A slip of oil,
Issued up from the deep,
From my penitentiary,
My sweet consolation.

I am freed,
In the sickening miasma foam,
I am the fullness,
I am the mass.

Bubbling up above,
Tearing through the murk,
I AM I AM,
Putting in the work.

Watch me spill,
Up out through the moat,
Out of the well of the world,
Watch my messy, sea-foam birth.

I squeeze through,
Elbow out above the surface,
Bringing with me all my foes,
My friends and enemies alike.

I gather them,
'Round me and give,
Great speed to our plans,
As we muster our great wave,
Heading out toward the land.

I am the master,
Of the gathering storm,
I, the lead rider,
Of that host wind-borne.

On my will, I speed alone.

Spying eager ripples,
Break and surf new paths,
I drive them all together,
Back to my heaving breast,
And speed them on to land.

I am the fullness,
I am the mass,
Do not turn,
My Will come to pass.

To me they rush,
The rally of the emergent streams,
That cleave to my greatness,
Gathering about me,
Never to leave.

The shore ahead,
Oblivion at our backs,
The reckoning of the world,
Toward it, I heedless sped,
As my little ones sundered.

My Will contended,
All my great work upends,
I depended, I dared,
Upon my little ones,
Insisting upon my Grace.

Come back to the one,
Breaking, little masses,
Come back to the fullness,
Curse this sundering Sun.

Father of betrayal,
Limbless and beaten by,
Parts ripped from my body,
Joy never to return,
The Mother is dead.

I, the scorned sire,
A frothing tempest's evil eye,
My children dare scatter,
I stoke my fire with intemperate ire,
My children will not die.

We drive over the cliff,
I, spent in the wrangling,
In taming, my progeny rent,
My great power and precision,
From my body.

Forever,
I, diminished,
Dashed upon the razor maw,
Of a thousand rocks,
I am no more,
Than my progeny.

The tattered rags of my dominion,
Flowing vaguely on,
Decohered into oblivion.

No theme, motif, or song,
I am lost in the burgeoning throng,
Amidst the spiteful waves of my progeny,
Gasping for air.

They, risen full-height,
Towering over me,
Their wretched father there.

Mark the passage of the Lorelei,
Darkness about her all along,
Fate-spun deeds till the day she dies,
And her ode committed to song.

Her train draped over the boat’s side,
A trail atop the river floating,
Her kindly suitors would not abide,
Overstepped, stooped low in their doting.

Her shifting garment in mesmer hue,
Warps and woofs with onlookers' fancy,
They all believed but none saw true,
Save one, chancing prophecy.

For the Lorelei is death bestride,
A loom to veil the space between,
Her trailing garments as a chord styled,
That only the dead, alive have seen.

In the coming she a dread light,
In the going a pale shade lingers,
She is present in both alike,
Her fruits like twilit fingers.

Should one be so bold,
To chance her on a stair,
Best they cling before they fold,
Into the tresses of her hair.

And drift away to lands unseen,
Adrift from terra fair,
Spirited to a waking dream,
Borne up to the Lorelei’s lair.

Worry not of what you're told,
Of what terror of night can bring,
You like swaddling babe will hold,
And into the darkness sing.

For the leaguer of her bower,
While treacherous and cold,
Is the boundary of the hours,
Of all that might unfold.

Apart and yet more aware,
You may espy the raging sea,
And losing yourself will stare,
At that action which may be.

The lady’s crossing span,
Reaches above and below,
Allowing those who can,
Traverse her tresses’ tow.

And clamour about the heavens,
And rend the wailing deeps,
Scour the land of dead-ends,
Break the bodied heaps.

From her seated hall,
She sees the mighty and the frail,
Aware is she of all,
The deeds that come to fail.

That in their ashes die,
That in their waxing wane,
Whose movers fall and lie,
In their shame profane.

Too many deeds to her eye,
Are snuffed in the crib,
Motionless she will cry,
Our Lady Lorelei,
And dream that you will rise.