Category Archives: Fantasy

The bookshelf of Fantasy

The pines of Dor-Lomin
The Baron Harkonnen
Lothlorien’s swan ship of gold

The shining Silmaril
A ride on a barrel
The sandworms of Dune to behold

The hero Estraven
And Poe’s eerie raven
The treasures of Smaug were untold

When Brandin was scolded
Isolla exploded
And they stood ’til her body was cold

Saruman’s tower
And Sauron’s great power
And Bombadil, oldest of old

The Nephredil flower
The hobbits’ great hour
And the soul that poor Sméagol had sold

The Eloi and Morlocks
The wizards and warlocks
Fair Luthien, Beren the Bold

And Moria’s door
And the Priest-Kings of Gor
And the stories that Tolkien told

Feanor’s Folly
The catapults’ volley
The Fellowship’s climb in the cold

And Yoda’s finale
The Jedis’ last rally
(This story is yet to be told)

 

 

In sway

I roll down the ghost road
in this time of quickening twilight,
uncaring of the mundane day.
A fifth part of me sober, in control,
but in the main,
I am swayed
by the lowness of the sundering clouds.
The cloistered scene.
There’s a strange sense of foreboding,
of a going down to the dark roots of guarded secrets,
unknowing all else.
This stays and presses,
saying settle, settle.
Though please,
I do not want to know you.
Nor you to know me.

A Dali in Delhi

As I was walking through the gloom
(a Delhi night without a moon)
I heard a cry, as from a loon,
but could not spy the creature.

“ ‘Tis Whom?” I said, all quivery,
my voice of scant delivery,
my constitution shivery,
(but still could see no feature)

There came a creaking and a squeaking,
as from a chest of wooden drawers.
Then ’round the corner, something peeking
and blood was oozing from its pores.

It had a black sardonic grin.
Its head towards me swiveled.
Its rotting bones were caving in.
Its eyes so dark and shriveled.

Upon its chest and down its legs
were doors and cabinets,
and things of brass and wooden pegs
and ornaments elaborate.

Its breath so foul, but it conveyed
a misery of sorrow.
Its drawers and cabinets open stayed
in want of Souls to borrow.

I stood transfixed, within this alley
and hardly dared to move.
It seemed a creature, made by Dali,
escape-ed from the Louvre.

It creaked and clacked, and came so near
we almost did embrace.
And I, so rooted in my fear,
did stare into its face.

And now I knew just what it wanted.
My essence, it would steal
to fill its drawers and cabinets haunted,
my sorry soul its meal.

 

Rhapsody in Blue

In the methane blue
of Neptune’s stew
I wildly whip my wind lasso-
a-hunting for the Dragon of the Cloud!

Through icy fleece
I stalk the beast,
a thousand miles an hour at least,
beneath this sapphire atmospheric shroud.

I’m born of wind,
and thickly skinned-
with Neptune’s swirling vortex twinned.
I hurry hard and bellow out aloud!

To catch him fast
and so at last
undo his necromancy past,
and join again the nation of the proud!

Night wings

NIGHT WINGS

In Mercury’s merciless day I burned.
His night was crystalline.

On Venus,
I rode a ship of ice immutable,
thick in its soups of sulfuric rain.
My heavy zeppelin floated slowly
through landscapes of red vulcanism.
Well past the boiling point of earthly tea.
Things of sponge grew and decayed in comic time lapse,
waving in the crimson fume.

The Martian dawn was cold and arid,
but a true trickling could be heard in the canyon.
There were balmy afternoons
where icy hangings would sweat,
and in flat rocks I have seen likenesses
not coincidental to climate.
The rusty sand envelops.
In storms, it permeates all.

The Jovian giant
is unfathomable.
Untouchable.
Unknowable.
A cathedral of violence,
storms both ancient and permanent.
Shown forth in bands of glory.
God’s enigma.
Its girth draws the soul.

No further do I dare
this night.
For I am filled with flickering light.
The power and the glory and the might.
Shown me, this perilous flight.

The listener

In the glove of twilight
Our man of twenty two
pads along the powder cow path road
to the last rise
above the grand grand valley below.
In a dreamt jacket of lizard skin,
shouldering a paunchy canvas backpack,
his threadbare desert boots with mended laces
make small dusty puffs
in time with his panting breaths.
Sits down, he does,
on an afterthought stump,
just at the lip.
His pearly whites illuminate.
Eyes are shining burning red.
Lips in taut crescent smile.
He twinkles above them,
they twinkle below.
The myriad thousands.
So silent through this slice of the airs.
They are here, he knows.
The seeds of stories.
Tragic, magic, triumphant, sad, comic,
Love, and Rage.
Tonight, he feeds.

 

Eighteen. The rolling green. With my Gravity Queen.

On the last doorstep before green, I stand.
The mossy carpet rolls and ripples to the very jamb.
From away.  Away.

These three have seen me, shepherded me,
sung me, into their house of home.
How long I have slept the sleep I do not know.

We awaken, four, in muslin robes.
Hands, sleeves, embraces long.
And now, the morning vista seen,
I swell with desire for the rolling green.

Our woman, our Queen
encircles my waist
and we float.
She laughs a hearty laugh, and lets go.

I have been touched, and I move through the airs with her.
I anticipate.  I know…
every blade, every knoll, what comes next, what might be at the end.
Our muslins flapping, our hands entwined, we smile to each other.
Me and my Auntie Gravity.

18. A dream of subjugation

I stand, looking out,
on the highest rampart of the cantilevered castle.
All of the Members stand with me today, deck upon deck,
in honour of this coronation.
The crescent walls jut out below me, each further than the last.
They hold our numbers of today,
ten thousand and one.
I am filled with terrible power and intent.
My robe of eagle feathers encircles me.
All other Members are clothed as lesser birds,
and they remain still, heads bowed.
The crown is of the eagle’s head,
hooked beak and eyes of adamant.
It is set upon me in that moment of stillness.
I raise vast pinions and give a cry.
The lesser birds follow.
In the ten thousand, there are those who would not.
They are bound onto crosses of wood, set alight,
and cast into unfathomable mist.
Now is the time. The time is now.