Monday 18 November 2013

Ten Masks of the Creatures from Before Time



1.
The gaps in broken glass and falling leaves
delineate the angles and the face
whose shiftings cannot blur, as wheel-spokes merge
or fighters hands trace vectors in the air,
but freeze each sectored movement in the eye.

2.
Once gleam, twice reflected telescoped gold,
like sun motes hum in the predators gaze,
the cagelike iris of the wolf that counts,
arranging constellations of sweet time.
Seconds celestial, quickly eclipsed.

3.
The cold, enfolded shadow blazes pale,
weeps molten moonlight tears that slowly pool,
a face of silver cast on umbral bone.
The winters smiling face on paling weal
and skulls slow-sung farewell to tidal sail.

4.
This masks packs fractured spiderwebs on glass
which holds the slow-constructed droplets eye,
gaze staring blankly from their inverse world
of harried girl-craft faces and a sky
shining like the ghost of a carapace.

5.
The skin here is finer than a fly’s wing
and folds around the features like that shield.
Expressions flick and twitch, a fly-leg prance,
deceptive weapons locked in silent wield,
a trance remembered dance it cannot sing.

6.
The eyes of approximate millions glare
from venom-spelling reptilian skin,
the snake of Nox (onomastically; Night)
a daemons tapestry of keratin
the legions chained up in her nails and hair.

7.
The smoke from burnt iron cores of blasted worlds
writhes, denser than the floors it seeps on, gawps
and talks, with words unfurled pennants of iron,
these tongues coronal to a boiling face,
sourceless, centreless, timeless as the race.

8.
Pinclutch of unclassifiable eyes,
Facial geography crystal splintered.
This mask is latticing the tongue in light,
igniting solar lips and bright gnathite,
bones; setting suns like shadows dis-interred.

9.
A hive of thoughts is twisting in the glass:
knots rays inside this anti-prism mask.
Omniphagic Gorgonite mouth, alas
Unstopped by its fettered portal casque
making lemniscate noms of space, and mass.

10.
This mask is the skull of the dragon, death,
who came before all days and noticed hours,
breath spilling out an absent numbing mist
bower, an architectured void that no-one drew.
This first masks fist is weft and screwed with power.

11 comments:

  1. It took me till the second one to realize "Holy fuck are these poems!? " Truly inspiring.

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  2. Dear Patrick:

    Thank you for your recent submission to We Don't Give A Fuck literary journal. Unfortunately, we don't give a fuck about your submission. We only publish poems about navels, emotions, and trying to write poems about poetry. We wish you luck in placing your work elsewhere.

    Sincerely,

    The Editors

    p.s.
    Our slush pile reader commented that she liked your "masculine rhymes," whatever the fuck that means. Please feel free to submit again. And again. And again. We don't give a fuck.

    ReplyDelete
  3. But seriously?

    Fucking wow. I wish I could get my students to do this. Mind if I use this as an example in my class tomorrow? We're working on received forms and I'd love for them to try to figure out the "rules" of what you have done here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Er sure.. but they should probably study someone who doesnt need to bully people into liking his poetry.

      Delete
  4. Look Patrick, I like your poems, but you only gave me a day or two before you told me the mechanical reasons that they spoke to me.

    Do you know the number of times I've been hungover and dopey and cried to the tears in rain speech? Like five. Maybe five million I don't know.
    All I know is that sometimes I wake up and I've got that buzzing going past my ears and it is almost 9:00 and my girlfriend left without saying goodbye and I go to my computer screen and I weep.

    Give me a hard copy right there.

    Just give me a couple of days to kind of grope your genius, you know? It's unfair to do it otherwise.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I keep coming back to this post. I think I want to make a full monster for each of these if that's cool.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hello! I love this entry so I decided to give it a try and make ten illustrations inspired on it for this year's "Inktober"
    I started for the last, for reasons unknown.
    More to come, I hope you like them!

    http://dandibuja.tumblr.com/post/130464341669/10-this-mask-is-the-skull-of-the-dragon-death

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks very much Dan! I re-tumbled it to the thumble where I put all the art inspired by my work, hope you don't mind.

      Delete
    2. I'm very glad you like it, sure re-tumble it!
      I just uploaded another one, hope you like it too.

      Delete