prompt: lots of eyes
tw: ptsd, dissociation, unreality, lots of eyes/mild eye horror, religious trauma, reckless use of the word ‘picayune’
the god who is watching is lying in wait
in the chasm carved in the edge of the worlds.
he waits, and he listens, and he stands guard.
here, the contours are fuzzy –
here, the walls are thin –
here, twixt world and picayune world –
is where intruders get in.
the god who is watching braces his arms
four palms, twenty fingers, twenty nails, upon
the ground that surrounds him, glass-dust and rock
the god who is watching blinks the void of his eyes
hundred-score lids in an unending wave
never unguarded, never unsafe –
and speaks the god guarding, with burned-cinder tongue
LITTLE ONE, DO YOU FEAR WHAT I BRING
HAVE I CROSSED SOME TABOO THAT YOU DO NOT FORGIVE
WHAT DO YOU FEAR FROM A GATEKEEPING GHOST
WHAT DO YOU MISTRUST OR MISTAKE OR MISGIVE
WITH MY HEART ON MY SLEEVE AND HALF IN MY GRAVE
WHAT TERRIBLE SIGHT HAS YOU SO ENGROSSED?
I AM NOT DISGUISED, speaks the god euhemerized –
but not into a man, there’s no man in him
or if there is, the pieces came together wrong
sewn in the dark by touch alone.
the god who is watching and waiting alone –
where the crossroads are rivers of hemlock and wine
where the sky has burnt black and empty and cold
he guards against monsters, and he means well, in his way.
it’s just that –
there are no intruders, at least, you’re mostly sure
and there’s no air for anything but gods like him to breathe
perhaps he is needed, you don’t know, perhaps
but you’re not brave enough to tell a god
that his time is over.
Elliott Dunstan 