an other odyssey

utter me a riddle, sibyl

of how before there were lands, there is earth

and how after there are nations, there is ground

with trembling voice and slurred speech

sing to me of the friends in time

with land no longer

displaced amongst the nations

seeking the spread with a sense

of their finitude, their timeliness

wise woman, you whom the kings hear

though they do not listen

teach me of the many forms of scattering

less like spores carried in the wind, transplanted

more like ashes, blown away by ether, pulverized

not as diaspora

the diatephra, spread across the earth

and resting on its grounds, they relinquish

the fetish of animation, and disavow

the violent desire of the seed

to use the ground as a stage for growth

they disperse, like all remainders

of burnings great and small

rather than rise up

from the ground and away from it

their remnants treat the earth

with minerals and acids

an elemental homeopathy

of an unthought after, after

and so those friends who come to know themselves

in their ongoing loss and flickered awakening

as ash-creatures, find the promise

of fragmentation and fateful transformation

into unknowable groundliness

much more realistic, than

the implausible inheritance

of any of the worlds this world imagines

or the desperate renewal

of any of the worlds this world has forgotten

the friends set off on a journey

seeking sites intimate

with the secret burnings of the earth

they desire pyroclasms, they yearn for

eruptions, they declaim

in broken translation, the words

of an ancient tongue once written

by a modern poetess:

“it is I who have saved this forlorn island

from the revolution of the oceans

and the explosion of the mountains”[1]

they travel to transform

their surface-relations

to embrace the gravity

of the depths

for the ash within creation desires

its material anamnesis

theirs is a primordial drive

towards volatile portals

gaping holes where the ground yawns

and the palatine pontiffs declare mundus patet!

suddenly exposed, sky and flame

exterior and interior remember one another

and concede, humbly, brutish

that they are not equals

upon landing, the friends forego the bustling port

instead winding up whitewashed streets

draped in paper flowers fuchsia

richesse and leisure, all vanities

they ignore the imaginary voices

beckoning from behind the bushes

to finally arrive on the other side

a hidden bay with a view out

onto the parallel islands, cones of fire

obsidian cliffs cut sharply into the waters

and tremendous gypsum boulders

are stacked on the stony shore

as the sun drives its chariot

to greet purple-eyed dusk

reality becomes woven, textured

entangled with fantasy, shimmering

with the veil lifted

the cartesian eye/I is banished

and the world performs, ceaselessly

they see an untitled opera

in a circle of neolithic stones

boys in silver lamé bathing suits

atop pigeon rocks, go-go dancing

platforms jut out from the sea, in the round

an archaeo-environmental exhibition

tempts them to join in

their elation grounds

them upon thrones of wonder

tonight, they shall be

guests of honor

comedy yields to tragedy

as the silver-haired moon rises

and their vision shifts to night

the flickering lights skip

and lengthen across the waves

this is cinema, now

featuring the saga of sea peoples invading

or escaping, a difference that matters

these great waves of displacement

lead back to climatic shifts

or, jump cut to

when the sky gods arrive

and slay the chthonic goddesses

a pantheon supplants another, somewhat diffuse

spirit-world

or, cross fade

spoiled children rebel

inside their mother's earth-belly

cutting her open and

exiling her waters to the below

midnight is for prophecy

perhaps they are already asleep

shrouded in darkness, there is no more to see

but their ears shall listen, even whilst dreaming

in this hour, the messages are sporadic

orange light glows in the distance

electromagnetic transmissions

tectonic activity from the inside out

now the ground is radio, its pulse is techno

its speaker, a late-night host

better known as the oracle

her utterances are the trace, a liminal cord

tying the times between comings and goings

this is a mediterranean trope

they’ve heard it before

the memory of catastrophe

awakens them towards a togetherness

it is twilight, the night is passing

a smoke pillar rises from the sea-horizon

the earth likes to party, too

blowing clouds

there they are the friends

in the middle of it

on the islands of the keeper of the winds

chasing after another tempest

beware the inevitable odyssey

that comes with imprudence

hark, the day breaks, glorious sun

triumphant with a kiss

upon dawn’s rosy cheeks

on that very new day

in a parallel timefulness

that which infuses a moment

with the possibility of myth

two brown boys arise, revived

they flirt with sunstroke

they chase the rising light

fire worshippers addicted

to sniffing out the fumaroles

their loins clad in leopard skin

their bronzèd backs moistened

with tap water mists

they climb the cliffs

they wish to go higher

to burn up from the heights

to scale the island

transformed into a tower

and to rise to its peaks

they drop to their knees

– "bitch, let's crawl!" –

animal, devoted, a delirious challenge

the beachfront theatre is now behind them

their borrowed wings about to melt, they howl

turning their gaze towards the sun’s zenith

they see a volcanic being

rising before their eyes

like a geothermal hard-on

bursting out of the blue silk-boxer sea

aroused and aflame, their spirits

shout declarations, war cries

freedom songs, joyful and terrible

on repeat and in unison

they keep the rhythm

of their heated praise

staccato, its refrain offers the ground

incantatory drumbeats, the heat rises

all quite suitable for the respective children of the sons

of ottoman warriors and luri mountaineers

and the respective children of the daughters

of herceg-nobility and median merchants

they have reached the highest point

they erupt in longing, they look lovingly

to the geological smoking rosebud

how it glows from the inside, they think

"if only we could melt our fists

into the bowels of the earth!"

they wish to throw themselves

into the crater, ravenous maw

there is no greater honor

than to be swallowed up

instead, they leave a gift

of dried petals crushed against pumice

soaked in nitrates, just enough to ignite

and a final, fearful pressing

of concentrated neurotransmitters, a spark

for the fire that eats no food

and drinks no water

any high comes with its lows

and so the friends come down

from the mount and

with heavy feet and bent backs

drag themselves to the port again

a boat awaits to rescue

the stranded from the storm

they sail off at night

broke and sullen, lusting after

the duke of milan, what island was this

the lair of unseen sycorax

what war was it, adrift

and afloat, a mood, really

they ask questions of language

the arabic that used to be spoken here

is now there, off the coast

a carthaginian threat

caliban's tongue, perhaps

in the slang of the young arab men

who cross the pillars of hercules

smuggled in the freighters, youthful

lust for a better life risks damnation

to wander, it is too dangerous to return

an expression for europe is l'harq

"the burning," a cruel jargon

that carries searing wisdom

for those who steer past calypso's isles

must be ready to burn their past

their history, their identity

in this new, northern land

that can never have enough heat

so it burns the world to make a home

the friends part ways, the path splits

they seek the sibyl

though they do not know how

to find her cave

and so, one tries to arrive

from the backside

like a true sodomite

marching up the ruinous shore

her rocky crag looms in the distance

charioteers thunder by, showing off

impish men hide in the dunes

lonely, hungry

and sea lilies spring forth

from the pink plastic sands

the one poses, waving a makeshift wand

to cast a nude silhouette, a long

gesture of the hand, another snapshot

bending over to stick a blossom up the butt

an erotics of journeying

the other skips such ordeals

sips a cocktail at the beach bar

goes for a swim

then takes a taxi

and arrives first

an ecstasy of convenience

the friend is there to greet

the friend who arrives too late

they kneel and beg the temple guards

for leave to enter

a rush against the sunset

they run, breathless

deeper and deeper

down into the underneath

they descend through tessellating archways

a prism of undulating triangles

cut from monolithic stone

framing their movement

as if it were a fall

until there, in her deepest darkness

a lair of renown, was it here

where she burned her books

was it here, where she moaned

her mysteries, such was the sense

of communion they felt

as the night-bound sun turned its final corner

dropped over the edge of the sky

its last rays penetrating

their underworld through

holes in the ground

piercing their eyes, a temporary blindness

this was an interior realm

where cavernous, curtainless windows

faced the earth’s core

to receive inner illumination

soon they could see again, without seeing

here they could die, teardrops

shimmer in their diamond eyes

they supplicate in silence

brushing the ground

with their hands, throwing up dust

they bury flowers and hug

the cool walls of her crypt

their bodies are poised

to transform into abysmal carbon

fearless deposits, an offering

to the aeons, their mouths

open to reveal a neverending

depth of voice, only then

do they acquire the courage

to ask her

[1] Forough Farrokhzad, ایمان بیاوریم به آغاز فصل سرد

“Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season” (1963); author’s translation

Artwork by the author / paper burns, residuals plus negative, monotype print, zinc, resin, and carbon ink, 297 x 490 mm, 2022