Surfing mind's midnight Sibylline sea
in my pandemonial Promethean quay,
caught in a creamy host, this countenance floats
-off the teary coast of my briny thoughts.
Once she waded pale down a ghostly vale
-kept a frozen stare from an elven tale.
Tossed to a tempest then this enchantress,
-strewn to spray, sanity no fortress.
"How she stalled the spumy steeds
storming her cherub cheeks!"
"How she fought kraken fears
from the rifts to the peaks!"
Neptune nabbed in the nooks in nymphal eyes;
silent seagull-cries swim the rain-sodden skies.
A Bragolin gleam on a Mona Lisa meme;
hanging loose on the brim, succumbs to a stream.
Cast to the thalassic tides of this mystery,
bobbing in memory's Venusian locks.
How this Seraphine gaze knocks in query-
on the Lethean tyranny of clocks!
Locked in a bottle "in an Apollonian deluge,"
truth on Pandoran shores shares no refuge.
Lost in a look "dabbed with a Babylonian gleam,"
what she'd screamed to say, now nothing than a dream.
Tossed to a tempest in her Seraphine scream.
Home now Avalon, beyond the creamy rim.
Lost on a gaze in an Olympian gleam.
This silent scream in my Sirenic dream.
27/04/2025
Hirondelle
This is on a live, Bragolin version of Mona Lisa I saw and have ever been haunted with: a version with eyes pooling with chagrin yet in a cryptic Seraphine chemistry. 'Bragolin eyes imbued with pain.' Yet, both serenity and desperate anguish which I have little idea as to why it was there pooling in the eyes had somehow managed to be in the same two pools altogether.
Ever since my curiosity had the better of me to steal a furtive glance at this person, who I knew wouldn't rather me to have seen them in the plight, I have been cast to a bitter mental tempest, rudderless, at the sporadic hauntings of the moment.
We were in a place with other people, and they were summoned to go out. When they came back, they went to their place as if wading in the blur of their eyes. Ignoring would have been unkind, yet seeing, not even watching, would have been heartbreaking. What would you have done? Walking out was not an option. You knew nothing -nothing more than you were the best person to help, but the last one to do so all the same.
My furtive millisecond glance was met with a steady poignant gaze, screaming volumes from across an unknown sea at me. It had been there for a time and I don't know how much it lingered afterwards. It was not meant to be seen but it was necessary all the same.
Not being able to help, my conscience has ever been in a bottle at a troubled sea with the deafening silence of the scream.
Human expressions are so subtle, or as far as we prefer to look at the world with blind imagination, they will always be poetic. The real question is about where we would rather live. Not in a rabbit’s hole, but not without emotions, either.
Some Cultural Notes about the Images I Used:
Giovanni Bragolin is the Italian painter famous for the haunting portraits of crying children he painted.
Venusian locks are inspired by Boticelli's iconic painting of the Greek Aphrodite (one born from sea foam) under a Roman name (Venus)
Apollo is referred to for his poetic prowess
Other mythological images include Sibylline for mystery, Promethean for the pain knowledge brings, Seraphine for angelic, Lethean for slipping into oblivion, Pandoran for chaos and destruction, Babylonian for forbidden nature of things, Olympian for divine qualities and Sirenic for troublesome nature of things.
