The Snare Poem by Lorcan Black

There are four walls, a window, an exit.

And that thing trapped inside

could be an animal.



You would swear it were being skinned alive

it is making such a racket.

And a banging,

like a hammer on a wall- 

relentless.

The trapper arrives, 

dragging his Christ wine.



Now I am a statue-

if I am silent, maybe

and perfectly still

I will be set free.

Mere mouthfuls and my blood 

is a tonic of opiates- 

a sea of poppies bloom in me.


Flush, sweet tinctures blending a terror of images 

and a voice whose face I cannot see

as my own flushed lungs 

gasp at atrocities. 



Unrelenting jolts of light

and a stench of salt 
engulf me.
The mirror is a screen

throwing his own image back at him: 

ludicrous in its parade of extravagance;

a glitter of fetishes lavished 

over a parcel of meat 

decorous in its straps, 

unfurling its humility.



The world slides back-

stripped down finally, to a singularity: 

a finale that slams in, hard as an anvil.



Daylight is dyeing the walls

the colour of blood.



Sound has become a physical thing-

an object like a table or chair; 

the knife that skirts 

the jugular.



This is night then, draped in its vacuous black.

The window is a void in the wall

I cannot get to.

Outside the moon admonishes the stars

in their cold multitudes:

I am not important-



empty vessel of shrieks

the walls muffle and eat.

The moon sees nothing,

terrors flow under the fall of her shroud.



When at last the snare rips open

and parts like the sea,

I feel sure I am walking on water.



I have snapped shut, 

so tight now even the pain is sweet.

I have nine more lives,

and I juggle them like knives.



A real Jesus feat.