Çatalhöyük

Only in a stupor strange and dense, did they permit me

Entrance to their midnight druid ceremony.

Clothed in deerskin cloaks, they swiftly invoked

Ancient canticles of tempest-culling oaths,

Bound to footpaths mirroring the starry course.

Thence, the tribe decried a tale of dim remorse

Foretelling of the fall of western man, bound

To reason and logic: material world's renown– 

First, a man of vibrant-shaded flair leapt in,

Attune with other movements in the circle's rim,

Making peace with scattered winds, earthly entities,

Only to be extinguished by the hands of Industry:

A man of darkened raiments swept his blade

And shunned the rhythm of the mid-woods parade,

Smiting celebration with a grim, mechanical glare,

Contaminating harmony, in dire need now of repair.

Solemn intervention to revitalize the tattered ruins

Rhapsodically began, by the tribal feather festoon'd

Children, unfolding from the shrapnel-laden graves,

Bearing anew ripe, supple, imaginations unscathed–

Having, thankfully, escaped the clutches of Industry's

Mind-forged manacles, by their precious ingenuity,

Unaccustomed to any illusions of temporal durations

And domination tactics, dissolved in youth's sensations.

Enshrining the spirit of high art's endless creation,

Inspiration swelled, instilling Industry's disintegration.

It then dawned upon me– in my ruptured, disoriented state,

For unknown intervals, this vision gathering did I hallucinate.

Ode to Stanley Kubrick

       I.

Many years ago, the guest of

A formal soiree found himself

Unwittingly ensnared in the clutch

Of a tainted, mystifying ritual

Defying any league of expectation.

Like Icarus, darting skyward

In pursuit of ultimate fulfillment,

This ghastly shade of a memory 

Became the impetus of his final enigma:

The fruits of arduous, secretive labor,

Undisclosed locations; enthralling

Scores of code-cracking generations

To come– resulting in his untimely

Passing; less of a man than a chameleon. 

 II.

Haunted by his grim encounter,

Distraught from the sordid echoes

Of rich Tycoons' sinister cackling, he

Took to replicate their power-hungry

Profession: that of avidly pursuing victory

In the realms of Earth's political affairs.

Disguised as Space Race propaganda,

He cleverly ensured future audiences

Would themselves become initiates

In a cosmic ritual of his own: a full

Throttle leap through uncharted

Dimensions- becoming sentient

Star children. Like a gift for the

Future; break the glass, play film

In the event of techno-fascism.

  III.

Evading the hazard of America,

He made for the rolling glades

Of England, finding seclusion

To begin his spree of secret films.

In public display of his mistrust

Of the system, he targeted those

Responsible for the destructive arm:

The militant, asking what is a man

When he is deprived of morality?

All the while, threaded, embedded

Images evoking rituals and hinting

At their remedies. Knowing such

Encryptions are simply tools for 

Empowerment and revenge, then

A raucous fit of victorious laughter

Will undoubtedly erupt– not of

Greed– but awe-inspired magnitude. 

Missed Chance Sonnet Sequence

Where of all possible shades and degrees

Of imaginings can solace be found?

Hidden hues of memories infuse these

Porous arteries of thought, like underground

Pools and reservoirs steep'd deep with spilled rains

Freely coursing, faintly coaxing, beckoning,

Flooding every facet of my fertile brain,

Producing these verses ripe for picking

From the tumulting trellises of words

Undoubtedly worthy of strange design–

As shall momentarily be heard,

Unraveling from abnormal frames of mind–

True bombardment to unseasoned beholders

Of abstraction: when hope crumbles, smolders.

Omniscient faculties are required

To, with certainty, know what transpired

Else that lilting night, besides this mire

Of a moment be, of these words' inspire:

Seated in a glowing room, past midnight

With partially intoxicated sight,

Scattering our cares in quick, lucid flight,

She gazed through me, and captured once- with bright

Radiance and deadly blush- a deep sigh,

Only fleetingly, gladdened, warmth-supplied.

I'd ne'er know this girl of pure affection

Would e'er reveal me, there, unbridled joy,

For the very next day, she'd forgotten– 

Abandoning me to this moment– redeployed

Eternally.  

Neon Currents

If the deep-sea's timorous trenches
Wish their sweetly guarded secrets
To be captured by a mainstream film–
And not discreetly, to those rhapsodic souls
Hunting rapture in its naked form–

What sad depictions would be witnessed
Of the harrowing shadow realms below
By restrictions of the camera lens
And the narrowing feeling of digital tricks!
Instead– averting cinematic limitations,
Through fresh, frightening unleashings;
Words spill, diverting from poets' quills
Like slick lightning– its favored method
Of thought transmission: chilling, subtle,
And yet, retaining its secret treasures:
Mythic organisms, eerie, gaseous vents,
Secrets remaining– lurking further within.
Those of fluent skill in the enterprise of simply
Letting regions unknown conjure themselves
(In ways congruent to the will of the deep) know
Of its legions of enchanted, teeming mists,
Pluming effervescent bubble chimneys,
Pressure gradients seismically billowing,
Tugging fluorescent deep-sea critters to and fro,
Spectral radiance of scintillating coral shelves,
Foreign funnels of unclassifiable matter
Pressing bizarre inertias upon the skull,
Paving tunnels through vents and catacombs,
Rising afar in methane gusts, allowing
Supreme delights to cross artifact-studded
Valleys, prowling quite subconsciously, as
Hidden insights erupt in prismatic crypts;
A world howling in vast astonishment.
Indeed, akin to any other over-budgeted sham,
The filmed edition of these fluxile depths
Would not begin to even hint at their enigma–
Oral traditions neither– but verse and verse
Alone describes the methods of deep-sea
Madness; granted, an agile mind absorbs
Warping diatribes of the sunken nether,
Visions planted methodically in dreams,
Banished hymnals of the earth undulating forth
From voids, abyssal reaches, and neon currents.

❖Poe-tent Midnight Parables❖

A most unordinary anecdote begs be told

In order to draw closure my fears, lest old

Age accumulate wrinkled markings down

Around my face resulting in fretted frown

As to assuage my grumpy, repressive state

I'll retire now a most unnerving tale relate:

Spilled from dreams like eggs un-yolked,

Plunged into a waking daze, haze-soaked.

Eyelets flood with waxing textures flayed,

Drawled about precarious, senses swayed

Across the panoramic field brightly-hued,

As morphing lines circumscribe my view,

A panoramic field a'swarmed with ebbing

Endless caterpillars, wallpaper'd-webbing

Squirming about, cross-hatched, glowing,

Pulsating erratically, others ever-growing,

A flood of dread most flagrantly twisting

Tore into my heart upon worm-glistening

Enthrallment; at the behest of contracting

Corpuscles, crying out in agonizing frenzy

'Plagued!' A 10 Commandments' barrage;

Alas, my mother assures me- it's a mirage.