Somewhere over the rainbow,
There are no seven steps to heaven.
But the spectral paths of deadly sins
await my tread.
A leather needle and an alchemy den,
where, white-smocked, I gather
Solomonic shades for black experiments.
Here’s a violet path,
Violet for my prodding eye;
Unfailing to capture the least fracture line
in new-grown emeralds, the false positive
of mood stones. My doubt transubstantiates
no wedding of spirit, iridescent curtain
like a peacock’s hide staggers under the burden
of its own beauty. I’d be well shed of it.
My imagination is indigo
and rides upon a snail’s back.
Multi-hued as Saturn’s rings,
pestle-crushed experience
where fantasies build from bowls,
Bunsen burners, crazily snaking tubes.
And I brew invention,
epiphany, rapture, seduction
my vats of dye, my homespun
hung out to dry. Unable to resist
Mephistopheles’ invitation, I cloak myself in lies.
I test the fabric of Salome’s veils,
glamorous sleight-of-hands
you want to believe
until I’m at your mouth,
your throat. Your whole life flashes
before your eyes, it’s said,
but tell me, what do you taste?
Lime cordial. Strawberry. Rum punch.
(Let the waft of these fumes float
your umbrella, Mary Poppins,
over sooty London!)
And here, my guile
is gas-flame blue.
As blue as the elemental build-up
on old water fountain mouthpieces.
Aqua fortis, cleansed by burning,
I fall on my knees, snuffling copper
for my presumption.
Green is my ruthless curiosity,
Drives me like the Feldgrau
across acres of dissatisfaction,
pushes me underground where we don’t speak
and avert our eyes from Mengele’s henchmen,
returned from Valhalla on the master’s errand
purveyors of ruin the world shudders to inherit.
This is the color hope turns as ambitions sour.
It is the color of obsession, the tablet brought down
by the Taheen god, re-born to sprout three aspects.
That this vapor arising from a fetid mind
could spawn such desires!
And the thousand thousand wishes I dare not
transmit to the universe
become a formula
become a prayer
become a chant
become a spell.
What are they anyway but words
unless I choose to endow them?
Envy ripens into vengeance.
We tear off the stars.
We tear off passivity.
No gentle scholars here.
Yellow is murder. Murder
is always committed with dire glee,
the confidence of the ceremonial dagger
tracing infinity through the air,
yellow light of the false sun
we follow like plastic flowers,
holy obedients, unquestioning,
fed on delusions of chlorophyll.
Orange brings me out of wicked-witch baths
and mustard gas haze. Gasping, I cling
to saffron-robed serenity like an infant,
my navel the center of all consideration,
if only for an instant. Then the flames become real.
Red.
The consummation,
the chemical reaction,
the auto-da-fe.
Vibration most high,
crimson pricks the eye like heresy.
I step up to the scaffold.
Beyond all questions or action,
a queen slipping between the black spaces
on a chessboard, her face in shadows,
indisputable as a pelican’s chin concealing
the mystery of fishes.
I splash my own accelerant.
I ignite the titanium casing of my skin.
I am the lamp and the censer,
radiant in my topsy-turvy colors,
with a toadstool for a footrest.
All hosts and stones vaporize,
but it doesn’t matter, because so immortal am I,
even your shadows will mark the spot.
Here is the flurry of sub-atomic particles,
I toss them out like pomegranate seeds
they roar and sigh and flare to earth.
If Hades and Persephone had had a child,
I am she. My cathedral train trails
to deadly flakes, from which no lead can save you.
No bunkered temple where you crouch
amid nonperishables can offer shelter,
and aluminum no promise of meat.
Not even your plundered flame will serve you
in the season of my passing.
I will transform your water.
I will make a Red Forest of the world
I will blacken your air
where your souls departing
will condense like breath
white.
|
Author notes
I promise, this will be my last study in psychedalia for a while, and I will return to more prosaic matters.
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 6 of 6
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Ah, psychedelia. I was going to comment on how, despite the rich imagery, the reader is lost throughout most of the piece because of a difficulty of pin-pointing a context. The beginning especially caught me like a sort of psychic mind-blast. Thought: Could the poem be stronger without the opening-with-a-cliche? I think it would.
Some lovely imagery here, and great diction.
Cheers for the read,
Nocturne
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PS Pie,
Excuse my sincere ignorance, but I can´t work out what Roy G. Biv means. Is it an anagram? Or just a simple mindf... ?
(drooling)gGeeehhh? -
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Hey, Simon. My apologies for not responding sooner to your comments, to which I was particularly looking forward with this piece. Roy G. Biv is a mnemonic device school children are taught to remember the colors of the spectrum, which I have used here-- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet-- the color spectrum was an ardent interest to Newton. The painting I have above is Blake's rendering of Newton. This poem is sort of my twisted love song to him-- his madness, his fascination with alchemy, colors, and the apocalypse.
The leather needle reference is to him poking himself in the eye with one to try and force himself to see the ultraviolet spectrum. It's funny-- he got saner the older he got. Shame.
I have more to say, but gotta go for now.
Later,
Lauren
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Alchemical Kaleidoscope!
Loved this Celestial! Long? Well it was a trip but it whizzed me through a lushly worded process of transmogrification that changed my brassy bronze leaded thoughts to pure gold!
I feel like I´ve dipped my big dipper in a pool elixir vitae and been hit on the noggin by a lapis lazuli.
Utterly enjoyable - replete with illuminating lines:
"A leather needle and an alchemy den,
where, white-smocked, I gather
Solomonic shades for black experiments."
Yepp, wisdom is a preriquisite when dabbling in the dark arts.
"I’d be well shed of it."
Said the serpent to his scales. Hahah.
"Green is my ruthless curiosity,
Drives me like the Feldgrau.." mixed with Prussian blue no doubt - nice allusion (along with the double one of Mengele as mad Deutch Doktor).
"..wicked-witch baths
and mustard gas haze." Hang on is there a subliminal thing going against Germanic non-altruistic alchemy here - Faust without morals?
"a queen slipping between the black spaces
on a chessboard, her face in shadows,
indisputable as a pelican’s chin concealing
the mystery of fishes."
Two great allusions to the occluded.
"your shadows will mark the spot." Wierd, I just wrote something in this vein about a falling shadow marking the spot. Did I steal it from you over coffee in the Akashic Library Cafe?
And all the way accross the Celestial Rainbow! Quite a ride. Can I go again?
Warmest
gGeomancingthestone
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This poem has really creative unexpected imagery. And the form is also unexpected which is what kept me reading. My favorite parts are the repetition in the sixth stanza and the lines, "Here’s a violet path, / Violet for my prodding eye;"
language: 5, rhythm: 5, subject: 4, tone: 4, form: 5.
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Hi, rave. I'm glad somebody read and enjoyed this piece-- I know it's a lot to digest in one sitting.
Thanks,
Pie
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