New Poem: Black Things

There are moments when a poem feels like it arrives in conversation with another, and Black Things can be read as a dark companion to Red Things, the earlier piece that carried a kind of salute to Allen Ginsberg. Where Red Things opened outwards with its restless energy, Black Things turns inward, deepening the emotional terrain and extending that same poetic impulse into more shadowed territory.

In Black Things, S P Clark explores the darker corners of memory, grief and despair with stark honesty, using powerful imagery to confront the emotional scars that trauma can leave behind. It is an unflinching and deeply personal poem that reflects on survival, self destruction and the fragile hope that can still exist in overwhelming darkness, reminding us that giving voice to our deepest struggles can itself be an act of resilience.

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Black Things

S P Clark

Such blackness in my mind today; swirling ash clouds deafening my sight, blinding my ears to the smallest chink of light, and then I fight back against my better judgement…I’m trying to survive as the endless pit of darkness, the tunnel of desolation doesn’t want me alive.

The black handle of a knife, and the burnt black end of a rope, the black glass bottle of hidden pills, they are all the sweetness in the darkness that I’ve obtained.  Stained and smudged by a tribal paint of recurrent death; a black black rose and a black black heart return me to the night, the night when I was happy and in the same night changed; some man came along and filled my life with hurt.  Knees engrained with black tarmac and gravel fragments of coal…they took away the pain he caused but still burned into my soul and flesh as a reminder…a reminder I can’t forget.

So I’m lashing out again and again and again with my satanic tongue; black words have fallen on my friends…leaving me with none.

The obsidian has settled on the black sand in my mind, a composite of soot and ash, onyx and graphite, and as the cogs start whirring in my brain I see a burnt oak coffin; black suits, and black ties again.  It’s like a lava flow pushing memories and regret and holding them like revelations to my haunted face, so that the chasm of my pupils can dilate and not ignore the sight of the damage I have caused.

The thunderclouds send shivers down my regretful shameful mess of a body and even shake my amulet so it releases a burnt rubble smell – the barbecue of my joy.  Every charred remembrance of gleeful hopeful dreams are now singed and destroyed by the hooded cloak of Death.  The vision of the coffin has the lily blacken, and the horsemen of my darkness have come to ride again; trampling over a raging furnace to destroy what’s left. 

What’s left?

All that’s left is the ink and carbon that’s been written in confusion and despair.  And when you look you’ll find only charred remains of the soul that was once there to try to cheer and entertain – he became…I became the eclipse that had to shut out the rain.  Let the ravens fly, let them shit on my past for if they search for the future, they’ll see that time has passed.

Draw a dark veil of blackest tourmaline and gaze upon this struggling man drowning in the minds’ molasses.  Let the procession pass.  Tip your black hat but I won’t care if you don’t, for I’ve just become the mud and soil.  And as you tread upon the ground, you're walking on my shame, walking on my pain, walking on my toil.  Soiled.

Give my regards to versions of myself – the happy ones, the broken ones, the ones trying to get by – and if you hold him tight enough, he may make it to the other side alive.

And as you go, please turn the light out and leave me to my gloom.  There’s safety in shade and shadows. No one can hurt me here.  No one.  But me.

© S P Clark