Spirit Photography - Kayo Dot

The fragile photograph cracked and tortured—

Forgotten in its box in the attic amidst

A ponderous flood of memories

The broken lines on her face, the years that have shuffled on

And on through disgust and turmoil

Spiders on the lips of its slow attrition

Knives through eyes that have long since faded

I remember this house like a half-forgotten song

A name on the tip of the tongue

A scar on the tip of the soul

I listen to this demon as it crawls across the floor

Drags itself across the boards and watches me

Lifting up a voice that sounds like witches burning

Scratching along the floorboards with a body gaunt and shattered

I burned them all in effigy

But must have forgotten about

This box covered in dust under the careful watch of dread

Ghouls awash in the tattered finery of

Hapless pain

And withered in the trance Despair

Disguised as agony

Conjure forth the monster sleeping long in stony silence

Roil the waves and rouse their denizen

From an æon of splendid sleep left mercifully undisturbed

Many arms about me, many

Pulling me into the shape and shadow of oblivion

Pulling me apart and gnawing without end

And tell me:

If the eyes of the dead are forced open—

Even for a second—

And the eyes of the dead are allowed to speak

What is the hell they betray, and

What is the nightmare unsealed?

What has this fragment of Reason

To do with the oceans of age?