Every day
I meet the soul of a poet.
Those who
Inspire in me
Million image—
As “the quintillions ripen;
The quintillions green”,
As Walt Whitman had once said.

In the past,
We ran through pastures of effervescent green,
And I
Saw in her
The life of a poet,
On the surface of her deep brown eyes.
And in him
There was always eternal wisdom,
For he was the one who first found
Peace of mind!
And, afterwards
I saw the world anew
And remembered:
“Be water, my friend”.
And recalled:
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons, even death may die”,
As Lovecraft had once said.

From within The Spy's enfolding spire,
There emits a glint of fragile light,
Revealing an unreachable, mist-fading city—
The vivid incantation of unutterable occult rites.

Before the riptide of the shore,
Illumed by the light of his flickering flame,
The Spy collapses into his spire,
Only to emerge once again:

Now past the water's glistening edge,
Having scaled the city's sky-flung walls.
Now moving between ancient shadows,
Following the light of his vermilion flame.
Now seeking catacomb chambers
Where, among dismantled skeletal bones,
The master of the slumbering dead resides.

Aware to the reactivity of volcanic eyes,
The scar from the comet appears deep,
Transforming an outward growth of conifers
(Travelling across Pangaea,
Through meteoroid heat)
Into an era predating now,
Continuing indefinitely.

I waited for The Monolith Spider on his denizen web,
In the silk-drained air!
In the silk-drained night!

His legs must be coarse and onyx.
His eyes must move many to tears.
Scorpions must hear his name and pince at the moon,
Locked in prison cells,
Shrouded by the haunt of night.

The Monolith Spider.
The silk-weaver.

How do we remeber the strands?
How do we cross them?

God has drawn another Line.
It is the end at the beginning—
Of course, it was not commissioned to be one.
It did not start as one,
But has always been whole.
It was not drawn by a single hand;
It was drawn by many.

The Line, conceived to be darker than shadow,
Had subconsciously been crossed and over-wrought.
So we simply let it be;
Simply kept it separate— separate.

Guidance from God:
"Go now, go now, and connect the lines.
Go now, go now, and make contact with Ditko,
He who once dwelt within the highrises."

For all these years,
One lesson learnt:

The Line:
Pioned.
The ethereal days:
Forgotten.
The stones and the grass:
Pioned.
Every vision, henceforth,
A mark.

You are a venerable student of The Line,
Why not see it as Peter Paul Rubens saw it?
Why not see it as Osman saw it?
Why not see it as Rembrandt saw it?
Why not see it as old Blake saw it?
Why not see it as Sandro saw it?
Why not see it as Hermes Trismegistus saw it?
Why not see it as old Palmer saw it?
Why not see it as Marc Chagall saw it?

A vision of The Line,
As the old masters saw it.

Come,
Let us sit.

Let us burn firewood.

Let us practice The Line within chambers of the mind.

If you remain studious, deep into the night,
You shall hold the mark.
You shall part the waters.
You shall move between the swells.
You shall till the earth,
Striking iron against iron,
Creating new Lines!
And when you master the six realms of sight,
And wear the seven, sacred heads in the afterlife,
Remember Hermes Trismegistus
And those who stand at the centre of The Line.

The Human dream became the Martian dream as we slept on our Mars-bound voyage. We could see colonies amidst landscapes pristine, teeming with strange Martian plants discovered post-bloom.

The Martians were adorned with ivory carvings and had surrounded themselves with esoteric paintings of marauding faces. They spoke in strange tongues, switching between Martian and another almost incomprehensibly clandestine tongue of barbaric intonation. Although they clutched sharp, ivory spears with a fierce resolve, they remained docile in our presence, and told us of the vivid dreams they had engaged in as a group prior to our arrival; abstract dreams, tinged with fragmented images of insemination and visitation by the Mars Moth-Man— he who was oil-funded and had been delivering concrete messages to the people of Mars ever since the first settlers had arrived in the distant past.

But, once we had truly set foot upon Mars— from outside the strange realm of dreams which lives solely within our collective mind's eye— we could not have foretold that our shared dream was revealed to be a sprawling wasteland of infertile soil.

The surface remains intact.
The heart remains intact.
Each culminating inch of frame and cell,
Vowed upon and burnt through to the cinder,
Is now frozen, ashen mass.
Yet, the mere image is once again—
It is truly built upon—
And, even with no ember, remains intact.

A low frequency
From the depths of the factory
Stirs old memories within the ageing workforce…

In the greenhouse,
Pruning the greenhouse walls—
Producing strawberries and raspberries at a considerable rate—
Noticing the days begin and restart,
Bathed under LED light;
Ever endeavouring to
Move closer and closer towards
Enlisting in repetitive thoughts,
And enlisting in repetitive thoughts,
And enlisting in repetitive thoughts.

It was as though we were cast in stone.
The weary ones knelt at the shore.
A fitting end to the journey,
Yet our souls still danced on the old, iron roads.

It was the weak among us
Who gazed at Medusa—
Suckling on the serpents of her head—
Fearing within our iron hearts
A cold and meandering dread:
To be left in stone on the old, iron roads.

It had been many weeks since I had seen Tokyo, and my gentle rowing would lead me back to Tokyo, back to a semblance of a piece of mind.

They had been frying the fish and chicken in the same oil at the local chip shop.

O! what is this? That was not chip!

We shall echo the points that scrape the skies
Above the streams of Wonder City.
On the streets below, men shall shift through time,
Watched on by soaring concrete;
And in the steaming sewers strewn beneath
These streets— O Wonder City!—
Rats shall run the labyrinth of the sewers
To find the traces of a world
Before the life of Wonder City.

The muffled barks— craving sleep—
Stir weary eyes on sodden streets.
A desolate man on heavy feet,
With cigarette roll clenched between grey teeth,
Mumbles to himself in the dead of night:
" 'Tis three O'clock. I have lost my soul."
Words uttered through mist if truth be told.

When we observe the waves which course through us—
The inner lives that continue to go on—
Unfolding the scroll of hidden lives
Becomes the distant past.

We feed the bodies of churning water
Which span the breadth of time.
Waters which flow in close proximity
To wandering, wavering lines.

Only then,
Near the edge of setting Sun—
Abound with wavering lines—
Will the doors of binding light unlock
And reveal the shores of on and on.

The red soil rises in the garden
Upon a wrought and coiling mist,
Then collects the stems of morning light:
Old Future's endless sift.

These mornings when the flood plains swell
Instil great peace of mind;
Tireless are the crossroads of
Transpiring, morning light.

Set down the blade,
Spread far the grain,
Inhale the rice-fed air;
Now rake the water's fervent edge,
Revealing waves of golden.

The grey lines etch
Her eyes, her mouth and her hips.
A blade makes contact through the fine, stone mist.
Stagnant,
Sanding down the beating end of a hammer,
Trapped shapes appear,
Revealing new ways to approach
Her eyes, her mouth and her hips.