NEUROTICA ET CATASTROPHIA
By John H. Watkins
Est thou? that spits convoluted disasters forth from thy bejewel’d throne?
Whom seizes the tides, Fibonacci-spiral lolling in awe
as dying Alchemists lay supine ‘neath thy verde bowers
of primordial origin, stretching upwards to wake thou, thou sleeping god.
Whom seizes the tides? Fibonacci, why dost thy spirals loll in such awe?
Whom lies chain’d ‘neath Lethean oceans as dismembered deities?
S/He is of primordial origin, stretching upwards to wake thou, thou sleeping god.
Lovecraft, thy eyes bulge with Neurotica, petrified of nothing as it is of you!
Whom is it? Whom lies chain’d ‘neath these Lethean oceans as dismembered deities?
‘Tis I! Creator of symbolic scriptures, summoning words into flesh, Necromancer of words,
Lovecraftian-metafictional Mentat, eyes bulging with Neurotica, petrified of nothing;
Xenophobic dead-dreamer, I cast thy essence away!—Awaken not within my words.
‘Tis I! Creator within symbolic scriptures who summons words from flesh, the Necromancer.
I know no pity of humanistic divination; I cry tempests and torrents of catastrophic carnage!
Xenophobic dead-dreamer, I cast thy essence away!—Awaken not within my words,
they crawl with beings as real as thou, as real as any sleeping god.
But alas! I know no pity, no ether of emotion slips from these wounds, only Catastrophia.
These forests swell with labyrinthine brooks and creeks, satyrs and nymphs, literary movements,
crawling with beings as real as thou, as real as any dead-dreaming-deity—
Schwob did it, Borges did it, but I shall torch the linearity of historiography, drown out time.
No matter the anarchic tendencies, ‘tis but a mere reflection of a reflection of a reflection—
Est thou! that spits convoluted disasters forth from thy bejwelel’d throne of dying libraries!
And I, I lay supine, dying, wriggling as though borne to suffering ‘neath thy verde bowers,
awaiting a pair of wicked eyes, eyes patient enough to love and hate these locutions as I do.
About the Author
John Watkins has previously been published in the 2019 Edition of Colophon