Wyvern’s Anthem

Yue Tu 

Of what frames our olden times 
Were silvery winds and fruity symbols
Mellow mountains and tangy syllables 
Lulls of the sea, a pearl-like moon 
Honeyed vowels and dancing runes.

Once upon a morning’s poetry
A lunar rabbit flits about freely.

The Nightmare Artist

I begin this page from within the long white cloud 
Beyond the heavens I so tenderly yearned
A sage old Kauri tickles a fern 
Roused by the wind of destiny’s shroud

Gone are the solars of cream and light 
Surrendered to scald in the river of fire 
Gone are the drapes of heavenly azure, 
Surrendered to the rust of crimson dust  
Gone are the waves of colossal blue 
Surrendered to scars of fissure and fume  
Gone are the intellects of the winter ancients 
Surrendered to the kiss of the nightmare artist.

Meaningless Flight

I am a worshipper of bygone lore
A wandering note among history’s murmurs 
A flightless bird traversing soiled skies 
A meaningless flight among starless, bloodless nights.

I am the fruit of ancient future interlude 
Bearing machine arms and printed heart
A beating heart, living art  
And the eyes of an aquatic thing drowned.

Ocean Sunder

On the marriage of those islands 
Surfs the creation of three splashes 
First, North resonance awakens 
Unearthly shapes of strangely shallows 
In the South, sordid nexus awakens 
Dark seas, the Ocean’s eternal shade 
Finally nightmare awakens
Thunderclouds and thunder rain. 

Tipuna warned against digging the serpent’s treasure  
That would starve the rock of its native shimmer  
The monster quakes
Our verse vibrates
All for what - a pot of rot-filthed gold and hollow riches? 
A rot of mud-blotched things and carcass-fouled beaches? 

Inside the razored castle of rhymes 
Nests a metal-winged bird of night
Days through the window of memory, he’d spy 
The elephant, the shard, the marvelous eye 
And so fearing the prison of certainty  
The bird breaks free - towards liberty!

Seduced by the ever and ever of time, 
He dreams, he seeks the garden in the sky 
Yet he descries nor vista nor vastness,
Only a canvassed sun, an oppressing sky 
As well as the wailing of some language dead 
And the flame-scarred feathers of some fledgling floored
The arrogant chick flew murderously abreast 
The diurnal maestro, that inferno artist
So he was clawed by the dragon’s coming 
So he was tormented by the Ox’s circus. 

In his fall towards death and evening
The little one dreams himself a songbird Robin 
Who with natural flight could at last sing  
But only sing and pitily sing
Those tattered songs of memory
Where that window beyond heavens the finest bough 
Where that castle for thousand years the kindest home. 

Then under some midnight child’s prayer
Of life in death, of resurrection and tears 
Bird wakes suddenly upon a starry hour 
To the rain and chimes of the insomniac gong 
Turned a real robin with flesh and flight 
He lifts off, wings off from the western wharf  
And soars towards the garden in the sky 
Yet there he finds only the mangled reflections  
Of a brown songless wingless bird
And a twin pair of metal wings shattered.

Absent a melody the little one flies 
Back to the razored castle of rhymes 
Whose door has shut, heart has cooled 
Leaving the robin locked outside cold 
And peeking through that window of memory 
He catches sight of some other more grateful passerine. 

Little robin without a bough
Little robin without a home 
Little robin suffers as a daylight robin 
Trapped inside the forever nocturne of memories haunting.

Robin bids one last look at the window, the passerine 
And a final verse of parting poetry 
Goodbye, goodnight
My castle in the sky 
To the dusky seas I fly, 
Hoping in future memories I drown.
May my songless tears, my wingless soul 
Rest under the seabed indefinitely so 
Then may the darkish oceans lift,
Descend rays of light, a paperless sun 
Chimes of a new morning song 
Where wing in wind, morning and robin 
Shall chase once more the bishops’ dome 
And set sail into the city of future memories past…