Metamorphosis
“All signs announce, the change has come. I will be something other than I started from.”
Photo by Hermes Rivera
Surrealist Prophecies #7
The seventh in a sequence of surrealist prophecies written using the divinatory technique of automatic writing (with subsequent revision). The theme of the sequence is the collapse of our global civilization due to uncontrollable climate change, leading to a mass rejection of both faith and reason and the re-enchantment of our world among the ruins of our failed creations. Some of the poems in the sequence are set before the Fall and portray the spiritual and emotional dilemma of our current crisis. Some describe the Fall itself, and the strange changes in thought and perception that will be needed if any are to survive a world in which humanity has been radically de-centered. Some describe the world to come, a world newly alive with gods and spirits yet free of all dogma or fixed belief – a world of beauty and strange magic.
In the seventh prophecy, the change has begun and the Fall is here. People and buildings assume strange shapes. Reason as we know it is overthrown, and faith as we know it has died as well. The future is limitless – both beautiful and terrifying.
Metamorphosis
The seasons turn - the beating of a wound.
Time gushes out and splashes on the floor.
We tacked a blanket up
But that’s no more.
The light comes creeping
Through the crack beneath the door.
And in the summer sun my eyes have begun to run like half-cooked eggs. I sense the waving of a spider’s legs, the buzz of bees, the weirdly ticklish feeling stealing slowly upward toward my knees…
All signs announce,
The change has come.
I will be something other
Than I started from.
I have become a meal for hungry stars
That burn as red as wine and walk the shifting line
Of mine and yours.
Don’t close the doors.
And leave those windows open too.
The change we tried to hide from has arrived for me and you.
And in the thick, wet heat my skin has begun to peel and pull apart above my heart, while in the street I hear the flapping slapping sound of altered feet.
All laws retreat,
All buildings crack.
Faith crashes into reason at high speed
And kills them both on impact.
The broken compact splits my bones.
My ribcage spreads and cracks, my slit lips groan.
From deep inside my body
Something rises
Something moans.
Something alien and lovely
Lifts it head to see its home.
Christopher Scott Thompson
Christopher Scott Thompson is an anarchist, martial arts instructor, devotee of Brighid and Macha, and a wandering exile roaming the earth. Photo by Tam Zech.
