Therapy Poems: 3 - The Light Poem by Gloria Kim

Robust digger-man mining for precious,
you work by ruddy light shed from the heart
down here in the dark, in the depths, some call it hell.
You work by ruddy instinct.
Why, really, do you persist?

klung! klung! klung! Dully sullen, I can hear you
banging away at two-inch solid rounds:
' Black-steel bars of a prison, '
you say through gritted teeth.
' Fence-staked for a shield, ' I do not say but
defend nonetheless
these revels of Nevelson, boxes and tombs
of pitchy-dark shade upon shadow -
black abyss, black cleft, black cliff - contours dearly known,
wrapped over years and yesterday in
shrouds and sooty webbing.

You are Satan-the-Advocate, coming down to hell
bringing coals for a new conflagration.
What a Terrible light you bring!
By it I am forced to see how
black-clotty rage blood waters my garden
where loam is not loam but
mould and rotting flesh where nothing grows.
What condemning light you bring!

I want to snuff it out -
So hear me, Gelt-getting glowing-heart smelter-man,
Hear: one Blackfoot siouxicidal gut-spewed war cry
Here, one scalp-razing red-bloody life-cutting
hand-delivered hand-made hand-held
knife knife knife
until ruddy oozing man bleeds no more:

Here lies Redwood Red
Red In Red Blood Felled

' Ah but, ' (porcelain bell voice: Kim SunKyung, treasure of the kingdom, noblesse oblige - you know the type)
she says, ' blast on, Storm and blow, you Rages;
pass like wind from the gut.' (shimmers at the timeworn joke)

Ah.
So.
I give you Ali Baba's sesame through shade and slime
to the ore you think you see.
Pass the word to Redwood,
Redwood to Red Leaf,
Red Leaf to Rose Petal,
Rose rise roused into crimson sheaves of mine.
I would rosy lief you would, digger-man.

I who am glassene timorous and volatile blacks,
I need you to shout your colors loud
to hoist a standard high
to lead me out.