I am the night full of colours to come

You look skeptical, like, yeah, everybody is a snowflake. 
You got my number
you got my type
you got me figured
I make sense
You've seen it seen it before
It's all black and white with you
But I am the rainbow
and I know you don't got me because I don't got myself
I know it's terrifying
I looked and I'm not here
I'm on the way
Like some deadbeat friend who saves you in the end
I am saving myself

Yes, the sun and seasons will have their way and things happen
They are done before you notice
It happens to you what you do
Like some machine-hyper-AI-thing
But all about food or Instagram or social approval or sex, automatic ba-bing.
And I might run from the gun and into the warm arms of comfort
And I might learn by mimicry, see, monkey do monkey
and I might learn all the reasons to be good
But all that is as wonderful as sunrise
Yeah, it's great in a way, but it happens every day. 
It's finished, but that's not me
I am not finished
I know somebody made the sun
And only I am the one who can act
I don't fit in the bright world
I am the night full of colors to come.

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Once I had a dream

by Nathaniel Williams

It was a dream that I had again and again. I was at a crowded bar, a man approaches me, grinning. I try to avoid him and turn away, but he follows me. A snake curling around his waist is trying to bite my leg. I try to get my distance and turn to run. The snake transforms into a curved staff and the man lifts it. When I look over my shoulder, he's holding it in the air and I am lifted and paralyzed, suspended, my whole-body rigid with tension and unable to respond. The dream repeated until a decisive night. I meet the man again at the bar, again, in the end I'm suspended, paralyzed in the air as he holds up the staff, as if enchanting me. 

But now, a voice comes from behind. Everything in me is aggressively turned towards the man in front of me, even though I am impotent and powerless. I turn around and see a figure. Their face is turned away from me and they wield a sword. I feel as if it is made of moonlight and gravity. It's double-edged. The figure holds it with two hands. The tip is needle sharp and it is luminous gold, brighter than the sun.

Still and silent the figure stands. Is it a man? Is it a woman? Then it speaks as if it had a thousand mouths coming from all directions of space, cracking sharply like the snapping of tree branches, booming thunderously as if from mighty storms. 

“To overcome the trance, you must learn to fight without inflicting injuries on yourself.” 

To my astonishment, I can speak. “I cannot move. How can I injure myself?” 

A laugh as delightful as small flowers and bells in the hands of children bursts out, melting the fear in my heart, “I see you cannot fight, and neither are you very bright.”

A wave of shame weighs down every part of me. Then the figure moves the sword, a series of arcs and thrusts. But more of a dance than anything aggressive or anything that would remind you of combat. Each move, while clear, was only preparation for the next, and the end connected with the beginning. I understood that this was an enchanted sword. The silver blade of the shaft revealed one vision on one side and another on its opposite, while the golden radiant tip left a fluid trail like spilled ink lines on glass. And the golden patterns it drew awoke a peculiar feeling in me, like a good friend who I had perhaps even forgotten, yet knew was about to enter the dream. 

“Three sequences I can teach you. I cannot bestow mastery in the end.”

My desire to learn was fueled by an eagerness and impatience. A fire of desire for success colored my quest. The blade wove through me, but I was unharmed. The vision on one side and the other changed. First, I saw the most beautiful figures on one side, and on the other, a thousand arms reaching out with clasping hands. Then everything shifted: a cornucopia of the most delicious fruits and foods, and, on the other side, a thousand open, salivating mouths. Then, suddenly and strangely, a hundred austere elders stood on one side and on the other, empty-eyed crowds bowing down. The thrusts and swings of the golden tip had created the image of a bull on my abdomen. 

The figure began a second sequence with the sword now moving through my arms and heart, again without hurting me. On each side of the blade, again, visions swirled. At first, I saw a suffering child on one side, hungry and cold, and on the other side of the sword, streams of gentle blue and pink. Then a figure appeared, striking another, who was turned away and surprised by the blow, while on the other side of the blade, crimson red and dark green churned and pulsed. Many more pictures appeared, and infinite hues of color. In the end, the golden tip of the sword had woven the image of a lion which ornamented my chest. 

The third lesson began and the sword touched my ears and eyes, my nose and tongue and also my forehead. This sequence was also graceful and painless, revealing a new panorama of double visions. On one side, a great assembly gathered around a document, marking their names with ink, and on the other, crystal clear structures of exquisite order carved from light. Then judges seated behind great wooden barriers, with volumes of books on shelves all around them, in a tower reaching to the sky and on the other side, a figure kneeling, the pure expression of submission. Many more pictures appeared, and at the end the tip of the sword had woven a pattern of feathers and an exquisite eagle, alighting on my head. 

The sword of the figure begins to grow wider. Its blade becoming more and more broad. The figure disappears behind it. The sword has become a mirror. The gold of its tip merges with the three patterns on my figure which are shining. I only see the patterns. The bull, the lion and the eagle. No matter where I look, I see them all. Looking at the broad wings of the eagle, I see the feet of the bull. Gazing on the mane of the lion, the horns of the cow arch up. 

It was as if these three patterns were garments of myself, not sequential strokes of a sword. They were all at once. What was time was now space. In this golden space a stream was moving up and down. Upwards to the sun, down to the sword which was now a mirror lying on the ground. 

I saw the figure's face. 

I turned back towards the magician with the serpent. He was still there, but now in the distance. Before me were a lion, bull, and eagle. On the bull a child was riding. The lion was curled at its feet, as if to keep it warm. Above its head the eagle spread its wings, creating a shelter. The snake was no longer a staff, but was curled around the scene, biting its own tail. 

The child was poised to speak.

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Myth 

by Judith Wright

A god has chosen to be shaped in flesh.
He has put on the garment of the world.
A blind and sucking fish, a huddled worm,
he crouches here until his time shall come,
all the dimensions of his glory furled
into the blood and clay of the night’s womb.
Eternity is locked in time and form.

Within those mole-dark corridors of earth
how can his love be born and how unfold?
Eternal knowledge in an atom’s span
is bound by its own strength with its own chain.
The nerve is dull, the eyes are stopped with mold,
the flesh is slave of accident or pain.
Sunk in his brittle prison-cell of mud,
the god who once chose to become a man
is now a man who must become a god.

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Poem

by Albert Steffen

Eh’ begonnen unsre Erdenbahn,
Wussten wir als Geister um den Plan.
Und zur Tiefe nahmen wir die Richtung,
zu vollenden eine Himmelsdichtung

Ist das alte Leben dir zerschellt,
schaff ein neues, wie es dir gefällt.
Dichte – dich, dann lösen sich die Ketten.
Anders wirst du nimmer dich erretten.

English translation (NW)

Before our earthly journey began,
as spirits, we knew the plan.
We set out toward the depths,
To complete a heavenly poem (dichtung).[1]

Is your old life shattered,
create a new one, as you like.
Condense yourself (“dichte dich”-see note), then the chains dissolve.
Otherwise, you will never redeem yourself.