Travelling the night sea journey.

Based on, and including excerpts from a poem of the same title by Hans V. VonMaltzahn III.

A man walks along
a winding path.
Reaching the summit
of a wind swept plateau,
he pauses,
sets down his pack,
and gazes at the sunset.

Deep red to orange to blue,
then the cool black of night.
And the weak light of stars
and moon shine through,

and he is afraid.

He thinks.
  He had thought.
  The doctor was right. He should get away; from his job, from the city, the people, the stress of life.
  He got away.
  Standing alone on the side of a mountain, his father's voice comes to him across the spaceless gulf of time: "you cannot run from your problems, son."
  "I know, Dad."
  He could not escape the dreams that had grown real over the last months. The dreams that had increased in persistence until he had but to close his eyes to see the dismal twilight world before him, with its shadows flitting back and forth at the edge of his perception. To see the cloaked figure standing in front of the hard, black gates, and hear the rasping voice wafting toward him words he could never quite remember on waking.
  Night after night of jerking suddenly awake, sweat stinging his eyes, bed clothes crumpled in his fists, unknown supplications on his lips, have taken their toll on him. He is thin, sickly, less than he had been.
  Waking visions stream past his eyes in the deepening night: his boss, frowning, unknowing; his wife, smiling, unsure; his children, playing, oblivious. He wonders if all these things will await him when he returns.
  He wonders if he should return at all.

The creatures of the night
for company,
the wind his music maker,
he settles down
to rest.

Sleep comes quickly
quietly subduing
all in her midst.
And he
is lost
in Time.

  He is there,
in his dark underworld of flighty spirits and mournful beasts. Cringing before his shadowy apparition, he awaits the onslaught.
  It speaks:

             Come fly with me
             Through this gate of Time
             To a land of
             Shadows
             Where pictures fly
             Like insects,
             Annoying, unsullied truths.
             A land quite different
             From your life's
             Gross Irrelevance.

  He feels his body writhing on the cold ground, and somewhere closer, his soul mirrors it.

             Through this, Hades' portal,
             Fly brittle
             Weightless souls-
             Lost sheep
             Who through foul and
             Vengeful deeds
             Took life from others
             And themselves.
             These spirits
             Died many deaths before
             This final one.
             Now shattered and starved
             Of life
             They pass into this kingdom
             Of oblivion.

  He closes his eyes, and the vision persists, and he realises his eyes are already closed. Shaking his head, he mouths the words: "no, no, no...," and, as if from elsewhere, he hears his whisper: "no, no, no..."

             But alas, don't despair,
             Come!
             See some more.
             Perhaps you yet shall see
             That I
             Am not your enemy
             See, over there,
             Art by both brush
             And pen, and
             Music made to calm the
             Wildest heart.
             The beauty of all creation,
             My gift to mankind,
             Or those
             That make a deal with me.

  Whisper becomes a shouted NO! and he is awake and trembling. Staring up at the stars, somehow solid and reassuring, he thinks, not for the first time, "I'll sleep no more this night."
  Resort town spreads beneath him, dark and silent. A patrol car swims sleepily through pools of yellow light. Sleep allows the still, green valley peaceful dreams.
  Autumn comes earlier to the mountain, and dreams turn, like the dry leaves fluttering downslope on the breeze.
  "And what of my own anxious spirits?" he thinks. Do they sleep? Do they dream, perhaps of stillness on a hillside? Does sleep bring them whispering nightwinds and muttering forests?
  Mistral washes over a silver moon, and murmurs through thinning branches, denying his dark dreamworld, but eventually betrays him to its keeper. Once more he is accosted by his fears, and faces their cold litany.

             Do you not see these
             Bright Entities?
             Can you not hear
             Their voices-
             A siren's song
             Compelling you poor
             Earthbound beings
             To cut your bonds
             With Life
             And be free?

  Fetuslike, lying in a hollow of cool earth, he stands over himself uncertainly. Multitudinous beckoning voices combine to form a sweet, sensuous music that speaks to his soul.

It is enough to know
something is out there-
living
and breathing
instead of just
the cold
blackness of space.

He moves one foot forward.
                           The other.
                                      Stops.
                                            Listens.

             Take the steps you must
             Down through the mist laden centuries,
             Over the ice covered sea
             Under whose surface surges
             The hot, putrid blood of
             The Infinity... life force.

  Another step. He looks back at himself, at his body, his shell.

To be free
to wander
among the atoms
and molecules
of Eternity.

  He turns, decided. Releases, floats through the gate. He flies among the chattering, gleeful phantoms; soars upward into the tunnel. The bright, white light awaits. It engulfs him, he engulfs it, they are one.

I, id, ego
the freedom to recombine
to be torn apart-
and formed anew.
As the old self is spent,
a fresh self peers through
the shadows, the
Life after Time.

  He hears, from far behind, the clang of iron on iron, and emerges from light

into void.
 
O, what a terrible mistake,
he thinks,

for the last time.

 

This one also comes from my university days. Hans was the friend I collaborated with on the life as a river delta poem I posted a couple of weeks ago. He originally wrote this poem and showed it to me. It spoke to something in me. I took it, and put my own words into and around it. My take on it changed the whole sense and feel, as well as the message of the piece. I don't think Hans liked it at all, but it's something I've always been pretty satisfied with. And we can now add Hans Victor VonMaltzahn III to my Internet invocation experiment. Are you out there buddy?