BEN BOSTICK

THE TANGLE

Delivered into the Tangle

There’s only the Tangle

Abandoned umbilically strangled

Infected, infectious, mangled

Wrapped in the vines and the wires

Ripped by the brambles and briars

Swaddled and cradled in hate

God, what a fate

Straight from the womb to this grave

Into this slithering cage

Bitter earth, poison well

Stagnant sulfurous smell

Choking on darkness, chained in this prison

Till these blindingly brilliant visions

Oh, it’s so open and so high

Oh, so unbroken and so bright

And I know that it’s real

I can see that it’s real

I can feel that it’s real

But how can it be real?

The only thing I can see from this angle

Is that I’m condemned for life to the Tangle

Vines all over me

Tear my skin away

Take my sight away

Carve my will away

Starve my hope away

Scratch me, scrape me, rip me, rape me

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What evil weaver would conjure this web

This sinuous lobby of gluttonous death

Who could deserve to be trapped in this place

A life without shape, a world without space

The vines are closing in

Should I give in to a

Blood letting death by a thousand incisions?

But what of these maddening visions?

Oh, it’s so open and so high

Oh, so unbroken and so bright

Are those stars that I see?

Somehow I feel sure

Although I’ve never seen

A real one before

Here is the only place that’s real

Here is the only place that’s real