Upon the throne

Of barren rocks

With wind-swept wrinkles etched by waves,

Of abandoned branches

Crumbling with a tap,

Of shadows cast

By breathing rays of leaf-colored light

Emanating from a center

Clinging to a humble cliff,

I sat,

Gazing out into

The simplistic veil of a realm unseen—

The dancing silhouettes of a caved prison,

The last vestige

Of a frontier unmarred

By the noisy disillusion

Reigning over the world’s mirage. 

And in my chained freedom,

I wondered if a full picture—

That endless aesthetic panorama,

A stroke in the masterpiece by a faceless artist,

May unravel 

Like a rolled-up

Dusty rug,

So that beneath the grandiose splashes of paint,

We may behold

Whether there is

A miraculous canvas

Of all-encompassing nothingness—

The tucked-away facet of creation,

Bone-chilling

                      Unknown,

                                      Transcendent awe. 

This moment,

Rearing up like rocking waves,

Spill into the edge of my throne,

Then float past,

Stranded like a droplet

In a stubborn current

That only knows the way ahead.

But perhaps

The droplet dissolves

Beneath the peaks of each ripple?

Perhaps under the unknown depths,

I may glimpse the closing line

Of a poem unfinished,

Be me before there is me,

                                          Or us?

Or perhaps, in this daring fantasy,

The many droplets fuse into one

Pulsing orb of gentle flames,

Warming, soothing

The zig-zagged highways that

Lead to life?

In the blurry distance,

I see solemn islands tethered by steel,

And all of heaven and earth—

Unmoving blots of green paint

Settling upon glassy tranquility glittering gold—

Dances to the unchanging rhythm

Of paradoxical dynamism

In a matrix of unknown bounds

Ordered by rigid, unseen rods.

But perhaps

A reincarnated Pangu

May mold the world’s coordinates

Into a bloc of bouncy dough,

Pinched together,

Folded in,

Stretched out,

Looped around,

Until reality takes its shapeless shape,

Transcending into a timeless blur?

As the modern warriors of science

Leap onto the shoulders

Of the Newtonian Goliath,

Slaying the unchanging dogmas

Of an ever-changing universe,

I sat upon my throne

Of rocks

Branches

And leafy shadows,

Gazing into the image

Of an uncharted metaphysical realm

Basking in all of its afternoon glory.