is a number found in Rig Veda. The number of deities, that then expands out in factors of ten to create the universe. It very probably also relates to cosmic cycles, particularly moon/sun and eclipse cycles.
Thanks. I’ve learnt to be wary of ‘googling’ a topic or theme.
Yeah, know what you mean! But with care something useful can emerge. ( it’s really not a lot less authoritative than printed information, which can be equally dubious or partisan, and at least it is usually obvious when someone has nicked material from other sites). Worst thing I find is getting the right search parameters. Despite its shortcomings Wikipedia does at least have references that can be followed up.
amazing!
Reblogged this on Spoondeep.
[…] An Instant of Midnight. […]
SHL: beautiful, and i’ve reposted…as always, thanks!! RT
Thanks too!