The Mythos of Time

Where to begin is not a point of origin or an age of history we know.

It's an emptiness, a void that a string of notes and stones falling as so.

Out of formlessness the ground is made, where does it lead to?

Although it's not within any known place, are you going soon?

But soon is the moment stalled by the unknown sacred ground and really,

  it should go south, and the stillness of tone is lighter in such a deep route.

 

When the night is spoken and shades the stillness in yet humble timbre flow.

Hours silent in measured rustling of chime and whir of wind in fire's glow.

And the rising of element in the form destined and designed.

As though nowhere came to fall and throws out far off time.

But as it is, far away and quickly amiss, I walk in steps as a guide,

  connected to overhead sky, and of that I recall the phrasing in the tide.

Waves in layers, beats of life, pulses recollect the edges of shrill call.

The edge expanded, formed inside the stillness, and let the sharp key fall.

Upon a bridge giving a long path as if it were a place to follow.

No time was counted and in that span came a light white and hollow.

It echoed back and formed around edges then seen in the mists,

  and the phrasing was fixed and absolute, yet soft as any reeded flute.

 

Dry, cracked glass lie below moon's passing, once pleasant now it's strange.

Distant sound has broken the stillness of this range, but nothing indicates change.

Rivers ran wide alongside and sang but now whose thirst do they quench?

Waters drawn into shadow and skies dimmed that not one raindrop will drench.

Valleys in the vague, vantage points obscured, walking through a sandy sea,

 faltering dunes of endless tumbling, of the desolation only continuing crumbling.

 

There was no time there and I was in that span, I knew the tombs that lay about.

I stayed away for eons and kept light and fire centered and suffered no such doubt.

Empty were the deeps, all before I began, as a sailing starlight retreating back.

If no tomb is feared why not open the door? The barrier stands for light it may lack.

To shade and in shadow, to sleep, but my grasp is strong to leap from whatever well.

I fly out of view to another distant star, to find paths no hours govern, from my shell.

 But how did I come to this? Now which time do I miss?

 

 

 

 

 

 

TBC...

 

 

 ©Iggy 1996

Shipwreck

If once the long ago closed in to a present cloudy sky, shifting into storm, crashing aground

Then truly there was spoken a word, maybe unheard, of the sea under sun's halo and moon's crown

Outside the shores of Ebura, the sunken mast cracks and seagull sleeps and in silence, awakes

Inside the cover of night and shadow, the waters carry to deeper keeps, and even deeper gates

But the gateway reveals hidden ships, whether the storm took them or they sailed up from the south

We'll go into uncharted land from uncharted seas, in a vessel made of leaf and twine, wood and vine

Raising sails against the winds, of stature so strong, a gentle whisper yet powerful is the ocean's song

With the waves wild and gray, the uncharted way, a log of pages written henceforth of heroes drowned

 

Dazzling mirage of luminous waters that drenched the abandoned ruins of sand in the north

The sails lowered, and drifting ship to coast toward the distant grey sharply peaks offshore

Magnetic pull of pole upward and afar, winds heedless and gathering speed like a shooting star

Ocean's surface carrying the ill-fated drifting oar, and traces have moved many degrees from bar

The mantle of sea floor, and the shield of coral lines the reef of seagull call, heard on the waves

Back from an age we yet lived, a different world underwater, seen down below watery graves

The silent chambers given to the lure of the blue, smitten and sunken, with a finality of high sea

Drifting signs of abandoned ship and left to fall the loose yardarm twice repaired, 'ere the eve

Hidden from sunlight, and the stir of oncoming wakes made by salty mist and whispering rain

Undercurrent surge distorted the secret, flooded wooden plank, spar shattered, rendered unmade

Ill winds, vast cold valley smooth, held fast the sense of doom and following upon lofty sails

Starboard lanterns aligned, a torn sail defied the freak storm to harbors where low sun dwells

And on the port side, anchor, bell and wheel shifted over gateway, the passage can be used again

If ship's features can be moved by shifted tides, passing through knowing when, encountered then

The tide is how time was designed in ancient days, and will turn back between dune and space

In hourly flight, navigate while deep under with silvery eyes, drawn into the current's pace

Guardians of trench and underworld watch from each point of their compressed ocular scope

The sea has placed itself over basins bottomless afloat, and still sunken ship settled over a slope

The wave now broken, glimpse a dense hiatus close to the shore of airy realm, it is known

The ship was in distress from even before, long ago, the damaged vessel creaked and moaned

And water realm took more than day for night of the sand, and sails with, upon ghostly helm

Wherever seagulls soar and disappeared in isle's mead, is a place subdued by earthly shell

A mirror of ocean reflect a world combined of heavens overhead, the ship rests but on this side

By chance, sailed into storm never to emerge from under a dark vaguely blue shadow, they hide

 

Yet one can find the drifting pieces of a tale, long since dead, beckon with murmuring low tides

Hear the way of sky in a calm shade, to turn gusty and to the call of night, and heed lost seasides

The starlight over quiet depths, and the shipwreck is washed away in hues of blue and white

Settling further out to deeper drop offs, the shipwreck floats under typhoon, with open deadlight

And off the coasts of scorched sand and summer's haze, the shore belies the lonely days upon

In the surf the trees sway, and away the ship still remains while grazing seafloor, boat long gone

Only the drifting oar, and splintered wood afloat can be seen oft times from some silent deck

As if staying, hovering in the waves, over the body of the sturdy amphora cargo of a shipwreck

©Iggy 2000

The Second Shipwreck

Not very many listen to the island winds, or ocean out there, slowing to a still air

Its deep retreat has perked the jungle's ear, moving gradually like the song of Altair

Gone under to fathomless hold, the crew of the sleek gray ship abandoned what was left

Days and nights flow together in another long course as water and steam softens sunset

Rumors told of island sunk, tides reversed, but night under clear skies should be my view

Off the bow a strange call rang out, but not of bell or distress, no sign of phantom crew

Listening again, for those who did, hidden ire, and fierce tidal swells coming in fast

The scattered reed, thick below the surface of angry waters clinging to anchor cast

In the glistening row of flickering lights, sunken ship visible for the outline of rails

If they could breathe the fog as easily as swimming along beach in form of torn sails

Their cloudy visage and frail hands could bank upon the fallen tree logs inland and rest

The faint subtle whispers on the wind of tragedy echoes louder, as the dark waves crest

The aura deep with glow, although proper navigation was heeded in ocean's end domain

But at night, that night, be it another matter altogether in mariner's way, they may remain

And they did call out, in song they named their destiny to sail on, all have been longing

Underwater realm rising, toppling high peak, now a distant road, their voices still calling

 

Middle sea, north beckons from obstructing continent, and the guardians may greet us

For legends stay close to Macedonia and gods who find lost explorers, as they meet us

Unknown corners in trapped waters as abstract as their borders oddly disappear from sight

The sounds of soon coming tides whirl downward, the loss of zeal, against gods we fight

Knowing the briny solitude, once strong wooden spars faded and now they only drift

To speak in ways of the sea, in the timid turn of time came a weak cry vaulting as sails lift

To know the ship is far below, a silent curse, seafarer's tale, sturdy sail have been my rhyme

Leaving the last remnants of sunken ship to this, our abode, they spoke gravely yet sublime

The ship was stressed, the weight exceeded limits and the spirit of adventure held to gold

Alas, it couldn't hold, and the story aligns as others never forgotten as heard or once told

Cavernous depths touched by the laughter through the same waters of each warm cay

Sun pierces through hundred foot hidden anomaly and keeps alight the Olympian bay

As it passes for the hours in between, the ship will sail beneath if only in current's grip

Much has been broken down for the force of the sea, and for lesser tales about the ship

Unspoken is the beauty of the layered sea where star given to the quiet deep, cannot drown

The tear in your eye because we stand in sun's halo and moon's crown, far away and down

©Iggy 2000

The Mountains of Wrath (Montis de Īra)

Far back behind the outlines of rock and treacherous terrain over a deep hidden place

A guide was stirred from beneath a sunken river of fire, its magnitude such as the solar blaze

The anger came from a buried heat that sought to find the twelve gates and torch the plain

And up in gathered swirls of smoke and ashen colored embers fading, quakes and peril claim

 

Fuming far below layers of ground that lay in a dream of clearest jasper, a guide knows the path

Coasts flank the land between two oceans with a hollow sea flanked by two lands as drawn by wrath

Where Atlantis fell, and sank, evenly as slow as its doom, guided nowhere while treading away

Then arising from depths, to the coasts beyond any account of memory in just a mesh of gray

Behind the fallen range of mountain of center mass, beyond the fallen stones of massive pearl

And all behind would succumb to dead zones of stillness below foundations of gems of world

A way one desires to go while seeking the other planes, paths that are never taken beyond the sun

I've went away into hidden grottoes, some I know by name and I see through ways, and fast I run

Three ways to all four directions was something louder than storms, the quiet shook of deathly span

Crossing past the dark unknown mile, while a golden rod measured still its dominance of its land

Lowest sound underground continued around, the shoals beneath waves of ages echoed relentlessly

For they ran under and through ways never traced, and wrath they stirred tremendously

Arch warriors as messengers would not mourn those who fled as unheeded as stone and wall

Messengers conjure only the words to warn, the mountains buried by design, by empire's fall

Where mountains rose up, they were taken down from the hand that wrote the names of twelve

But earth buried the upper way, as safe as woven gold, and in heavy current over molten shelf

In that hand that summoned the mountains to stand as guard, it wielded a terrible wrath

And in justified force, brought mountain ranges from earthen mixture into sunken path

A guide now making haste to speak of earth and fire and sea, came to lead beyond molded clay

The surface sinks where boiling deeps allow, shifting the buried oven to severed root to fray

A piercing bolt shatters the sky, as told in ages of old, the sign and siren call through a maze

Giant mass folded square, again a guide strides forth awakening the essence of wrath in his gaze

Underneath a thousand ranges, pointed breaks through from the base and we know not how

So that a thousand sides round the twelve sides fill with elements of glass and silver upon its brow

In the encompassed thunder and wind, the deep fires burn like a whisper, and hillside trees sway

Inner fire tunnel ways speed through without a break in their course, another gate was made

All the anger from a chaotic blast was then subdued, by that which held mountains of hidden light

Clearing paths and unearthing maximum thermogenesis for those able to intensify mood and might

The mountains, the key to upheaval of buried earth, exposed and cooled, and wisdom its source

Being the last path from below forged from above, broken frames of time for the hour in its course

And ice poles setting a border to encompass all to be lost and to die in a frozen mass

And no guard stood in any created path, even as waters were lost in a dead hazy pass

 

Aim arching far, a monument hides inside the outward obelisk of element subdued, and used

In open gaps of time the guide warns of destruction built up to flooded gorges that lava fused

A single strand of lightning warded off whatever evil spell may have been spoken and cast

To look from afar, on such a place with eyes that see no land, and no sound of waves' splash

Mountains fully grown from darkness itself, rage and fear alas, but the guide and hand that holds

Drew the power away and gave no gem or sand of sea, when darkness cannot sustain its tones

I set out  following the guide, but knew the ancient ways long standing, and deep fires smoulder

The dark deep captured mass already laced with creator's flair and strength of celestial shoulder

 

Ages passed, past days counted and numbered here, past eons of arms yet unclear, unseen

Contrast in mirrored illusion levels off, the pinnacle stabilizes as root of pillar and root of tree

Waters vast until clouds return with them over a thirsty desert, and sometime having no path

For the guide walked and wandered, I'd seen him from far back, in fire waves of the aftermath

Raging just below the surface, there towers over the world, the mountains of wrath

 

 

©Iggy 1999