Patrick Allen

Diving

Immersed, looking down, the spiked fingers of black rock are speared by fractured splinters of crystallized light. Webs of seaweed form tactile screens, gloved hands become enmeshed in, pushing aside the clinging fetters of undersea.  Diving deeper encourages visions.  Plankton grows as an extra eyelid on the eyes of sailors lost in waves. Conger eels cling to the rhythms of the tides forming mastheads more real than the sunken ships that litter the depths like nightmares multiplying within the bones of sight.  Prehistoric monsters cling to bulkheads, emitting crea­tures like men of war, tentacles screaming out, smearing the looking glass with a poisoned scum.  Lacking air, the dream floats inward touching spinal nerves, tracing veins in the sand of the hemophobic diving, tugged downward by an intractable, embolic weight.

 

 

Heads

Featureless as dream objects: crystalline, sharp, the light at the edge of sight.
These imperfect busts, molds, encased in marble, struggling, shrunken, dried,
displayed in rows on sagging wooden shelves,
Dreamy timeless, electric, bloodless, screaming and scheming.
Always scheming.
Bald and smooth, empty inside but vast as outer space.
Severed ones: prototypes, models that must be broken open, shattered
their black holes released.
Death heads with wooden crosses and a wandering gaze.
Iconic, carved in the image of a mad god and worshipped by his minions
with a passion once begun there is no letting go of it.

 

Either/Or: The Movie

First:
The Title

Either/Or

in white letters on
a field of black

Then:

The Credits

based on the book
by S. Kierkegaard

 

Then

The Soundtrack

by John Cage

Followed by:

an unraveling reel
of undeveloped film

accompanied by
silence

 

 

Patrick Allen is an occasional poet and reviewer.