Hopping along the lovely word-stones in the volume before me,

Dancing in light-streams of contemplation divine,

Basking in wisdom I thought unattainable,

Along the scholarly cobbles I drift,

Seeking and finding form within

Authorial, labyrinthic catacombs

That capture beauty

And frame freedom—

Until my Fall.

Diving away from inked symbols and stamps,

into the blankness of the page,

into unexplainable chapter jumps

into the little pools perforating the start of each paragraph,

those that well up with unknowledge,

into that monstrous, godlike white page prefacing

such voluminous importance and well-edited glory;

into decisions arbitrary and blankly staring

some made by writer,

others by editor,

but most by upbringing.

now i live crawling around these gaps,

a creature fallen into the unassumed,

blinded by empty lampposts,

abandoned long ago,

still glimpsed on easels few,

Up above,

the rumble train of pen strokes and gawks

deafen my poor ears and trap me

beneath loose stones

that carry ancestral weight.

down here,

Mysticism twists herself in circles,

gnawing at her purple train

with an eloquence unthought

of a chaos-born beast;

Assumption lays here too,

drunk on the stones,

dizzily laughing and spreading a cheer

that fogs one’s eyes with untamable fire.

on this rocky incropping,

my eyes flame with unquenchable thirst

and the mirage dries my hope into dust,

but, heaving, i reach out

Please, sir, where might I find the sea?