Poetic Collection 1

Being A Collection of Writings By A Certain Endiry Shade


Hours

Hours, lives, time seems to pass,
Or maybe pass him by -
The one who sits there waiting for naught,
Compulsively checking his watch
Whose filigree hands had long stopped spinning,
Whose gears rot rusted and jammed.
He taps his foot in nervous impatience,
Keeping some parody of tempo
That his heart has long since lost.
He may not even live yet -
The late white rabbit,
Waiting on a queen who died long ago,
Waiting on Alice,
On his Godot,
But the years they seem to slide through him,
And leave - like dust in the road -
A burning itch at the corner of his blind eye,
For he knows it is too late to die
And has besides forgotten how.
He waits there stiller than death yet tapping,
A timeless relic of a non-era,
A curio that has lost its curiosity,
No longer of interest,
A smudged footnote on a worm-eaten page,
Simply existing there at the rim of time,
Where even death has yet to be.
What is it that could keep him so -
Is it madness or mindless loyalty,
Where do the rabbit's lost thoughts go,
What colour do hours bleed?

originally written June 13, 2010; rewritten December 19, 2012
inspired by Jan Svanmajer's 'Alice'

An Invitation

Oh come ye madmen and messiahs,
You pariahs and high-kings,
Come and see what unknown wonders
This grand new world now brings.

This, your new land all bedecked
In glorious splendours rare and wild,
Willful, wide-eyed, well alive -
A wondrous newborn child.

Oh gods and kings and lowly whores,
Though hopeless all may seem,
Fly fast beyond this sea of life
And to my isle of dreams.

A landscape shaped from raw emotion,
An endless hall of unlocked doors,
A chance to learn what lies there hidden
Past the grey of sanity's shores.

A galaxy of pure sensation,
A form formed of sheer delight,
A world not bound by sense or logic -
You'll find your true self in that night.

written sometime in 2011; edited December 19, 2012
written as part of a wall-hanging

Beneath the Knowing Snake
(version one)

...and our minds will follow falling
like stars from a sickly foreign sky
dead things not dead but dreaming
lay crushed beneath Leviathan
the petals of a rose that screamed
and in the night with thought arose
a silent mouthless weeping god of hate
an idea wrought in godless hearts
and in the hands of Chaos's children
a dagger; ready always to be plunged
into the eyes of birds that flew
and sang in the gardens of delight
till mute they 'came with grief
and knowingly they sang laments
for their own blindness they had seen
in the pools of knowing they'd sipped
and which all man choke and rasp
their throats still remembering
the bitter taste of that old knowledge.

(version two)

...and our minds will follow, falling,
Like stars from a sickly foreign sky.
Dead things not dead but dreaming
Lay crushed 'neath things that cannot die.
The petals of a rose that screamed,
And in the night with thought arose
A mouthless weeping god of hate,
An idea wrought in sleep that knows,
And - in the hands of Discord's children -
A dagger ready to be plunged
Into the eyes of birds that flew
And in gardens of delight had lunged,
Till mute they had become with grief,
And knowingly they sang laments,
For their own blindness they had seen
And drank in pools of wise torrents.
'Tis from these pools all thirst derives,
And why all men still choke and rasp,
Their throats all still remembering
The taste of knowledge they once grasped.

written October 7, 2011
inspired by the writings of H. P. Lovecraft