Grander Compass (abridged above). Full poem here—

This we do, we humans—
we imagine a grander compass,
a glorious context for the quotidian
around us: passages to the underworld,
gateways to the lost monuments
of paradise.

~/~

In my youth, I gathered daisies,
jasmine dangling over fences,
dandelions and the dainty flowers
of other weeds, to make bouquets:
gifts for the inhabitants
of the overworld, because
I thought that all flowers
and all people were equal.

The gardens of the overworld
are manicured, and their mansions
are a fashionable grey,
but beneath their tidy lawns, yellowed
comic books, worn carpet squares,
and hessian sacks filled with the bones
of dead animals, birds, and fish
are buried.

In that forgotten subterrain,
broken bricks and tiles
lined with rotting timber mark
the pathway to the underworld.

Out now, a collaboration between the euphonic author Eugen Bacon & the somewhat author & artist Inconstant Light: Texture of Silence, a collection of illustrated prose poetry from Independent Legions; and Purpose of Reality, illustrated collections of poetry and stories in two volumes from Meerkat Press. Click titles for details.

art video

Grander Compass (no AI in the creation of this art video). Part of the Beyond AI Project, evolved by the Visual Evolution Engine, my software that seeks unimagined realms, with Cyclic Nonlinear Desaturation. Art and poetry also on Instagram.