The Trouble With The Astral Plane

You can't take a bus, you can't take a plane, you can't get there by boat or train
it isn't a safe or a tame domain, and that's the trouble with the Astral Plane
You can't look it up in a travel guide or a foreign ports brochure
but if angels hear you one might let you apply for a private tour
You take your ticket and wait your turn and the angel waits to see
whether you forget it or come to burn with intense curiosity

It may take days, it may take weeks, it may take months instead
you may be awake, in a day-dream state, or sound asleep in bed
But the moment that you least expect he sneaks up on your soul
and yanks it by the nape of your neck as he comes to take control
You don't let go and you feel as though you've just been thunderstruck
like he hooked you up to the engine-jack of a ten ton tractor truck

And he calls, "Let go!" with a mighty shout and reminds you, you applied
as he tugs you from the inside out and says, "Time for that ride!"
To back down now you do not dare, though the treatment is some shoddy
So you just surrender and get prepared to evacuate your body
You say a quick prayer and you take a deep breath and he jerks you just once more
till your soul and your body disconnect and you're ____zzzzzzzzzzoop! through the astral door

It's a soft, warm night in a pale twilight and a brilliant silver thread
connects you from your astral feet to your flesh incarnate head
And you float above the tops of trees and you fly like Peter Pan
steering left, right, as you please with a mere flip of the hand
It's an alter-material, parallel world where you think the path you take
It isn't a dream or a hair-brained scheme, you are utterly wide awake

It's a simultaneous nether-realm where ethereal spirits soar
And you realize with your astral eyes that you've visited here before
As you cogitate on your astral state you remember how you whiled
many an astral hour away when you were just a child
soaring in bliss, just like this, so high up off the ground
with never a thought for how you got up or how to get back down

nor what they'd do if your parents knew that at your tender age
you rose right through the roof at night like a bird right through it's cage
and you leapt to a breathless precipice twenty-six feet over head
tripping the light fantastic-ness when they thought you were in bed
So now you glide at an angel's side. What a perfect thing to do!
exploring woods and old neighborhoods with a bird's-eye point of view

And you thrill to see the geography from this death-defying height
You can hardly wait to investigate, but you dare not stop tonight
There's a thousand doors in a corridor and a thousand or more of those
As you pass them up at the speed of thought, they fall like dominoes
And for every door you pass ten more spring up, and then you find
that out of sight is out of your etheric double's mind

You've left your body far below unattended on the ground
and a hundred unseen hungry ghouls have begun to swarm around
Ekes, effreets, knobbily wooves have caught the scent from hell
and they all want in what looks to them like a vacant human shell
Well, they bubble and squeek as they nibble and sneak and gnawsh upon your cord
and try to stuff themselves inside every portal in your gourd

And they buzz the buzz of a thousand bees that malevolently swish you
as they quarrel and fight to occupy every cubic inch of your tissue
But you pass right through this motley crew as your guardian yanks you down
A door slams shut and you wake up re-embodied, safe and sound
But the buzzing lingers round your head even after you awaken
Your ethereal self is a sated elf, but your mortal form is shaken

It's not unlike being bitten off, chewed up, and spit right back
You don't recall as a child at all any such traumatic attack
Then comes an invisible pair of wings, like a dove hovering above you
that sweeps away all the greedy things still trying to yank and shove you
And it sweeps your body head to toe as it gently tucks you in
and adjusts you like a virtuoso fine-tuning the violin

And at last you sink to a peaceful place and sleep the sleep of the just
To trip in the Astral Plane you may, but to dwell in this world, you must
And unless you're an old and practiced soul, or an innocent without fear
don't try this trick alone, my friends, you can't get there from here
You can't take a bus, you can't take a plane, you can't get there by boat or train
It isn't a safe or a tame domain, and that's the trouble with the Astral Plane

copyright 2008, Lyric-Dragon