1. |
Minister of Falconry
04:00
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Send the sennex to the scaffold
Eyes wide and wan
Though he’s barely through the gates
I’ll bet his tongue is wet, his brow is drenched
Yet he says brimming with glee
“I am the gadfly tickling the herd
Of the ignorant and uninitiated
Let them hear me and be disturbed
The truth was never meant for men
It is poison to their ears, their minds and spirits
Show them what they’re lacking and they’ll want it
Be it to their furthering or detriment”
Someone gag him,
The old man’s voice
Brings me naught
Save a turning stomach
Gods above his words are strong
His mood is bright his tone is fearless
“Tell me aristoi what’s there to fear?
Words are empty without action
And all I’ve done is speak my mind
If just for that I am condemned
Then gladly I’ll wag my tongue in freedom
I would rather die than bight the yoke of censorship and vindication.
Though in silver you find strength, mine comes from the mandate of the people
And only the wealthy can be bought.”
Tell me Sophos, have you hope?
“Hope is alive where there is discourse,
As sparks bring fire, knowledge brings light.
This is the life that I have chosen,
And if it ends, well then that’s life.
You demand cast off my morals and expect that I find sleep?
Let’s end now this dull quarrel, I’ll take hemlock
Before I submit to you, oh gilded statues of corruption”
This man has fluttered his lips enough
Let him be bound, may he be silenced
Let the ideals die with the man.
“You know as I do that’s ne’er occurred,
And as I fade so grows my strength.
Tomorrow the people will flatten your gates.
We know there’s more to life,
We know this garden’s growing
Soon our ivy will swallow your gods of gold.
So now we go our separate ways
You to life and I to death,
But who amongst us truly has the better lot?
Only time and truth may say.”
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2. |
Cosmic Awareness
04:50
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The artist is poised
Sipping its poison
At war with its liver still
Consumed with ill health
Choking on blood clots
Knowing that its time is near but hoping to gnaw off a leg
The canvas primed
The palette waiting to find use in its hands
The artist stands not knowing what shape its monument may take
But its soul bursts forth
Though form unseen
Snaked lines of paint
Spread like magma over ice
Shattering the stigma of imagination
And transcending conscious thought
As cold light breaks in through the window
Breathless it collapses
In a heap
Arak spilled
Taking a last day’s breath of life
The hour is growing late
Still on its knees the artist is heaving
Producing only blood and pus
Struggling just to stand
This art is useless
How can one hope to press on with the end of life encroaching?
Fear though dulled by aquae vitae presses the artist on
A vision appears
Tangible as smoke,
but there regardless
Now weakly shaking,
brush in hand the artist continues
Rethinking forms, and speaking dissonant shapes
With each stroke of its brush it brings life to its death
This art is useless if nothing comes of it
All art is useless
Tell me someday
I will be remembered
For more than the hands I shook
The people I loved
The days I spent seeking the strength to get out of bed
The hours in front of screens
The dreams I wish I could have lived
Or will someday
If only, if only
I had the strength to press on in the face of fear
Hulking and hopeless the artist forces
itself through the wall of vines and thorns
And all the while forlorn and resigned
Feeling the encroaching and pacing night
Nipping at its weary ankles
Eyes clouded by cataracts
There born an unknown form
Snaked paint and confused lines
Weave Abstracted and fevered visions
Holding back tears the artist mourns its life in passing
Though in this moment the artist’s harrowed breathing slows
Years pass in days
Children are born and grow old
The product of creation
Waiting to be found
A heap of bones feet away
Unmissed, unmourned
The canvas gathering dust
Its worth fading with sentiment
Though time endears all things
And be it treasure or trash
Painted with panted gasps
That piece was for its maker
And those who may simply see it
For its shapes and forms
Never for the life poured
Into its basin
Are blind to the beauty
Of the moment of birth
All art is nothing
But death given abstract form
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3. |
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Lost in the sand without wine
Nor nectar, nor water to find
Here I drop to my knees
Desperate, begging for a drink
Cursing thirst and the dearth of this earth
And the gods in the Sun
Casting cold arrows at me
The path is lost, the wadi’s drained
And the winds are the howls of ifriit
Oh how my spirit is stained
I’ve wrapped myself in mangled dreams
Yet before my eyes grows a glowing sheen
A mirage mirroring god
It beckons, I crawl
Its form dissolves
And now alone I feel myself start fading
As I’m giving into grief,
And a fatal sense of faith
I cannot
Cease myself from giving into solar flares, erasing my shadow, lapping at my skin,
Expunging all my words save for those on the tip of my tongue
Water
Now as I seethe, as I’m dragged by my knees
Through this dothraki sea
As I curse knowing Ishmael’s thirst, the profit’s verse
The rivers burst and I am
Drowning under the sun
Wave after wave shredding my layers
And doubts, and my cares
The death bells calling
I hear them in the distance
As I pray, singing every third word that I speak
Delirious chanting gives into ranting
The moment’s lost, all hope is tossed
Into drained beds of silica and shale
And I find myself impaled by light
A four armed form appears salving my skin
What is this being? Etheric and glistening
As I’m raised up my ankle’s caught sand
Pulled from its foothold
A sensation I knew but have long since forgotten
Flows forth freely, etheric and glistening
Water springs forth feeding the earth
Now I am drenched by this land
My bones aglow, my throat no longer slaked by sand
How this oasis is flourished, I settle in my spirit nourished
Finally at peace, reborn as a hanif
I thank this endless well
Zam Zam
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4. |
Reason Will Prevail
02:54
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Beckmann, this shall surely break you
Thoughtless, twisting the knife in the shell
Which spat you from the Elba’s listless embrace
And found you in Andora
Where shingles dropped upon your crown
And lowly merchants led you off to Venice
The strawberries are over ripe
I can’t spit out the seeds
And god that child’s smile so enflames me
Oh, the Lido is so changed
Death waits at the door
And all these dreams of Tadzio are torture
Hearing as time pounds at the gates
In three hours I wake, and shout dusk at the dawn
Pan dances with orphaned fawns,
Wild and weary, ankles pierced, bound and drawn
Caskets will line the Thames
Chubby dams burst, wastelands seek to extend
As prose speaks in verse its syntax inverts
And language gives into birth
As I lay hoarry and pale
Scipio readies triremes to sail
So he leads them off to Zama
Like and arrow shot by Rama
And Carthage succumbs to the fate of Mastarna
Oh the light is but a trick
Draußen vor der Tür
When will I receive the death I wish for?
No, I won’t try
Life over-ripe sticks to my lips
And the sky starless and grey,
Is cringing, and begging
To fall in clusters
Proud mountains shudder
Are ground into gutters
Lakes become allergic to water
And I bury myself in the arms of the night.
Trapped between shadows and streetlights
Bone xylophones clatter under the hands of
Death bloated and glutinous,
God grows weary and impotent
In the light, in the light, in the fell fading light
I wade out to the heart of the river
Begging the Elba to send me to sleep
Crying out for any succor
Solitude, safety, or the pang of relief
At the end of the end of the world
All the stars seem clouded diamonds
And to breathe’s to swallow smoke
Drowning and gasping, chasing the exit of hope
Now we are here at the edge of a dream
The tranquil mist shrouded surface
Of the Starnbergersee of my youth
They reflect these years and in their cold arms I find
Truth.
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Polyphony Maplewood, New Jersey
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