Orbem Formate

When I’m about to be overwhelmed, I cannot retreat. I assure you of that. I cannot trade the breathing today for the unborn tomorrow; I cannot imagine what life will be as the spiritually vanquished or exiled. I can only stand atop the ramparts, laughing my joyous defiance into the brunt of the host arrayed before me. I tattooed Life rends you limb from limb behind my eyelids; I burst my eardrums with the poetry of the last stand.  I can only shout–to me, and only me, and some turbid ideas of others–orbem formate. This is the Forlorn Hope into the breach; this can only be Les Enfants Perdus on the unlit front porch of eternity.

Nothing sweeps here except the wind; nothing washes except the rain. Every autumn corner rustles in ancient leaves from beaten brass, and beneath them my own death mask. Moaning and mewling impotence has achieved me only a voice I’ve lost, and am now only finding again piecemeal. I understand only absurdity, and absurdity has become my every understanding. Can there be any doubt that our time is running out? Could there be a scrap of uncertainty that we’d never had a shred of time at all? You make your time out of whole cloth as a child, but age makes me clumsy, my fingers awkward, and time has sewn shut my waking eyes.

My voice has shorn itself of words; my windpipe shivers like the tubing of a bugle.  My palms are massaging the timpani, readying for the swift and precise roll of the mallet.  Work is my love; idleness my lover; solitude the sacerdotal and ambivalence spiraling through the spindrift.  I am a mountain–of this I’m sure.  These mineshafts twist and wind, double-helical, indecipherable.  The heart of the mountain is ahead, the fiery crucible, tidal waves of fire–just a bit more black powder, a wheelbarrow of slag, a few strokes of the pick, almost there…and…

Now, and listen close: orbem formate! Sound whatever internal alarm stands vigilant; if none do, be the sentinel that wakes the town. Ready yourself, and discard the rules–if a game has no rules, how can you lose?  Who knows what happiness lies just beyond the fear of the unknown?  As they grapple up the walls, sabres clenched between their teeth, wonder at the absurdity. Grasp weakly at meaning and love the empty air that it achieves. Love the vibrant syzygy that counterpoints the chaos.  I crawl and crash with so much affection, so much love, that my ribcage creaks and groans to contain it.  Orbem formate!  They’re in, they’re in!  And as they hack you limb from limb, show your bloodied teeth, for you have won.