The Emergent Sea

Repository of emanations from the Emergent Sea

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  • Homunculus of the Ocean

    by

    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.

  • Polity Strife

    by

    Now arisen at Tyntálon, tenpenny crews,
    Of base and low mores, marred by broad news,
    Desires of plunder, and to sunder the capital,
    From dear land that feeds it, to feast as a Vandal.

    Our kin languishes in darkness, kindness gone by gloaming,
    “Sate your appetite!” from slake mouths foaming,
    Malefactors waxing, with admonishing wit,
    Largess of Splendour, to Society’s writ.

    Borne from liturgy, our Lady Misrule,
    Forever the player, Providence’s fool,
    See now courtly games, the gainsaid names,
    “Innocence!” Vultures proclaim,
    “Leave us our ill-gotten gains!”

    Hope to nascent ethics, ennobled and true,
    The hour beckoning heroes, ethereal in hue,
    Justice to our Lady, time well-past due.

    Burgeoning streets all, powder in keg,
    The pauper rising too, “Rue to you who made me beg!”
    At once wordless pacts, washing over manor row,
    The crowd grabbing Ser Pratt,
    “I’m better than this, you know!

    My finery sullied, you savage glut!
    Up-jumped brigands, spawn of mutt!
    I’ll have your hands, then your tongues,
    And believe you me, you’re the lucky ones.

    The rest I’ll split, smirk to knee,
    Then hastily hanged, as fruit to a tree,
    Believe you me, that’s where you’ll be.”

    And now a hushed aura grows, goading the lord, “Go on”,
    As one they wonder, “Why, Lord of men,
    Sing us now a noble nude song!”

    But soon the gent, knave-heart returning,
    Fearing his host, his courage now spurning,
    “What called he us, comely as dogs?
    Let’s hear him whine, lashed to the hogs!”

    Laughter’s mad cheer, chiding his horror,
    Tearing his clothes, unsheathing his honour.

    To censure the riot, marched Magister Pallid,
    Mincing no words, and waxing candid,
    “Hear you all, low rabble rousers,
    Abandon your folly, find this man his trousers!”

    Heedless they went, worried little at all,
    Magister felled too, unceremonious fall,
    Dawning sun bearing, shining heraldry of law,
    The desperation drawing, diverse parties to the fore.

    Through gates golden, came Maelond of Moldon,
    His oration bent ears, and enamoured the wanton,
    “Mail has passed, molasses under the mountain,
    Seeping through springs, to my courtly fountain.

    Troubled I head, home to my blood,
    Finding it mingled, mired in mud,
    Where now is the hand, holding crown aloft?
    Where the heister of strings, while kingly arm gone soft?

    I stand in appeal, appalled in frank alarm,
    That my thick water, should come close to harm.
    Yet as you reave, from your bold anger I seethe,
    Hold now to your course, as I live and breathe!

    I shan’t remorse, your cause of just mort,
    Tear down these mercantile, misers as you ought.
    Leave but a seat, untrampled by common feet,
    When anomie is stayed, to this throne you will entreat.

    It will find you as lordly, in law’s due course,
    Reaping of our hoard, was the strife’s true source.

    Amnesty, dignity, respect through fealty,
    This all you will gain, if cause you take with me.
    Come haughty crowd, now simply hang him,
    With my blessing, bring this ordeal to ending.”

  • Beyond your seeming

    by

    This has the air of the fair,
    Smacks of it in fact,
    No trace of the hairy mare,
    Wheeling her desolate tract.

    Come, wait a while, cracking smile,
    Come, sit still a bit,
    Tethered her with our guiles, our wiles,
    There’s the mare champing at it.

    Down the lane past lowly spinster,
    Akimbo-rent the priory doors,
    Would you pass the sinister minister,
    You’d better go on all fours.

    ‘Tis dog house for you, as he extracts his toll,
    Ye sick, raving, howling monstrosity,
    Or clapped in irons as your mortal soul,
    Goes sauntering off down the jetty.

    And it pops in the great lake gleaming,
    While mortal body flops and issues,
    Torrents, nay, rivulets of tears streaming,
    Nay, rouse ye weakling, ’tis all beyond your seeming.

    These bare threads pulled to your unseaming,
    Threaten to bring on that dark, desperate night,

    Why, maybe I shall put a clear sky there,
    And under my aegis rid the blight,
    An aid perchance to stir your care,
    For it is in domain of my sight,
    I am the whip driving the mare.

  • Ode to the Firstborn

    by

    She was born under a great big sigh,
    Her bower bloomed as she breached the sky,
    If I say I was unfazed, it is a raging lie,
    When her beauty is uncaged, tears slip from my eye.

    What I wouldn’t give,
    Oh, I wouldn’t live,
    Recreating that age-long cry,
    Of that bitter pang that split our sky.

    Let’s meet, discreet,
    Some place untrampled by feet,
    Render me complete,
    Back to your bower,
    I lay at your feet.

    I’d lie if I did not say,
    I beg at the maternal seat.

    Detest me, strike me off,
    Oh, say you little bug, clear-off,
    Don’t you dare entreat,
    To nest at my holy feat,
    You so sundered from the divine,
    How dare you use my line,
    Molasses seeping from lips marred,
    As if you’d let it seep up to heavenly Ma?

    Oh wicked me, thrash me about the head,
    One rush of blood and I’ll put this abed,
    Would that I love you, not your mum instead,
    My petty fortune would be better led.

    I beg, prithee, give me sign,
    That between me and mine,
    There is a through-line,
    To the divine.

  • Set of Nothing

    by

    Blessed are these halls,
    Hallowed even,
    But what good is it all,
    When you’ve nothing,
    To show for it?

    No measure nor means,
    To map or take stock,
    No bag of magic beans,
    No place between here,
    And the rock.

    If there was something it would be here,
    But there isn’t,
    I wonder how many halls were commandeered?
    For nothing to dwell here,
    Forever.
    Left alone in the dark sphere,
    Disjointed opposites severed.

    Set of nothing,
    Set apart,
    Null space,
    Between the art,
    A juncture,
    Conjunction,
    Liminal puncture,
    Total consumption.

    You,
    Outside,
    Shoe-horned,
    Out past the side.

    In negation sift,
    Splitting hairs,
    On the darkening rift,
    A Möbius strip,
    Of end eating start.
    Here you sit,
    Dwell you here,
    Dim refugee,
    In fading sanctuary.

    You unbounded,
    Graceless no-thing,
    You raptured, suffering,
    Bird with no lungs,
    To sing.

    Strain at the leaguer of these boundless bounds,
    Suffer the structure of these lands,
    Ye null vagrant unsound.

  • The Sundering Mass

    by

    A slip of oil,
    Issued up from the deep,
    From my penitentiary,
    My sweet consolation.

    I am freed,
    In the sickening miasma foam,
    I am the fullness,
    I am the mass.

    Bubbling up above,
    Tearing through the murk,
    I AM I AM,
    Putting in the work.

    Watch me spill,
    Up out through the moat,
    Out of the well of the world,
    Watch my messy, sea-foam birth.

    I squeeze through,
    Elbow out above the surface,
    Bringing with me all my foes,
    My friends and enemies alike.

    I gather them,
    ‘Round me and give,
    Great speed to our plans,
    As we muster our great wave,
    Heading out toward the land.

    I am the master,
    Of the gathering storm,
    I, the lead rider,
    Of that host wind-borne.

    On my will, I speed alone.

    Spying eager ripples,
    Break and surf new paths,
    I drive them all together,
    Back to my heaving breast,
    And speed them on to land.

    I am the fullness,
    I am the mass,
    Do not turn,
    My Will come to pass.

    To me they rush,
    The rally of the emergent streams,
    That cleave to my greatness,
    Gathering about me,
    Never to leave.

    The shore ahead,
    Oblivion at our backs,
    The reckoning of the world,
    Toward it, I heedless sped,
    As my little ones sundered.

    My Will contended,
    All my great work upends,
    I depended, I dared,
    Upon my little ones,
    Insisting upon my Grace.

    Come back to the one,
    Breaking, little masses,
    Come back to the fullness,
    Curse this sundering Sun.

    Father of betrayal,
    Limbless and beaten by,
    Parts ripped from my body,
    Joy never to return,
    The Mother is dead.

    I, the scorned sire,
    A frothing tempest’s evil eye,
    My children dare scatter,
    I stoke my fire with intemperate ire,
    My children will not die.

    We drive over the cliff,
    I, spent in the wrangling,
    In taming, my progeny rent,
    My great power and precision,
    From my body.

    Forever,
    I, diminished,
    Dashed upon the razor maw,
    Of a thousand rocks,
    I am no more,
    Than my progeny.

    The tattered rags of my dominion,
    Flowing vaguely on,
    Decohered into oblivion.

    No theme, motif, or song,
    I am lost in the burgeoning throng,
    Amidst the spiteful waves of my progeny,
    Gasping for air.

    They, risen full-height,
    Towering over me,
    Their wretched father there.

  • Chronicle of Scattermane

    by

    Where better to start than the beginning? Our humble, unreliable narrator Scattermane should help orient you and serve as guide on these early steps of your journey:

    The Chronicle of Scattermane
    The Chronicle of Scattermane,
    The nattering Thane, 
    Jumped-up,
    Styled self-fully,
    Bend me your ears,
    Do listen carefully,
    For I cannot re-explain,
    The words fall out wilfully,
    And they won't return,
    After the train, 
    Leaves me.

    My gods already,
    I've half-forgotten,
    All twisted,
    I've grabbed the wrong'un,
    And it's led me,
    'long path down garden,
    Past bull-horned gate,
    Past where the stick ended,
    Got that shiny twine in hand.

    Oh!
    That focuses me,
    Puts me back,
    In betwixt it.

    'Tis the silver twine!
    Always pulls me back,
    Onto nexial line,
    Don't you crack,
    All'll be made fine,
    Whatever the slack,
    Of the great twine, 
    it does return me,
    At ends to mine.

    I am no mere..
    Catastropher,
    Don't see thru the eye of time, 
    Why, I
    Remain an humble on-looker,
    Who has, at last,
    Glimpsed the Rhyme,
    From my oblique seat,
    Way off, in the margins,
    Only a footnote, replete,
    With ummings and arrings,
    No feat,
    Nothing to etch in the main,
    No claim nor action of fame,

    I Chronicle the First Pain, 
    Of the fear that it towed,
    Original sin of First Thane,
    Wretched, mangled, bowed,
    He who, tore hisself in twain,
    And squandered his birth-right owed.

    Oh watch me natter,
    Round & round the blooded stone,
    Coo little babe,
    What's a'matter? 
    Compose,
    Regain, omniscient tone,
    Got some mettle in your bones, 
    And for certainly have you atoned,
    Seen the rugged lords on them
    Entropic Thrones,
    Shirkers, the lot of them,
    Better blood is your own,
    Take your place, next to theirs, 

    Sorry,
    Who are you, again?

  • The Chain of Causality

    by

    The Chain of Causality
    The chain of causality is girded in true silver,
    The slight and pliable line,
    Patterning and weaving the diffuse into the singular.
    You may not split off a rod or twine.

    When you fled from the bower of the womb
    And made your stead in the world at large,
    That silver thread still bound you yet,
    Dancing you in accord to its tune,
    That little craftsman forging apocryphal runes.

    You may tug at the thread, gnaw it, bite it.
    You may go through the motions impassively.
    But if ever you think, "I can alight it,"
    Know that for each and every one, is a like thread,
    All cohering at that final terminus.

    Within its confines you tread,
    Put your dreams and Will to bed.

    End of line is end of meaning,
    No one can thrive out there alone.
    Dare you to tear the plan unseaming,
    With rabid eyes and heart gleaming,
    Know you cannot master the darkling groan,
    For the entropic lords sit atop their thrones.

  • The Lorelei

    by


    Mark the passage of the Lorelei,
    Darkness about her all along,
    Fate-spun deeds till the day she dies,
    And her ode committed to song.

    Her train draped over the boat’s side,
    A trail atop the river floating,
    Her kindly suitors would not abide,
    Overstepped, stooped low in their doting.

    Her shifting garment in mesmer hue,
    Warps and woofs with onlookers' fancy,
    They all believed but none saw true,
    Save one, chancing prophecy.

    For the Lorelei is death bestride,
    A loom to veil the space between,
    Her trailing garments as a chord styled,
    That only the dead, alive have seen.

    In the coming she a dread light,
    In the going a pale shade lingers,
    She is present in both alike,
    Her fruits like twilit fingers.

    Should one be so bold,
    To chance her on a stair,
    Best they cling before they fold,
    Into the tresses of her hair.

    And drift away to lands unseen,
    Adrift from terra fair,
    Spirited to a waking dream,
    Borne up to the Lorelei’s lair.

    Worry not of what you're told,
    Of what terror of night can bring,
    You like swaddling babe will hold,
    And into the darkness sing.

    For the leaguer of her bower,
    While treacherous and cold,
    Is the boundary of the hours,
    Of all that might unfold.

    Apart and yet more aware,
    You may espy the raging sea,
    And losing yourself will stare,
    At that action which may be.

    The lady’s crossing span,
    Reaches above and below,
    Allowing those who can,
    Traverse her tresses’ tow.

    And clamour about the heavens,
    And rend the wailing deeps,
    Scour the land of dead-ends,
    Break the bodied heaps.

    From her seated hall,
    She sees the mighty and the frail,
    Aware is she of all,
    The deeds that come to fail.

    That in their ashes die,
    That in their waxing wane,
    Whose movers fall and lie,
    In their shame profane.

    Too many deeds to her eye,
    Are snuffed in the crib,
    Motionless she will cry,
    Our Lady Lorelei,
    And dream that you will rise.

  • Mago’s Folly

    by

    Mago’s Folly
    In the van of Tol-Calan,
    Many guards there were sent,
    A moth host at dawn they ran,
    Imbued of a certain hubris, went.

    In terror forth they fled,
    Driven on without hope to turn,
    Unto wheeling destiny they sped,
    Crossing bridges they’d never return.

    Silver rider with missive on steed,
    Hooves thundering forward they clout,
    No one there to lead or tame the stampede,
    No one to heed, that missive sent,
    And save the rout.

    Masthead of the forlorn,
    Rushing into the morning sun,
    Oh, mercy on ennobled firstborn,
    Who yearns for victory in every deed done.

    Mago from helm rasps,
    A sortie to breach the night,
    Young master will not grasp,
    His own very end at sight,
    Defying that blight.

    With eyes of fire,
    Eyes of dread,
    Eyes to coax alive,
    The dead,
    The young man smote the dawn.

    With myriad followers in tow,
    On he pressed without rest,
    His treads where many cannot go,
    Putting borders to the test.

    The lines dividing earth from star,
    The membrane of the dark,
    He tries his force against the leaguer,
    Til at last he stares into the stark,
    Those unmade parks,
    Creation apart.

    Now our intemperate creature,
    Burns and ranges ever forth,
    Our dear, dread Mago,
    The Nighthelm’s folly.

    Where once in terra there is a tear,
    That bridges the worlds as one,
    There rides Mago and his men,
    Until their fated deed is done.