You, Who To The Temple Came

"…... ... ... ... And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
  And blew."

--- Robert Browning, "Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came"

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… for, the exact moment 

You roll headfirst

down steps steep with stony 

indifference,

genuflecting in futility,

in cascades of your   

devotion, eyeless,

Is when the Lord

(who or what the Being?)

Growls.

You hear the force rumble

inside you, all around you,

somewhere deep down,

(swelling up from somewhere, but where?) 

Crouching deep down in the icy

dark hallways of

your bones, the corridors of

your convoluted skull,

(one voice? or a million?) 

Far and near,

echoing, clamoring,

bouncing off massive buttressed

Walls, your lungs roaring,

your guts churning within 

your peritoneal hollow... 

.

.

[Wait.]

.

.

[It's stopped.]

.

.

And then,

Your solar plexus

Explodes

In a mad sunset riot of colors -

ultraviolent, azo orange 

and azure, turquoise, gamboge and

bruised plum.

But the fireworks dissolve in a blink,

 for then the only hues before

your eyes are the layers and 

layers of immutable teeth, of a stratified 

black and garnet-rhodonite frieze,

carved thick with creatures

dancing to frozen music in the flickering half-light 

of a lone lamp,

licking around the curling edges of 

clustering shadows.

And all the while rising high,

In curving lines,

Rippling way up to the topless Crown, 

    Above which no birds fly,

                                                     The divine phallus towers high

                                        Over the holiest, most secret, 

                        Most sacred womb. There, in those

darkest havens, buried deep 

beneath caves, closely

              hidden away from fleshly gaze, 

              on beds of glittering gems,

                                three faces of primal, radiant wood 

                                 Float. Pupils, like fierce pits of black fire

                              in the center 

                       of their glassy                             

             totemic eyes glow, and slowly grow, and grow,

swallowing up the whites...

[So, then, into hallowed ground, into thick shades

walled around corners, take your first teetering step -

If you dare! You, who seek despite the 

gathering gloom, your eternal 

jewel entombed in the 

ever yawning 

jaws of the

Temple…

 ]