Art – Dream Collage Via Dakota Sky Walker
I screamed my defiance
and heaped upon the
curs’d beast all the rage
and hate and despair of
a soul quest denied.
No sooner had I entered the
gullet of that celestial parasite
then a plan
bloomed in my mind; I would
find the creature’s gullet
and cut my way out
if it took a cold eternity.
Immediately my plan was
thwarted, I could not see
in the blackness of
that vast tunnel.
As I sped ever inwards
I felt shapes go whistling past
unseen but sensed,
as the wind bent
to accommodate passage
towards that continental stomach.
I cupp’d my wings and scooped
great buckets of air, slowing
my headlong rush –
my feet found
the gentle tug of gravity
and I followed them down lower
as my eyes focused to the dim,
I thought….
I saw a feeble light and bent
my path towards discovery.
I noticed looming swift
two spaced spires
far apart and
like a moth towards
a feeble flame
before I could
turn aside, I was caught
in a mighty net that stretched
between two parapets – placed
artfully, as a spider does a
web. My flight ended abrupt
and entangled, my left wing
unnaturally bent as I felt
a hollow bone give. I cried
out in pain and outrage
and all the toils of my efforts
stole over my exhausted
frame and I collapsed, unknown
and unknowing into a fitfull
sleep.
I know not how long
I hung suspended like
a fly in its trap, my sleep
felt short and dreamless
I awoke to the smell
of cumin, cardamom and
coriander. I was caught
well and true and the net
wrapped around me like
a lover’s letter in its envelope.
I felt myself being lowered
in slow but steady rhythm
and saw the feeble light
grow as I descended.
What first I thought
were faces bodiless and
floating, were instead attached
to bodies harder to fathom
because of the light I bent
myself towards discovery:
Gathered and gathering
a sect of men like no other
(if men indeed they were)
I had encountered on the land
or at sea: their faces were banded
and from each stripe a corresponding
light came forth. Their skulls were
glabrous and their bodies in
equal proportion to my own
covered in tailored clothing
exceptionally well made
from the base of the
neck down. Showing only
the glow of their strip’d lit faces
each layer seven in all –
At the crown orange, not
unlike Beauty’s tower, below that
circling their foreheads
an eldritch violet, and
just above their ears another orange,
around their eyes and cheekbones
a raccoon’s bandit mask
pale and white.
Their cheeks were a deep emerald
shaped like a cockle shell: the hinge
at the notch of the ear and
stretching forth. Both nose and
lips were full and sensuous,
an earthly brown were they,
along their chins
and jawline was yet another violet.
Underneath the chin leaking
below that sharp jawline
two more bands, again one orange
and one more violet disappeared
below their worn well clothes.
I hailed them
with as much good cheer
as I could muster
for many a bad encounter
can be blunted with a
glad voice.
They jumped and
the lights of their faces
were chaotic and
unpatterned, it was clear
they were not expecting speech
and did not know
yet what I was.
Even as their flashing flushes
flickered fast, a single word
emerged articulated
and precise: Engedi! Engedi!
