Cryptic in Triptych

Prologue

Streams of consciousness, for me at least, often lead me and us (where us read me) to interrogate, investigate and conflate the very fibres that make up the me and who that might be. Even when starting along, pulling the anchor aboard and setting adrift on poetic currents and craftship mastery, the still ebb and flow leads towards choppier waters of warring and debating, embracing and debasing ponderings on existence.

The Stream

Oh, to be cryptic, in triptych, elegant profundity this isn’t a stream, it's a river

no. It's a confluence of many, streams and rivers meeting, thrashing against one another

in grotesque and violent disharmony and stirring drama, foaming at the mouth of the vortex

Something like that, along those lines, mystical and mysterious in its inception and decimation

poetry is like slashing yourself, in the head, arm or chest, spilling out the blood and entrails

for all to see, read and feel, mostly metaphorical, analogising, but sometimes, just sometimes

the quill pierces the parchment as the knife bites the skin and there's a catharsis to behold

need not worry fellow traveller of this mortal coil for the overshare, that is why we cryptic

in triptych, that is why we subtilise in syllables the truest notions of our internal infrastructure

with jokes and jibes, delicious asides in the literary mix, the deeper, darker thoughts can be lost

but for the most microscopic analyst to beadily measure the makings of your being

does the moon represent the conscience and the sun represent the heart

does the wolf in sheep's clothing denote the reality behind the facad-ity

or perhaps, the wolf is a wolf and the cryptic in triptych is a herring, oft more than not

the herring is both a herring and a clue, a deception in diction

if though, they do, perceive the telling of your inner self, do not be alarmed

for they will not be laughing at you, but with you, in jovial disarray, sharing a tear of empathic solace

I promise you, Scout's honour and all that old chap, though you should remember, and please do take to heart

I was never a Scout and as a poet, a scribe of one of the noblest arts, aside pistols at dawn, that

you should never trust a poet, the highfaluting fiends of society, as poets are far too interested

in pain, suffering, moronisms and irony, too detained with a predilection for the grey of us all

to be trustworthy.

Still, if they point to and reach the conclusion of the very what is and what is not of your cornflake brain and desiccated heart, does it matter? Not much. For they have their words

And you have yourself.

once there was a man, maybe a woman, I forget that detail, who sought to have all the riches in the world, while casting himself free of the painful start in life he was given, due to a childhood of cruelty and neglect. he tried oh he tried to cast off the layers of sore-skin that poorly covered and protected his bullet-ridden heart, tried to let go of the past, without learning from it, without giving space for grief and suffered a life, full of riches beyond compare, but a deep chasm of regret and unsupported sadness and loneliness.

If ever there was a moral, I am sure you can decipher it, if not now, soon in time

Poetic mastery is but one glorious end to a life full of Wednesday afternoons, slipstream stone skimming, and treacherous storms that soak through to the Musculo-skeletal system we all are beneath skin, flesh, ligaments and more. Happiness and sadness, joy and grief, birth and death, all between, the sane and inane, the memory and nostalgia. Fear not a life of trouble, embrace it with two fists of defiance against that which tries to hold you down and beat you, enslaving you to the misery. Behold the misery, wear it as a badge of honour and cast it off into the pyre, if you must, or hold it close as a keepsake on a chain, as a reminder, a memory.

Never lose yourself or sense of yourself, for all you really have is all you really are and all you really are, is all you really feel you are.

An Epitaphian Epilogue

Have you ever tried to pen an Epitaph to and of yourself?

An epiphany in the dark that follows the petering out of the flame of the erratic irreverent one.

Here we stand, locked arm in arm, head to toe in ceremonial gowns (his words not ours) to pay all due respect to, well, I don't want to say man, but he is a man.

To a man who needs no footnote, really, but here he gets an epitaph befitting someone of great import, without the ance.

Let us not think of him as that man that did that thing with that alien and a crap-ton of alcohol. Paul Stewart is more than just Tektal's pal. He is more...or should we say was?

Did anyone check if he was still breathing? Perhaps he was trying to Houdini, held his breath and calmed his heartbeat.

Would he really to us?

Would he?

Yes, he would. Wouldn't he? A bit Bilbo really, isn't he?

He's far too "involved" and opinionated to be Old Tom Bombadil, even if he would love that association. Much more a meddler. More Merry than Samwise, Wormtongue more than... wait... not... he was not a Grima. Was he?

Whispering his dark and twisted scheming lines of deception to a comatose king? He is the Kingmaker is he not?

The man who would decree all that he could see, and it would be done as was said from his dry lips. His words would impact and could cut through the skin, flesh and more to the centre of your cardiovascular system and pierce through your beating heart to revel and reveal all that you hold true and dear, all that you feel and believe.

Shall he be remembered in triptych cryptic or as a confluence of the crashing flowing, rivers not streams of existence? Should we not all want nothing more than to be remembered. For who we are.

*

Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: This may be my last entry for the challenge (upgraded from the previous edit that didn't include the "for the challenge" bit lol. Thanks, Rob). Never say never or last, though. But I need to concentrate on other challenges, official and unofficial. But I enjoyed writing this. So. Here it is. I hope someone out there enjoys it. Often my work seems to touch on the same stuff. I guess we all do that...or can't help but come back to the same subjects, thoughts and ruminations. The image is one of my favourite painting by one of my favourite artists and I felt it went well, not least of all because of the triptych structure of the poem. The poem is also self-referential and meta because I can't but not refer back to me in most of my work. I shall put a link to Tektal in the poem and below. I missed Tektal and felt for a while he should make an appearance even in spirt.

I really appreciate anyone that reads and comments on my work. Always have and always will.