Lumpy's Lament

in this excerpt from my novella-poem, "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons"

the magic mirror happens on Lumpy, a hapless victim of the shape shifting shade,
floundering in a perceptionless dimension.

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a fine glaze of lilac sprouted on its surface,

spreading like a breath caressing the glass.

the mirror was inspecting the margins,

scarcely attending to avoid appearing crass.

this usually resulted in raised up hackles;

an awkward task he repeatedly shirked.

but just now he was cracking a mystery;

intent on disclosing the spot where it lurked.

it was no closer.  nor was it farther.

he'd smacked up against yet another solid wall.

he'd have to consider a different approach,

if he hoped to make any progress at all.

so he slanted his linear perspective,

bending reflection in pioneering shapes;

reimagining angular distances,

deepening doorways into lopsided gapes.

skimming on the rim of an altered dimension,

dredging up wedges in a cubist maze;

he pried open portals in hinges of windows,

probing proportion in outlandish ways.

sidestepping into a surreal existence,

where perception was stretched most obtusely;

he peered down a dwindling tunnel and blushed.

there was someone right there, weeping profusely!

darkness.  thick darkness.  opaque and obscure.

a singular freedom from the dictates of form

left Lumpy less affected by shapelessness,

indifferent to the laws informing the norm.

he could easily recall the broken candle

he'd happened on while heading back to bed.

the very one Gramps had been carrying

when he nearly mistook him for the walking dead.

but as he knelt on the stairs to retrieve it

a heart-stopping shadow perverted his space;

surrounding his senses in an instant,

lacing up his skin in a paralytic brace.

then the wind was expelled from his stomach,

as he felt the effects of an onrush of gall;

and succumbing to a mind-numbing terror,

grasped he was helpless and couldn't even crawl.

and it seemed to him then that he was falling,

spinning and splashed by a bout of vertigo;

as if he'd been forcefully flung from the earth,

but with gravity lapsed, had nowhere to go.

his reception of perception was severed,

hermetically sealed in a reticent case.

objective reality had come undone,

displaced without trace by disabling embrace.

gradually adapting to absent externals,

his urgent readiness began to fade.

and he mused on the menacing faculties

plausibly possessed by a shape shifting shade.

he left off expecting imminent rescue

for time ran out, having nothing to measure.

and came to accept his grim abeyance,

relinquishing relief from limiting leisure.

his mind filled the void with films from his past,

narratives to soften the unrelenting truth;

stoking the legacy of daunting derision,

hounding the hours that haunted his youth.

with no distractions the deluge descended,

a torrent of scorn on a shame-laden wave;

till he felt once more like that ridiculed boy,

pouring out his heart in the drought-stricken cave.

Lumpy was jolted by the revelation

that his sobs had crossed the insensate divide.

for the darkness resounded with dejection,

blurting the burden he'd buried deep inside.

as surging regret at last depleted

he detected the rumble of a shunting sound;

gradually invading his awareness,

like a train derailing metaphysical ground.

then a blinding flash opened up the heavens,

as his eyes adjusted to a newfound sight.

the palest hint of a far off glimmer

had introduced a dazzling speck of lilac light.
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- Evan Hawthorn, the 28^th of October, 2015