The Homunculus of the Ocean
I was beached upon a ring of white,
Enamel rocks jutting out a gaping jaw,
A rush of water almost sent me on,
Through that yawning maw,
While a singular terror studied my awe.
The ring was crowned in a fading grey,
A second circle of sacrifice,
Tiered, the Elder whales were splayed,
A fetid boneyard to block my descent,
They, pierced in some jagged rite,
Beheld in the periphery of my mariner’s sight.
That flood of mammalian blood,
Spraying out over the eye,
Amidst that red mist I stood,
Gazing, hazily over the obscured deep,
Homunculus of the Ocean’s sigh,
I, screwing my face, damming tears that would cry—
I dare not weep.
As I waded into that Deep,
Shambling through the whale-bone structure,
Up to my knees in congealed red seep,
Heralding a bloody geyser of the stuff,
My throat straining from imagined stricture,
Gasping, I reached for my last tincture,
Washing my spirit in opiated elixir.
Brief, blissful mixture.
It rose up of a sudden,
Rearing, the barnacle-crusted heft,
Crashing a wave, drenched me sodden,
In that mingling, mired water,
I swear it spoke to me on that rocky cleft,
Speaking of the lonely tides—of Ides Bereft,
Nascent ripples of the bleeding depths,
I agape, at my heart’s theft.
Or rather, it sang of a melancholy,
Of a sonorous age forgone,
Reminding me of our great folly,
Those stricken sailors in waking dream,
Heeding the Ocean Song,
Driven ever northward, sped on by that melodious wrong.
In its sadness, I basked,
As time stayed the water,
In music, there was I tasked,
My charge ringing in my ear:
Seek the iris of the eye,
Bring back whale-daughter dear.
Fear, fear!
Rapture me from here!
No—Surrender to the Elder Song,
Sonor of the Homunculus,
Greet sighing eye of the Ocean,
Where the Lorelei meets us,
In watery embrace, find devotion.
The Flammifer’s mast folds,
No hope of homeward return,
Dare I dain breach the watery holds,
Or die upon my sunken stern?
I have at last heard the song,
And its beauty I will not spurn,
My heart is already won.
The Emergent Sea 