Grandiosity

The ocean looks so serene in every scope of my scene,
So my steps lead me forth, and I so gently now wean

my weary eyes and thought from my sorrowful lot

Into this never ending nor caring lullaby gleam.

And now out from the depths of this "me" I do dream.

I walk straight out on the sea with feet tender and shy,
Stepping long strides atop merciful tides,
Seeing nothing but blue from all angles and sides;

And soon I find myself at sea with not a thing but the "me",
With this lonesome, this torturing last mystery.

Devoid of pain, stripped of sorrow and scoured of stain,
This blank slate is marked now by the falling of rain.

The rain is like the tearfall of weeping long kept within,
With a tormenting trickle that is fought to begin

That then bursts and breaks free till it hurts like it bleeds;

And I soon stand in wet rage stabbing hard at the sea.

The storm heaves and throws waves that scream in their crashes

As loudly and mightily as the wind itself blows;

And the rain beats and stings and at my face lashes,

As these tears turn to a powerful hatred that grows.

For this is all my deep anger and my trembling dance,
As I call now to the waves that at my fist enhance;
I swing them into a mindless, mean fiend-crashing dance

of a swirling, insane, unstoppable vortex,

Of the mightiest maelstrom whose center I chance.

And this anger is at the very depth of the sea,
This anger is at the empty heart I call "me".

And the maelstrom's center never falls but it rises,
As I stand tall the master of all that amazes,
Then the pit far below me,

sucking in all the sea,

Sucks from me my flesh that is not really "me".

I'm a fully fanged wolf — warning flails from my eyes!
On the tallest of thrones in the highest of skies.
Neither humans so haughty nor beasts full of cries
Can nearing me fathom my alien size!

Then I rise on up high and I howl like a bear,

Through sound so resounding in power abounding,

With such a long frightening, terrible stare

That the stars and the moon shake and tremble in air!

As they fall from the skies, each one bursting it dies;

I steal the eye of the eagle, the mane of the mare;

The wind itself moans lest I roam where it flies,

The heavens themselves have been robbed of their glare!

And the only light that stays bright through this fantasy flight

Is from the eyes of the wolf that gleam fast on the sea,

Whose full mighty force was spent in this vain fight,

A fight the beast used to cowardly flee.

To escape his own fear of the last mystery,
To escape his own fear of that thing he calls "me".

[1992?]