Some years ago, in a time I can’t see anymore
the layered pre-history of memory,
I bound myself meandering through a silted,
sinking pool. At first,
it seemed so light and flowing, full of internal convections, and imagined whirpools. Barely stopping my reckless steps,
which became morassive and dense,
impulsively I wandered into that self-indulgant quagmire.
Then, I realised, with age, and time,
I was in a tar pit.
And I couldn’t get out.
I drowned in its viscosity. With almost animal aggression,
I pulled myself deeper.
That tar, slow moving, patient,
ate at me , dissolving all that I was,
Stealing memories, taking qualities like they were trinkets to be lost,
And I would never get them back.
They were lost to the tar.
The boundaries between me and that deep substance
blurred and bled,
so I never noticed the incompleteness.
Never stopping, I consumed space. Around me, I expanded-
I? Or the slowly accumulating tar pit?
It didn’t matter, I was accumulating in the pit too.
Unwilling to see where we encroached,
I sank into myself.
Sinking, sinking,
caring less and less,
I was the tar pit, and it was me.
Unsure time passes, indecisively both years and moments,
I washed up
Near the shores, the borders of my personal imperialism.
Some half forgotten instinct stirred at me.
Ferally, I clawed at clay, pulled at sand and grass,
and extracted my remains.
More time passed,
I picked the parts of me up,
stood at the edge of the pit,
and the wind howled through the holes in
my turgid midsection
through the outlines of vital parts
that will never return.
The wind continued its song through
the half-corpse left of me,
I listened,
and hated what it said.
No comfort,
save
I had pulled myself free.
Decaying, fragmented, caught up in dehumanizing myself,
the Tarman,
I had pulled myself, even if for but a moment,
free
And drawn a line in the sand,
Tar/man.
