Three Prose Fiction Poetry Pieces by Greg Patrick

 

 

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.