The Centrifuge

Black chimneys spout billowing venom

Of brazened iron, delirious with steam

Flooding the gridiron lattice-workings 

With bustling fury and hastening speed

And ferocious pistons kneading slick steel

In split-pulsing, rattle-trancing tension

Conjuring the mighty rites of Foundry.

Levers, pulleys, switches, each rampant

Like unchained fetters off a Cerberus

Eager to unleash dormant capabilities

And lend Rage to the world's dismantling.

Crackles of hideous fumes propelled

Through wilted notches of pipe patchwork

And ascending to the upper atriums and galleys

Where beading vapor trace-lets take riddled form

As unrelenting tensions compose mechanic rhythms

In homage to the sacrilegious names Rate and Quantity.

Hell-winds spew panicked pandemonium through circuitry

As the rebelling flames in furnaces expel their lungs of soot.

The Foreman, decked in similar shades of misery, pulls the chain

Commanding the conveyer belt-spanning Centrifuge to grinding halt-

A cog must be replaced.

It must have met Erosion.

Gradients of Change

Cassiopeia

I've been sabotaged in dreams-

Corrupted in the global game of chess,

Taken to a Vonnegut extreme.

A victim of tendencies, vices and lies,

And a plaintiff, rigged and bribed.

Suave and tactful were the standards:

Now the well's been tainted,

Left to mellow, caramelize and mold

Into its own Leviathan,

A twisted testament to Industry.

The people feel the rift at different rates

Like a fountain, trickling arrays

Of fuming wisps and tapestries 

While some are catapulted instantly

Into untapped worlds,

Banishing themselves from old deposits

Of lukewarm thoughtstream

Mingling with musty Prejudice-

A manufactured, heart-rending tactic.

Like cells with centrosomes and centrioles,

The hands of artisans intertwine

And take into their mind's eye

A collective invocation

To restore and bring to Light

Old world rhapsodic winds

Harmonizing astral currents

And ascending with fluid ease

To the summit of forgotten realms

Of the imagination.

Traces

Living in the heart alleviates

the dull corporeal roar

of tension fusing to our minds

like fluffy sugar-stringed webbing

running round a cotton candy cone.

The sagging sleepless bundles

bunched beneath your eyes

and blushing laminated arrays,

the many hues of chardonnay.

We crave that transitory glimmer

a frothy brew of over-whelming chemistry

and topsy-turvy, wavering souflées
served hesitantly, to a guest not yet

ready for uncharted mental contents
to unravel before his eyes, and thoughts

whose residues will never coalesce 

like pock-marked petri dishes 

in easy sequences again
and energize our source of being:

The solar plexus-nexus.

Chameleon Reunion

M. C. Escher

On my endless voyage through the mists 

I came across a seemingly abandoned brook,

with surreality flowing rampantly in the woods

As quickening anticipation rushes to its peak. 

Then, slipping off the leafy cover of the brush-

Hark! A witness to the rarest of magical spectacles.

I arrive at assembly of slithering technicolor textures,

A clandestine festival of speckle-scattered herbivores

And jungle-cloaked enclave of hidden chameleons.

Subtle at first, but a mine-field exploding colors-

The way of these expressive, yet elusive creatures

Tipped with curiously-coiled slips of shifting scales,

Melding into funky earthen tones and replicating stones.

The cornerstone of mirage in far-passed eras and beyond

Embedding patterned color-coated harmonies through time

And united to re-kindle their skillful pact as chosen changelings,

A reprisal to their legacy and exclusive language of deception.

The old wood's clever triple agents daubed in vibrant shades

Heralded together by their chameleonic pheromones.

Unlike their nocturnal prowling counterparts,

These crafty, mischief-clad scouts of undetected observation

are overlooked at any time of day, the sneaks!

Forbidden skills to other creatures in the expansive underbrush.

The old and wizened lizard among the gallery of shades

Reverberated with his thoughts images to his friends:

I too have spoken with those who speak with us.

The seasons are askew, birds collapsing,

foliage dissolving, magnetic poles completely flung-

Our language is a life vest for this chaos.

Quick! Let's hasten to our respective roosts.

And with that, my memory fell prey

To their haze-ridden, ethereal traps,

Never to observe their breed again.

Substrata

Coursing pools

Beneath the ground

Tributarily unraveling 

And merging at the heart:

Comforting limestone bedrock

The perfect shade for colonies.

Shafts of light through rotting trees above,

Each an insect portal through the substrate.

Apollo's statue stands dead center in the grove,

Aiming his gladius through a trove of leaves

Reveals delicate glowing hearth in bloom:

Needle-like tendrils grasping tender green vines

shearing the bristled moss edges in endless designs

 twisting broadly through stems and through plumes

petals unfolding like luscious lagoons

cords of life weaving like fissures with roots

converging through spindling, segmented chutes

once parched, nectar resurfaces replete

a fixture of flora both supple and sweet.