Sunfaded Gardens of Xcaillivdn

Levitation

Their words flow like the Sea of Galilee
Unassuming righteous dialogues
Clad in biker jackets scarred by road rash

How can I float along their rivers?

Undertow

Blackened trunks of fallen cedars
Cruise the deep currents like the prow of a Viking ship
Gashes bleed red sap from the collisions
With bare-knuckled boulders standing amidst the river like
Barroom brawlers at McSorley's

Architekt

And I taste the copper in my veins
As I'm borne along by the rapids
Relinquishing the copyrights to my life

Perhaps some child or another
Will find the dusty blueprints of my dreams
Lying in a forgotten cupboard
And with drinks from the hose
And dashes through dusky July-evening fields

The child might construct a stairway to the cloud decks
Greeted by a skeletal doorman
His bones blued by jetstreams
He'll extend a spiny hand to usher the child in

Right this way past the sunfaded gardens
Whose kaleidoscopic salt ponds
Clash with evergreens and alabaster monoliths
Reddish-black dunes roll into eternity
Bedouins trudge along with their camels
And no one asks where they're going
No one knows where they've been

As the gunmetal sun draws down again
As night comes in triangular shades
That fill the canyons and arroyos
The dry washes holding bleached bison skulls
And a mummified Forty-Niner or two
Guarding their last claim with a fifth of
Blood-shot rye in their hands

Murder in the miller's eyes

In the farthest corner of the cloud decks
Beyond the great Emerald Ocean and the Silver King
Past the two-headed twin snakes who surround his throne
Out to an island grove
Deep within the palms

Seated on the cold marble blocks
Master chessmen study their command strategems
As pondering statues of Homer and Aristotle
Recline against the black-marble columns
Muttering to the sleeping sand-turtles with the diamond eyes
Of philosophy and whether foolishness can reason with love
Since everyone knows that diamond-eyed sand-turtles
Are exceedingly quiet, redeeming wise

Tea-lanterns float along the River Chypris
Which flows serene amid the terrazzo banks that glint
Refracting the sunbeams back to the heavens

Seagulls moan as they float across the Emerald Ocean
Mourning the breakers which can never subdue the headlands
Thunderclouds roll into this halcyon oasis like 19th century tycoons
All dressed in black; where no memory of mirth or levity ever stood
Tongues of lightning fall swiftly, brandished as bullwhips to quell dissension
Among the do-gooders and hail-fellow-well-met's

The child, the child, forlorn and forsaken
Runs into an abandoned building
To escape those terrible bolts falling from the sky
Only to see he is not alone

By Garfield's beard

The short old man was fond of saying
As he puttered and fixed
Stuttered and tricksed
"M'boy," said Linus James
"Tinkerer's fiddle with the gears of Time
And perform maintenance on occasion they do."

The child was duly amazed and doubtful of these tall claims
So Linus agreed to show him in person
Down a spiral staircase
Past tomorrow all the way into next week
Until the water dripped upwards
And the hyena's wear smoking jackets and cordovan loafers

"We're here." said Linus James

Indeed a sign on the wall said:

Bombs come in carnival colors

They stood outside an endless hall
Beside a stone fountain, crazed with cracks for ten-thousand eons