The Lake Nocturnal

I sank like a submarine through the Lake Nocturnal

The lank billows of spidery green, skies clinging to my clothes

Through the humming aqua sounds of the radar glow

My lungs sucked in the water, extraterrestrial air—marvelous!

I sank to a prairie with sea grass rippling electric

Filled with safari fish, prowling whisker-faced

Titanic seahorses and swimming dinosaur birds

Then I spotted a man standing cloudy-shadowed

With a copper brow—furrowed and ancient

And a scowl pressed like smoke onto his murky face

And throbbing, black rhinoceros eyes

I then went on and chanced upon the duke of the mermen

In the termite catacombs of labyrinth castle

Where butlers buttled wearing octopus heads

And emerald chandeliers creaked as they rotated, like Jupiter

In the palace they were having a masquerade

Of sea nymphs and mermaids and Cyclopes

And countless other creatures, strange

And they floated and spun to the harpsichord waltzes

But across the room I spotted a man

With a rusty tin brow and a shadowy scowl

And a pair of black rhinoceros eyes

Later I went to the Capitol

A churning city like an animal cell, gravity dazed

By Victorian buildings upwards and downwards and ceramic streets endless

In an impossible network of neurons, groaning marble architecture

I met the Man on the Moon and various radio gods

And the mayor, whose name was

Something-Or-Other

Came across gilled seraphim-merchants and a pair of sirens, lovely

As well as Nereus and Proteus, with their barnacle beards and sandstone cheeks

Libraries and courthouses and oceanic burroughs stretched for miles

Above and around and below, glinting bright in the lake-light

Voices rippled and blossomed like molten hydrangeas shining

And waves of faces—alien, angelic—surged through the sidewalks

But then I saw him, his skin faintly gold

Burning into mine were his terrible, black rhinoceros eyes

I flew through and over Plutonic deserts and shimmering forests with

Mile-high trees stretching sideways to heaven

By caves that blew bubbles through their rocky gray lips

The clouds above my head were eerie islands submerged

Like the dark moss-haired heads of giants slaughtered

Past aquatic zoos and seaweed jungles: howling beastly cries

Over trenches Charcoal like Eternity

That roared with silence deafening hum

All the while under the sapphire sky, tranquil

Till finally I returned to the surface on a

Silvery ship, waving a sleepy goodbye as the sail rippled smooth

Breathing contented, my thoughts ether

But then shivering, suddenly icy, my skeleton chattering

As I recalled that spectral figure, his copper brow

And his terrifying two rhinoceros eyes

Nightmare-speckled rhinoceros eyes

I gasped as I broke the surface

Cold air/gold air splashing my face

I shook my head like a dog and dried off my clothes and

I whistled goodbye to

The Lake Nocturnal