23. Poem by Ofentse Hajane (The Dark So'tho Seer)

Paned over twenty-three times by Olympus' hand,
The Pegasi of Eatos fell—
Winged steeds once borne by Eos, now broken.
My obsession: insanity.
My grief: a shadow deeper than Hades' veil.
Every twenty-three seconds,
My soul bleeds from crown to sole—
Yet no comfort visits me.

I leapt from the twenty-third floor—
To silence the howling Furies within—
But rose again, not dead,
With twenty-three shattered joints in my cursed arm.
Still, my spirit wanders, unliberated.

I cry out to the firmament,
To El Shaddai, to Yahweh, to forgotten gods—
For revelation.
My King James Bible, torn like my soul,
Pages like withered leaves.
Only Psalm 46 remained,
Clinging to the broken spine.
I read its forty-sixth word:
'Shake'.
So I trembled—as if moved by the Leviathan.
Stormclouds swallowed my reason.
I turned to the end,
Counted back—
The forty-sixth word from the last:
'Spear'.

'Shake... Spear'—
My damned mind whispered.
Could it be? A code? A divine jest?
Psalm 46, touched by the Bard?
Twice twenty-three.
My groin convulsed inward—
A primal shudder of cosmic irony.

Born under the sign of Taurus,
I—like Shakespeare, born on April 23rd—
Am cursed by the number of my becoming.
A ghost-child pierced my thoughts,
A forgotten heir,
Formed from the twenty-three chromosomes I gave.
He bled before me.

I fought the curse—
Broke 2 from 3,
Divided the indivisible,
Forced unity into conflict.
The sum mocked me:
0.666 666 667—
Neither beast nor god.

O weep for me, blood of Adam,
You phantom of my conscience.
I begged the gods in their own tongue—
They flung at me another page—
From Numbers 23: 23.
It read:
'What hath God wrought? '

I replied:
'All is wrought, Lord. Spare me.
Release me from this earth,
This orb tilted at twenty-three degrees.'
I vowed:
If not answered, I'd hang from a twenty-three foot tree.

Silence.

Like a man of oath,
I found the tree,
Ascended,
And leapt.
All twenty-three vertebrae snapped—
Yet Death passed me by again.

When I awoke, I read the date:
23rd day, of a second month,
In the third year of this millennium.
How could such a small number
Hold such monstrous gravity?
It bore not 6, not 66,
But 23 souls—
Each a mirror of mine.

Had the Ouija board not warned me—
Of the twenty-third sigil of the fallen angel?

Here I stand:
Twenty-three years old.
Twenty-three minutes to midnight.
Bound to the twenty-third wheelchair.
They call me Inmate 23
At the asylum of forgotten minds.

And at every twenty-third hour,
It comes.
Its whip is pain.
It flays me until midnight.
Then it vanishes.

Now:
Twenty-three minutes remain.
My only companion,
Is the shadow that leads me
To the abyss.

By O.M Hajane (The Dark So'tho Seer)