Blood from a stone;
Vulcan, erupt.
In his Ares heart,
Of the Zeno soul.
The battle drags on
For a cause, I do not know.

In death's dream kingdom
           These do not appear:


                     I

They're handing out maroon balloons
And saying they are free
But grasping children grip them fast
And the monks amidst them disagree
Dispassionately, but en masse
While they liberate the children
With obliterating oms.

A nearby Byron expiates
And mildly reiterates
The soporific broken ode
He bellows over holy oms
To the smitten women who approach
That "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"
Dispensing with disinterest
Crimson bliss amidst the women
Who ignore the sinful image he bestows.

He hands them out like red balloons
To grasping girls all afternoon
Imploring them to trust their nose
Insisting they are free
And so continues to propose
To the smitten women in the street
That "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"
As if the word could smell as sweet
As the perennials he grows.

And in the corner – Romeo
Who greenly mourning understands
The worth of poison in his hands
Imagining a life of night
Where roses wither without light
And only stars through windows break
Through all the countless nights of fate
and every breath's an endless wake...

Meanwhile Byron's distant yells
Prevail over the choral swell
And plant a seed in grasping ears:
Salvation can be engineered!
Which Romeo soon understands
As kissing death, he takes her hand
Thoughts germinating into schemes
If a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
...then a dream is a dream is a dream.


                     II

A griffin, a hippogriff, and a wyvern
Admitting me and
Gripping crimson
Dripping strings
So none of them will fly away.

Inside, Cain is killing Abel  
(How few! yet how they creep)
killing Abel
(Through my fingers to the deep)
killing Abel
(While I weep — while I weep!)
killing Abel.
(O God! Can I not grasp)
It is the first story:
(Them with a tighter clasp?)
A samsara of carnage and drama.

Somewhere above
On a city street
Desire's handing out balloons
He clips their thorns
And trims them neat
He says they're free
And just as sweet
As the women he impugnes
He belies his guidance on repeat:
That love is the light is the sun is the moon.

A widower laments and moves the world
That has such people in it:
A snake, a guard, a god, a dog
A wife by no other name
A faltering of faith, a peek
A pillar of salt, a severed head
Adrift on a river
Singing:

I'd transcend five hundred miles
And I'd transcend five hundred more
Just to be the man who transcends trials
Sprawled out on your floor
(Thy drugs are quick.)
Searching for a souvenir
To prove to you our world was here

Isaac, bound, blank and free
Bleating, looking for meaning
(All that we see or seem)
In his father's violent eye,
And finding it.
(Thus with a kiss I die.)
Abraham swings his knife.
A son is a sin is a ram is a rose.

A man pushes the sun up a large hill
(LET THERE BE LIGHT)
Every day, and then it rolls down again
And then an eagle eats his liver.
(I am the resurrection and the life.)
One must imagine Prometheus happy
The alternative is dark

The moon, by any other name, would—
But do not swear by the moon!
For she changes constantly
(Then said Jesus unto them plainly:
Lazarus is dead.)
Everything changes
But nothing is truly lost.

(at times
the fact of her absence
will hit you like a blow to the chest
and you will weep.
but this will happen less and less
as time goes on.
she is dead.
you are alive.
so live.)

A man pushes the sun up a large hill
A day is a year is a life is a death.

One must imagine Orpheus happy.


                     III

In dreams, the sun resumes her loving glow
I'm reunited with my silhouette
I glue myself with soap to my shadow
And find myself beside my Juliet

No longer a balloon without a hand
I'm rooted to the earth where she grips me
With purpose guiding us through life's demands
I push my boulders uphill happily

I build a world with Juliet my wife
Where roses are all roses and smell sweet
We live a loving happy magic life
Together til our journey is complete.

[Enter, at the other end of the churchyard,
FRIAR LAURENCE, with a lantern, crow, and *****.]

In union Eve and Adam are redeemed,
Not in a rose but in a living dream.

All the pain a man could muster in his lifetime:
Compressed to a minute.
Then, send it scattershot through the airwaves.
A morose melody. A lovely female voice inflects....
"May I override your rationality and reason?"
Imprints a depression on the mind;
a rope around the deckhand's neck.
Does her voice now command your neocortex?
Yes, but deeper still: it denigrates.
Instills an insistence toward apathy:
existential treason.
musical notes denote a debt to be paid.
They accept just the one currency.
Trade melancholic fervor for nihility...
A payment must be made.
Posit the ship is a sojourn in deep water.
Feeling A sorrow you can't adjourn.
How quickly you will learn:
Jumping overboard
CAN be an act of kindness.
A slave to that recalcitrant sorrow.
Jetsam yourself to lighten the load on your psyche:
It's ideal over facing another tommorow.

Seafaring folk
assume a siren's song is beautiful.

I felt The Earth shake when she sung.
There goes the air from my lungs.
What more to give? Here.
Borrow my body and tongue.
Sitting in the auditorium
of my own soliloquy.
This state of mind is anti-reverie.
Your falsetto sonnet showed memories.
My family.My mishaps.
An altercation out of ennui-with my father.
Before he left,that last thing he said to me...

But.

Why WAS he levied into conflict
over Antioch?
On a whim prescribed, of course;
The pope demanded A crusade on sin.
Father died inside the walls of Jerusalem.
Bled out fighting alongside other mortal men:
Father, is your heaven more beautiful,
than your grand daughter's grin?

Captain has seven sailors hold me still.
I am suppressed inside the fo'c'sle.
He counts down from sixty:
"Let us see if time sets him straight."
A siren's enthrall doesn't agitate long.
Yet,
Even after the weight of it lifting,
it leaves you forlong.
Sometimes-I still feel-
underwater...is that where I truly belong?

Seafaring folk
assume a siren's song is beautiful.
                          I know better.

A violent storm materializes from otherwise
sunny, fair weather.
I guess the myths of the Tempest here are true:
It attacks ships sailing near the fabled
isle Revenir.
Until then,for my own safety,
I had been enroute to the brig.
"All hands on deck
(including me and my captors)
Secure those loose rigs.
Batten down the hatch.
Cap'n is going to steer us-
Right through this Tempest's heart!!"
Steady now.
Or his hubris will tear the ship apart.

I felt indifferent as waves
pummel us relentlessly.
Contrite as our vessel
won its war with the sea.

                   I jump overboard.

Instant remorse.
Father, can your God please alter my course?
A mistake.
This can't be my legacy.
I'm sinking.
Because of what a siren sung.
I can't breathe. Feel water filling in my lungs.
Siren,take what you won
then leave me undone.
I'm sinking.
Is this how I meet my end?
Shimmer from the sunlight fades
as I descend.
Sinking.
And I'll never be found...
My fear, my flailing. My failure to float.
the ocean swallows it all,
ingurgitates my hope.
Is this how you felt?
Facing your ill-fated destiny?
Father.
You always tried-and failed -to quell my misery.
That last thing you said...
Preaching your god's salvation as remedy.

                        I'm sinking.

All along its been my sorrow
that's drowning me.

-

I didn’t want to die running for my life,
Yet in the snake pit, being kissed by vipers felt sweeter
Than the bitter sting of men.

You cried on your lyre so beautifully
The winds stopped to listen,
And the gods obliged so mercifully
To let you take me over the threshold again.

If you can’t trust them, have faith in me:
Don’t look back and be my guide.
You never turned around when I followed for miles
The back of your head after we said goodnight.

But as your arms twitched the day I became a bride,
You can’t take me past the door again
And you look me in the eyes.

I don’t know if it’s because you love me too much
Or to say you got cold feet:
The outcome is the same.
You get to live unscathed and nothing of me remains.

I am from water, from fire,
      from earth and air,
            the spirit to complete.
I am from the busy movement of city
      from the busstling to and fro.
I am from historic land,
      from where many jumped to find gold,
            to find a better life.
I am from the prison of Him,
      from where the truama begins,
            perfect from all around.
I am from nights of games,
      from spondgebob monoply
            from Life.
I am from the seeds of the earth,
      from where the magick starts.
I am from Odin, from Apollo,
      the strong Yggdrasil to protect.
I am from the occult of practice,
      from the forests and seas.
I am from long walks with Odin,
      from his warm embrace,
            from playing fetch.
I am from the theatre,
      from Carlos, from tech.
I am from here.

Do not stop to dip your toes
or heaven knows to swim
in this sea of winds
where waves are whipped to horses ears
and tails of white among the foam
foolish child go home
retreat and walk no more
upon this wild and lonesome kelpie shore

The first time my existentialism
shifted to a metamorphosis far greater,
far greater than any constellation could foresee,
I began to pray.
pray for someone to feel the lawful,
evergreen,
world around us.
But I was left with a deafening cry
from an endless river,
meant to be brushed off as weakness.
The empire was destined for ruin
despite our efforts to save it.
The silence withheld all instinct
and we fell.
Fell where no one could hear me.