Palladium of Sphinxes

    
                              I

      

Darkly,

Darkly in most underivable black.
Veiled in interior shadows,

Temple reliquaries of this morning's dream

Like a saint's skull studded in jewels

Hushed away inside inviolable chambers.

A palladium 

At the center 

Of my dreams

Forfending 

All remembrance of a dream

Surrounded by rows of Sphinxes

Before a sacrosanct sub rosa.

Stern barricades of lion bodies-

Eagle-winged, serpent-tailed-

With riddling faces of women,

 

"There are two sisters; 

One gives birth to the other,

Who in turn gives birth to the first. 

Who are they?" 

The entrance of subterranean inner mazes

Barred to my unclean soul 

That fain would dare to venture

Here into such mysteries.

 

These Sphinxes

Impounding the water of anamnesis

Night after night, 

Life after life.

Bringing countless dawns

In the dismal, thirsty wastes 

Of my forgetfulness

Midnight blue 

Sentinels,

They guard my pillows, pacing

Behind dense, censored billows

Of incense pouring

From censers redolent of dreams

They sequester imagery

On distant islands from the world cut-off:

Fragmentary body 

Of a female mystagogue, 

I see her only dress,

The extravagant incense of the Holy Spirit

Pouring from the vortex 

Of the thurible she whirls-

The condensation of a dream

In smoke

Spinning in centrifuges of latent dream

Perfume

Spun throughout the air.

 

Rings of incense spiraling

Inside of dreams enchained,

As she with sistrum dances away

Beyond the threshold of all recall,

Swaying behind the palladium.

 

And I unfitted to detect in dream

Any scent

Absorb the truth in wakefulness

That I am not able to breathe a word

Of Her forbidden epistles

Written in those sweet clouds of incense

In her place

Every morning

These sphinxes

Who patrol the vertigo realm

Of amnesia.

 

Oh, imago ignota!

My soul adrift in the waters of Lethe.

Cast on the shores of oblivious Hypnagogia

Inside the furtive, enigmatic land of Theta

Hidden in the hinterland of penumbras,

Occulted along the displaced border of a dream

In which eyelids flutter

Like curtains hit by high winds

Opening upon a receding stage displaying

A frontier rarely remembered

These sphinxes , 

Satin pawed, silken clawed, velvet mawed

Teeth of ivory glistening like tall gates

They come tomorrow to drink my dreams!   

Ever invigilating and circumambulating 
In increasingly narrow passes 

Of nightly inquest closing in

In countenances of holy jealousy.

 
Every dawn,

Inhaling the oneiric flesh of the evinced dream

At the hour of  my waking, dawn after dawn,

As they sit commandingly atop

The Wheel of Fortune,

Falchions bared in blue fists

Armored in clouds

From which aloof tetramorphs stare

Into cosmic dramas of the quarternion universe

That contain realities beyond all coping

Prophecies fomenting there

That only ancient seers penetrate,

An argosy of terrifying futures

Across the seas of mind

That only ancient seers penetrate,

An argosy of terrifying futures

Across the seas of mind

Oneiromancies spoken by soothsayers

Before bewildered kings

As empires crumble

And masses are displaced and dwindle

In a carnage of dreamers.

 

From such dreams as these

This one cosmic man is spared, for now

Yet these sphinxes I see beside my dreams

Casting silver beams

From out of indigo eyes

That invigilate my mind

Without reprieve, I a pariah

Expelled and left out of their arcana

As they stymie elaborate cogs of dreamworks

Spinning round and round inside my hypostasis

                                      II 

Aromas of astral scenes,

Sweet trail of star thoughts, 

Spiral of lingering perfume left on the pillow 

By a vanished woman…

Eau de etoile, Water of stars

Condensed haze of forms, 

Sweet sweat of emptiness 

Dripping, musical nocturnes 

Filled with the perfume of rain and night.

 
Played by women in silence
On ancient stringed instruments
In soundless adytums. 

Holy secrets whispered before altars 
Of ancient gods strewn with flowers.

Time’s mysteries transumed 

Across bridges of secrets
Never to be known

All substance and function of a dream

Passing through the petaled gates

Of horn and ivory,

Climbed by swelling balloons of 

Nepenthe flowers

                               

Blossoming in rare mirabilia 

Inside the roaring, implausible 

Wilderness of prima materia

Of no scents and no shadows 

Because in dream 

We drown in Marie’s perfume

Because in dream 

All is the menstruum of her light 

Because in dream 

Shadows are emulsified to her milk

Richly and rightly I am rewarded 

With ribbons of rainbows and halos of gold

Surrounding her breasts 

Of wonderful dreams tonight

Of fabulous duration,

I mouth exclamations 

Of universal sighs,moans, and hunger

Within the vast, private glades of soul 

Cultivated by Micro-Anthropos, The Cosmic Man,

Gentleman gardener of the cerebral hemispheres  

Gloved in  the hippocampus, riding a seahorse 

Working in the rich soil of nocturnal noesis 

Every night 

On this nightly estate of prima materia ... 

Convoluted in spiral chambers like a seashell 

That secretes oceanic secrets 

Oh no, yet still these sphinxes!

They looking down 

At my somnolent husk 

Of my husky soul 

Sleeping with my Sister,

Drenched in sleeps of The...

Definite article of waking 

The bed and the pillow - 

God's pillow, God's bed 

English The/                              Theos 

Spanish El/                               El, Elohim -

And It's all God's to the last article! 

God’s teeth, god’s nails, god's blood 

God's crisscross

Christ!

Save us all from this bloody consanguine sleep in the seas of Mother Mary who squirted thee as fish to save us from the rocks, from the stones of god, who were supposed to save us from your father, your mother of such quick, bestial faces! As these that steal dreams of their eternal medicine and hope!  Agghhh...

Unschooled by the oceanic realities
In which I swim 

Like a fish not knowing it is in water 

My naked anguish billows and waves 
Across the waters of my soul 

Lost in the salt of oceanic tears 

At the terror of your storms, God,
At the terror of your shores, 

At the terror of your mountains
And your desserts that spill 

As streets across the globe of my soul! 

These things just the least of all,
A hundred million more small 

And humiliating and frightening,
And all having to do  

With people.

Oh, indefinite article of dreams... 

Ah...         A.       so clear;      Alpha/Aleph

That place of the Rose, this sanctuary of the Lotus

Abracadabra. Thunder from the void 

The raising of an eyelid and          another?        Dawn? 

Rub your eyes very hard;
Seeds of kaleidoscopes, rays
And whorls of electric colors, 

The infinite tumbling of vorticular skies... 

The dancing waves of multi-chrome tides across 

These seas of our eyes 

If only those tetramorphs would peek out at us
From all of these satiny, staticky clouds
That house their lightning.

And I ask, 

Why does this world conceal itself from us? 

Hiding itself behind us, leaving us to look in front 

Away from our dreams and 

Into time, eye to devouring eye 

With these sphinxes 
That take all manner of shape 

In the mad fantasy of day and night

That revolve in the melting heat of light and sun 

Of memory's reflections confronting us

With the harsh vagueness of ourselves
Who would remember 

Oh, let me sleep with my sister

Oh, but my sister flees me 
With an insistent shake of her wrist, 

"It is time to wake,” she says, 
"Get up.  Time to stop" 

 

Close lidded, face askance, 
Turning round the corner 

Of her eye to look at me and depart 

Drifting across the room, slowly, delicately,
Definitely away in a night gowned step, 
Inapproachably beyond 

All my blandishments and fulsome cries 

Down through the silent carpeted halls, 
Through the doors 

And into the street 

Into the world, 

Oh, my sister, oh my daughter,
Oh you sphinx of sphinxes, 

Coming to, devouring, and leaving me 
In my gilded bed of nails 

Rousing and arousing me to a lusty violence 
And in time, a hate of lust 

And forcing me back out into your 
Impossible world of reality,

Away from your charms. 
 Oh, why is it is so hard 
To be personal with a woman? 
Why are they so much like dreams? 

Why is there day? 

Why can't we just sleep 
With the women of our dreams 

In the magical landscapes of our hearts? 

Oh, woman, sister, now my daughter, come to me!

My joy is your ecstasy 

I only live to plant fire in your loins, fire 

Rising and rustling up the hairs of your back 

And to the end of your tresses, 

Consuming you and lifting you onto to the tip 

Of a flame drifting into the sparks of stars. 

Let us lie half-asleep where come

Only saffron and magenta sunrises that find us
In each other’s arms 

After a night of only ever increasing midnights, 

Forever a second away from zenith 

Of incandescent moons with beams of argent fire 

Shaking like our bodies 
On the rich sheets of celestial, cerebral hemispheres 

To stand guard over our dreams
With the arsenal of orgasms 

To fire at these sphinxes that come
To supplant our bliss 

With waking forgetfulness,
Unable to remember the simplest dream;
Our heart's desire