Spelunking

art by jason engle

Spelunking

“The true and determined writer will forge forward

with courageousness for the craft--but weaker writers

will give up and fall off the path.”--Daniel Belcher

In the pitch black belly of the night,

astride his loyal wooden desk,

within his writer’s roost, with

his research materials spread about

in piles, ideas scratched upon

brightly colored scraps of paper,

cement canyons became 

Carpathian foothills,

police sirens became 

crimson-haired singing Selkies,

liquid-silver delivery vans became 

teams of huge white horses;

his bushy eyebrows knotted into

a brutish scowl as his dancing pen

created mysterious messages between

grunting behemoths and wire-thin outlanders,

the warrior tribes, their faces & chests

painted with fierce red & black symbols,

their icy stares backed up by their short swords,

just as the paradigms shifted

and primitive flyers filled the urban air;

first pterodactyls, those fearful twig reptiles

whose wings were formed from skin

and muscle membrane stretching

from its elongated fourth finger

to its hind limbs, soaring fossils,

precursors of the dragons of legend,

whose rainbow scales became fur,

and fur became feathers so that

sacred white owls could burst

into purple skies,

while simultaneously somewhere 

on the birthing pulsating pages

heroes would rise raven-haired

to hack at injustice, at monsters,

at wizards & villains,

the sweating author struggling

and fumbling with the necessary

ingredients of romance, adventure,

betrayal & revenge among golden spires;

and it had to be something completely new,

while still laden with the seeds sown by others,

a fantasy novel complete with jazz themes,

existential plot elements, graphic sex,

a heretofore unknown language,

undiscovered secrets,

something 

his agent would adore,

something 

his wife would endorse,

something 

his children would approve,

something

brave, passionate, personal and perfect,

and of course, 

something 

ripe for the sober blue penciling

of the next dawn. 

Glenn Buttkus

December 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets OLN

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