Hedgemaze

dispelling antiquaries

interweaving estuaries

circulatory topiaries

hortatory capillaries

intermingling ribaldry

mortuarily mentioning

momentarily ensnaring

filibustered faculties

full-dendritic fractal-trees

alabaster anomalies

anatomic atrocities

panoramic mycelii

slanderous celibacy

supercilius circuitry

Wharf of the Phototropic Wizard

Tumbling deeper still through banished tides and savage, undulating crests,

Burgeoning with hopes and yearnings erupting from my heaving chest

For uncovering placid voids to place my dreaming feats at ease-

Some strange, subterranean holding cell or mythical repository

To escape this disillusion-inducing interlude deemed sleep

And in turn, transcend form and distance in the fleeting deep:

The heart of all abstraction, the central source of rippling waves

Only to return to waking world anew, with neural-currents paved

In networked, clustered stratums bound by blooming mental circuits

As chugging chords of heavy trance clutch my ears like gripping tourniquets.

A jelly pool ensues- Pandora's box-like mayhem- crushing, fraying tones

And spectral glow, swelling far, far beyond the barriers of reason

Imbibing seismic overtones like gluttoned thieves in pulpits of treason

And then, brewing pangs of enigma snarl and wheeze- a purple cloud

Which plummets through its very sheathe- secrecy and riddles bound 

A visage, much more horridly imagined than his predecessor

Renders him my night-time reality captor and possessor

Whose dirging tones dictate my threshold sanity

And whose horrid eyes untimely seeds of decay

Embodies man, cloaked and haggard with age,

And makeshift orb, denotes him timeless sage

Or hooded crone, feeble from the years' morph

Suddenly translucent, with sinister aspect

Drenched in riddles, clutching wrist-bound gauntlet

Sizzles forth sparks, his aura drenched in shade

In his clutches, a tome bound in black suede

Mystic-natured, speaking in static blips

Capsized by time, an otherworldy glimpse.

Shrine of the Stranded Sage

Roger Dean

A drifting, incandescent essence envelops through my dream

Inducing awe from plasmic shores and bright, blazing beams

Across still surface waters of rationality and thinking

Through lush and endless valleys, weightlessly sinking

In search of artifacts entombed in forgotten crypts of time

And avidly seeking relief in the splendorous and sublime.

Soon the lands became the ballad of a maddened bard,

Escaping description- save for dissolving glass shards

Which retreat into tiny particles of dust and sand

Crumbling into a paltry resin if touched by hand

After molting, phantasmically and skillfully:

Old mechanisms return craftily and willfully.

Fibrous webby lacing dresses lichen clans in hut near bog,

Comprised of decayed and collapsing nether-woven logs.

Within the hut is seated a most mysterious hermit-sage,

Bony frame, wilted skin, vacant expression

That somehow saw beyond comprehension

And found me bewildered and aghast,

A suitable subject for spilling his past:

I've traveled to the wildest dimensions in my dreams,

And became a fixed sentinel- a gate-keeping emissary

If you find yourself fit to journey on, please do,

But know: misguided minds usher in your doom!

And that, my friends, was my shamanic inter-dream initiation,

Deployed by the crooked countenance of my crazed imagination.