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The Muse

In the name of some great mysterious Art,
On the theatre’s cold, dark stage of my heart,
To this sole audience, whence curtains repel,
The Muse conducts a symphony from Hell.

With province perch’d in the shade of Babylon
She’ll challenge the world with Her steel baton
(That swift glint, in its savage Dance of the Dead,
She inspir’d to hang o’er Damocles’ head)

To elicit a response of sensations
That surfeits such grim imaginations.
Those vultures may find, tho’, in making their feasts,
The taste of my flesh unfit for such beasts

That furiously build my heart for their nest
Whence they devour doom and spit out the rest—
Hath vi’lent pageantry ne’er been reticent
Orchestrating emotive sentiment?

Like sea leviathans, o, man-of-war-bird,
Employ thy skies with terror undeterr’d
And cultivate these archipelagoes ere
Hope departs the peninsula of Fear.

But Hope once had conquer’d with brave hand outreach’d
Now waits for the verdict of Love impeach’d
From this heart dethron’d with Reason subverted
And slaughter’d by this Nonet concerted:

The guilty are judg’d at the tip of Her sword
As She flicks Her wrist to strike up a chord.
Eviscerate thence where fierce romance harbors
To spill upon the sunsets of martyrs;

Beckon’d by the Sisters (fair, winged maidens)
A choir of death in deceptive cadence
Howls to Apollyon and ascends thro’ the gale
With hymns of worship in chromatic scale.

Alchemist of sorrow, Architect of pain,
Shap’d by thy golden elegy’s refrain,
Clasp this lithe neck with thy proud axe freely swung—
My corpse in the sepulchre of thy tongue,

My head impal’d upon the spikes of thy gate,
My heart burn’d in the furnace of thy hate.
In myriads we view thy exhibition,
To come explore these wounds with sedition

And promise war in the throes of upheaval
Like hyacinths bloom’d from seeds of evil.
But thy sonorous winds blow our circumvolv’d
Ashes like an exhalation dissolv’d

In the name of some great mysterious Art,
On the theatre’s cold, dark stage of my heart.
Whose blood dost thou now wear upon thy pinion
Spread across the vale of thy dominion?

Wow.
This is an exceptionally passionate piece.
The rhythm, the words, the imagery, the writing technique, the subject, the very idea of it...

A
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Too much to handle?

Nope- bloody brilliant.

A
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The work is hard, but it is fun. I mostly enjoy the challenge of it. Keeping subjects and keeping structure are most difficult. But here is an insight to my method, no matter how odd it may sound: I see or hear or a word (written or spoken) and I think, "That's a great word! I want to use it!" And I wind up having a list of words or short phrases that I've put together and, well, basically I organize them in rhyme and meter.

Sounds too simple, doesn't it? It really is a bit of a challenge. This took me well over a week to write.

Actually, I am curious. I had a foggy vision in my head during the writing of this. I wanted to verbalize that vision. Within the first few--I'd say the first four--stanzas, describe to me in detail what imagery you see in your own head when reading that part.

And reading this over and over again myself I see three very distinct motifs. Distinct, yet simple. I wonder if you are able to see the same ones. Tell me, if you could, what you think they are.