THE DISCARNATE

A tale for Halloween...😉

Messing around with the Ouija Board
that Samhain. It was a Halloween gift
from a well-meaning friend. Oh how it's letters
and numbers intrigued me.
Pioneer in the arena of stupidity!
That evening I opened mind, body and Soul
to who knew what. I cared not. I was a student
gluttonous for knowledge of all things occult,
the entire cornucopia. I began calling out:
I had to do it right, like in the movies -
I called out loud, determined to be heard.
And my Spirit, and whatever unexpressed need
it harboured, called with me.
I'd assumed I was strong enough - was well protected
against unwanted intrusions by the circle of salt
I had spread around myself and my board.
But, suddenly, something breached my amateurish defences.
The sweat burst out.
I was shaking. My head! I was accustomed to migraines,
but this was something else. Pounding, stabbing pain.
Then, that night, on my pillow
the drumming of my pulse in my ear.
Visions:
a strange land, another time -
playing Russian Roulette with my sanity. Weird
to be lying on my bed
and watching the room morph into the unfamiliar.
It knocked me to pieces,
as if my entire being was fragmenting.
And yet - I was still me. But, was me still I ?
This I, that had always got me through
life's challenges, that I knew inside out -
how could it fail me now?
It had been with me forever, a kind of inner Guru.
A sudden spike
through the left side of my head.
Or a sword? Horrific image of a thin blade
piercing my crown and continuing down through my neck.
Or a knawing at my brain
from the inside. Even worse,
the terrifying dizziness - instant slip
from infinite thought to mental paralysis.
Physical movement jolted into neutral
and awareness no longer under my control.

How many thoughts in a day?
Hypochondria screaming in a language I couldn't understand.
Was I going to die? I tried to give voice to my fears
with a tongue that tied itself in knots.
I tried to write it down, but hands refused
to obey - wobbled uselessly, like half-set jelly.
My waking in confusion. Going to bed
with a favourite book that I didn't recognise.
The invisible block of concrete
that came down on my head,
knocking me senseless.
Sudden impulse: staggering to the mirror.
Blood oozing from nose and ears
like scarlet rivers - a ghastly omen
of impending doom?
I became a battering ram. Pounding, pounding
against castle doors unyielding.
Then the golden Mace, battering the doors
of Parliament. I was everywhere.
And nowhere. And through it all,
the horrifying panic.
Disintegrating from the inside out,
I felt already posthumous.
Whoever I looked at, their names escaped me.
And they stared clean through me, seemed to feel
a breeze and shiver, and maybe catch a glimpse
of a flitting shadow out of the corner of an eye, looked again
and saw nothing.

My redeemer
was the exorcist they called in.
I recall very little, only the agony
of being torn apart and then re-integrated
with sacred water and sea salt.
And many words, meaningless words,
drifting in and out of my stupor - that cast out
that incapacitating dead weight...

My new research:
who had invaded my body? Who
had slipped in between the letters and numbers
on my Ouija Board, to inflict such pain
and confusion? And was it simply to amuse himself?
Who was this discarnate joker
who had come to share with me
his death pangs from a brain tumour?
Wearing my skin, his consciousness composed
my poem, using my hand to record the physical agony
and the mental torture of desperately seeking
this mirror or that mirror, for confirmation
of continued existence -
only to find
nothing.
Almost worse than the pain,
the sense of being cut off, of being
ignored by everyone:
total solitary confinement
with no explanation, no crime committed.
Only endless punishment,
and such ghastly apprehension.

Only now do I fully understand.
Not so much the joker,
more a lost Soul
in torment and despair,
anxious for acknowledgement
and a way out of his personal hell-in-limbo...

and I just happened
to inadvertently open a portal.