‘He was pale even to the lips,’

Editor’s Note: Recently we featured some engrossing poetry from Ekstasis Amor while we waited for his novel to take shape. Now the shape-taking has begun, and the lyricist seeks feedback!

Tentative first chapter of ‘The Kleptocracy’. Comments regarding the intelligibility of this selection would be greatly appreciated!

The Kleptocracy
I

And live and died the…

Upon the verdant landscape I came to, ravaged by dream it seemed, or was it inferential confusion? Had I come to rest, in narcosis wonder, under this tree—atop the suddenly steep slope of the river bank above the water streaming with the quickened gleam of mirror glass which lacerates the improbable self—as a marginal guest of Socrates and Phaedrus, the coyly amorous pair? But here I was; pale in the earthen glare of the hastening twilight, remaining immutably suspended in the amber splashed sky.

Where lived and died the simple passions, slept under earth while shone the blazing crown beyond the hills. Repeating to myself the experience gazing over it, again and again. Downing the same addictions, I must fix or have the last Carnival pulled down, buildings and all, before me!

“Anatol, Anatol. What quiet you keep beyond the vow!”

Grasping for the voice he saw the indistinct words, branded with seraphic intensity, across his brow. Stupor had proffered this verse to his waking ear:

Melodious time hangs where
Place beholds unreality, subtracted space.
Gardens do not suffer nothingness, wherefore
Process yields inexorable doubt—
That unimaginatively positive statement ruled providence
From failure extant wounds tally a constant
Proposition of non-existence.

O, the clamour I have encountered! A cacophony to rival the raucous exertions of the masses poised to heave their indisputably, just wars:
“Here, we entrench ourselves in the throes
Of wild righteousness.”

Damn this weariness, incurring my disenchantment in such an idyllic surrounding as this! Why has my name ensnared my conscience?

“Anatol, Anatol!”

To this absurd refrain:

“And thus, nothing presupposed is not often seen.”