Mirage and Horizon
By Greg Patrick
Nathaniel Hawthorne had once written that “moonlight is sculpture” and so it
was an
apparitional mirage of a poet nomad’s imagery,
conjuring by incantation where poetry becomes
spells…a vision recreated in dream’s own image from
the desert of isolation. Like a lone
sculptor who moulds the divine from stone or the
soloist who steps free of the strings to speak the
words, the composer pacing with the lion in the music
notes till he casts open the window of his
hermitage just to see the stars and in promethean
theft drawn from their celestial fire, for there
are no kindred spirits below who remember and are
heirs to that entrusted song.
Conjuring the vision of goddess. Huntress to the huntsman from the stuff of
dream’s
image reconstructing in fast forward, bygone castle
towers awaiting homecoming of a rightful
prince, take form as if before an exiled soldier
returning to a Homefront in ruins. The city lights
with their gaudy displays seem like distant minarets
with a tempter gesturing around to the loftier
idealist, the sad prince on pilgrimage. “All
of this can be yours!” He gestures grandly with a
showman’s flourish.
But no… He has his own way through that painted desert…For golden age is not a
gilded
cage that he disdains. By moonlight alone where dreams
seem credible, tangible as a ghost’s
caress the vision takes shape. The words even if
whispered softly as waves to the shore like
depth serenading the shallow, were a battle cry too
resounding to be anything but soundless to
the crowds and passer-by but for the cry of the heart
alone like a mute composer’s and blind
bard’s song. Though the soul can live by muse alone it
is not the heart’s sustenance but its
craving like a desert lion at the oasis.
And by the lyre and campfire the nomad croons by the light of a lifetime’s
moons:
Serpent trails across the sands and a
sieve of sand through nomad’s hands
in storm-swept lands where nightmares hide
till dreams awake by the moon of the corsair tide
and the Magi beckoned by the star doth
ride
for the Emperor’s word will not abide
until the desert lion strays from its
pride and songs anew begin by the fireside…
“Moonlight is sculpture” as a midnight scribe wrote…Like a gambler’s frailly
balanced
card castle for those who dare against the odds,
dreams built of moonbeams for those who
walked the dreamscapes of the heart till dawn without
substance.
Calling Orion
By
Greg Patrick
The shredded posters of the traveling circuses at the
remote railroad station, seemed haggard lion
and tiger banners of quests come and gone... And yet
still he stood vigil by them...for a vision...?
For a promise? That eve, prayer seemed merely a
talking to air…raised to the unmoved pall of
night sky, like casting vain coins, in offering to
a dark pool, an echoless soulless void on a dark
plane of infinite thirst, feeling the eternal solitude
kindred to an immortal. And the stars in their
aloof shimmer like gaudy carnival light pulsing neon,
promising a game that is not designed for
you to win.
In nights haunted by restless shadows that the
sleepless artist weaves by some dark alchemy into
song...He wrote of his muse when despair was dark
sister to inspiration and the scribe wrote and
composed in the searching way that felt kindred to
Orion. The craving called with the mysterious
urgency of a phonebooth at a remote rail stop, ringing
at the crossroads of the midnight nomad,
then stopping before it could be answered,
replaced by memory haunted, regret-gnawed silence
of isolation at the rails with all the hunger that
emaciates the soul...that drains in succession
every oasis of the nomad's passage...
Man and moon stand in two solitudes and he stands
before its vexing light like an uncertain king
on eve of battle before an eyeless sibyl prophetess
confiding his dream like an offering to the
night. Detached patron to dreams but confidante
to dreamers, of kings and shepherds while
flocks and armies stray. Like one on a cooling walk
that takes pause in his preoccupation at the
solace of a hauntingly beautiful performance by a
street harpist he likewise ceased in his step
before one who captures his heart in silence set to
music. He spoke the muse’s name the way a
warrior would say the name of a goddess of war on eve
of battle. He said the name the way one
would say the title of a song in request to a busker
as the snow began to fall.
Lingering with the song in the cold where an old
soldier’s wounds pulse…in the dark where an
old fighter could cry in the dignity of solitude. He
said the muse's name an exile’s sigh would
steam in the cold…and like the only survivor walking
the aftermath of a battle he knows the
isolation of the gods...He remembered the maleficence
of a smile that was like a masterful
magician’s sleight of hand…It has cast its
spell before his senses could tell how and when…
And seeking the right words, seemed delving into the
unseen depth that plays temptress and siren
to the novice diver, beckoning to the fathomless
depths of sea…Heart beats in the rapture of
dream, tenacity to dream like when a slow dance
becomes a waltz or the harpist leans into the
instrument, intoxicated with the power of the song.
And the heartbeat races against the stallions
of Helios, against the stallions of Helios against the
harsh light of dawn...in eternal echoes of the
soul.
The Goblin King's Sigh
By
Greg Patrick
Maybe it was all a labyrinth then, a series of vexing
twisting paths towards a maddeningly
elusive end and searching cries confronted by yet
another wall in duet to echoes...an endless
interplay, an arachnid web of misleading steps.
Perhaps that is the way of mortals I
contemplate...I remember you...how could I forget?
Haunting in eternal immortal's dreams like a
radiant ghost haunting a castle's ruins, standing in
silence set to nocturne.
A muse of recurring dreams gowned in sweeping gossamer
and cascade of raven hair the turns of
our waltz. Deaf to the danse macabre of the played
song, I was lost and bewildered under the
green spell cast by your eyes...more so than any had
ever been in the glorious stone riddle of the
labyrinth...The twisting dungeon inflicted upon
others, became my own dreamcatcher's snare, to
one who once revelled in ushering in legions of
nightmares....and I was hopelessly lost and
revealed in that bewildering alien sensation.
Palm pressed into silken fabric in a dancer's embrace,
my eyes closed, in the motions of the
waltz I felt drawn into a labyrinth, thrilled by
sensations that I thought never to know. Mortal
beauty was from my perspective, like that of a sage
standing in aloof contemplation upon a lofty
summit. It was like the last flaring of a sunset that
one did not want to see dwindle away into
darkness...and yet that is a mortal's immortality, to
vanquish an immortal's heart and infect us
with a vision to haunt the dark procession of
nights...
Every night I arose in bewitched somnambulism through
the dreamscape of the labyrinth's
eternal paths, seeking with a time-hunted desperation
reserved by mortals beyond that...Like a
constellation against a background of high darkness,
you waited on the dancefloor beckoning
like echoes of laughter haunting the darkness of the
labyrinth. The dungeon lord becomes
prisoner of an oubliette, my crown usurped by grace,
and the lower goblins that once cowered at
my word and shadow move in like scavengers on a fallen
lion. Lord of the Lost, I embrace the
labyrinth.
A dual
citizen of Ireland and the states, Greg Patrick is an Irish/Armenian
traveller poet and the son of a Navy enlisted man. He is also a former
Humanitarian aid worker who worked
with
great horses for years and loves the wilds of Connemara and Galway in
the rain where he's written many stories. Greg spent his youth in the
South Pacific and
Europe
and currently resides in Galway, Ireland and sometimes the states.
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