Baptism

I read about this way of being
once before, in a sepia toned book -
the biography of the girl in a glass
prison cell.

The indelible smells of poison bark
and yew tree sap, boiling in a white
enamel sulphur pit. What glory is there
in such a cacophony of stenches?

I peel off my
servantile clothes that I assumed
this morning from Mother. Small
scrapes with cats outline my
pale, virgin hands.

My skin so stark, wincing into
deathly green when the
fluorescent stars of
human hell strike on
outside the pulpit.

I dip my foot into the
bubbling sea I created
and my skin turns suddenly
fushia and the white
like a ghostly cancer
of my senses.

I slowly ease myself
into my private River Jordan
or River Styx and scald all the
fear and disorders that
reign mightily in the
democracy of my arteries.

Over my head the radioactive
waste goes and my eyes
sting like flying ants as my
traitorous cornea melts into
the liquid.

I feel the purity rise in my
lungs as they release the
final grasps of gas that they
held like a dying person's treasure.

No blinding light but a comfort
of darkness swallows my
soul whole like a great
Asian cat. Veiled in a million
holy robes and togas as
I pass into sainthood
and Heaven is an abyss
of what life could never offer;
finality, futility, happiness.

that was amazing! i loved it