Apocalyptic daydream
walking through the city
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original writing and photos. . . by
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Apocalyptic daydream
walking through the city
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The city has its rhythm;
Separate, I have mine.
I navigate the rubble
Of fiery, latest schism,
Past the smoking sign
Of embers dying — evening
Is advancing, is encroaching
On optimism's sunrise.
The sky, ominous, threatening
Destruction, soft approaching
With new creation's reprise
And vulcanism — wormwood,
Bitter fallings from the old world:
Cascades to sweep the surface,
The elders lament what they could
Prevent not, nor foresee hurled
In shining strokes, reverse bliss
Of unseen, of unmanifest
In vic'try 'gainst the living,
With water and bright flamelets
To take a livid harvest,
To reap the longtime giving,
To liquidate the long debts
To subtle planes, celestial
Owed by simple sojourners
Upon the terran spaceship,
Exploring rough and bestial
As conquerors, as mourners,
Lamenting circumstance's rip
Of all that is held dear:
Forgetting to be here.
Briefest paradise of all,
Precip'tous rise and sudden fall
Of empires and clans—
Who fate always unmans.
Yet linger all the empty streets
And eerie, all the unheard beats
Of those dead city's rhythms:
The silenced algorithms
And grating halt of cogs,
The strange, unearthly fogs
That spread over the detritus,
The inscrutable impetus
Ancestral generations held
Until in haze they meld
And I stroll into their shroud,
Their ghastly, subtle shroud
A-billow with the gravity,
Dense with shocking brevity
Of physical dominions.
And I yearn for my pinions,
To take away the footsore,
With each step humbly implore
The meaning of the madness
Made plain, before the egress
Of spirit from its prison.
The free and the arisen
Souls still call to me on earth
Where terror reigns, where mirth
Releases tension still, where forms
Are worn away by whirling storms
Inconsequential, era-ending
By turns, assumption-rending
By the wheel of time, a-grinding
Down the edges sharp, a binding
Of inhabitants to fate.
Each circumstance, its mate
Must have in strung polarity:
Balance, and right parity
To strum the cosmic harp.
My thoughts and movements sharp,
I daydream, on the sidewalk,
The rhythm of society
Drives me to surrounding scarp
That falls from it, I balk
At the cliff's edge — clarity
Approaches and then flees,
My mind awash by visions
Of imagination's worst.
Whispers start to seize
The fragile mind's decisions:
From the very first,
Unto the final verse.
The city has its rhythm;
Separate, I have mine.
— created by Daniel Pendergraft —
- to be posted to HIVE on May 3rd, 2020 -
