O Nigh! -The Desert Entourage Poem by Candice James

"O Nigh"… The Desert Entourage
© Candice James, Poet Laureate Emerita,
New Westminster, BC CANADA

Part 1. Somewhere In an Ancient African Desert

Dank dark drapes
drool from the black lips of night
and ooze onto a heritage mix
of scattered stardust colonies
banked along a river of illusions and unblessed desires;

the jagged sword of truth, slaying the blasphemies
of a treacherous moonlight,
is exalting a lonely rag-tag desert entourage
hallucinating and snaking
through the shifting sands
crumbling pyramids
and buried memories
that still live and breathe
in the hearts of dead Pharaohs and Queens.

The eyes of night flicker like fading flashbulbs
and engrave the ebbing twilight with purple signposts
to lead the weary day away from the wayward drops
of sunlight spilt in the wake of its early departure.

∞

Today,
the time of tectonic shifts is at hand;
rumbling underfoot.

The resounding echo
of African coastal communities
Crumbling and sliding
into the movable silt floor oceans
reverberates in deafening whispers and mendacities
carrying the cumulative,
cloyed and acrid scent of death
across the sparkling waters
to hover over the dunes of the Sahara
and fill the weary desert entourage
with the salty essence of age-old dreams
and serendipitous ghostly images
of those innocents who died
in the choke-hold of disingenuous sycophants,
despots and shylocks preying on lost souls

∞

Yesterday
the rags of the earth were full of life;
millions of pieces of silk
hung loosely in the winds of change,
blowing every which-way
on all the different levels
and revolving platforms
of failure, success, laughter, tears,
breath and death.

These ragged people are broken windows
in a stained-glass world of locked and derelict cathedrals
They stand hopelessly, watching delirious, rabid ravens
flying blind through a flock of white doves
adrift in a blur of pale blue sky;

then suddenly, these ragged urchins
cast their hooded gaze downward
at the heaving, time-disheveled
asphalt tread-mill they stand on
witnessing fractured birds of prey
falling from broken nests
through the piercing echo of a midnight scream.

The eye in the sky opens,
weeps and bleeds
in the name of something sacred
and a ghostly garden of blood red lilies is born.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

PART 2. "Somewhere on the Other Side of the World"

At the core of a circle of drums
natives are dancing a dirge
lamenting the fall of indigenous rituals
and the loss of sacred hunting grounds.

There are buffalo skins, moccasins,
medicine men and shamans
lost in a maze of mind tunnels,
underground caves and ancient artifacts.
There is a peace pipe
with wisdom's indomitable smoke
rising in rings that speak;
And there is an invisible cloud of thought
gathering the air in at its edges
into a pocketful of sleeping stars

In the core of the circle of native dancers,
the drums beat louder.
At the edge of the echo
between drum beats, pulse beats and heartbeats,
a man is hang-gliding
beneath a sail covered with locusts.

There's an explosion of stars in his head;
his arms flail like strands of crepe paper;
his lips are bleeding; unable to scream.
He sings his swan song in stolen silence,
in unison with the flap of his failing sail
and closes his eyes, denying all prayer
to fall into the abyss of death, unsaved.

On the other side of life, he has arrived
in a land of a million little lamps
and gleaming white-boards
that speak in clicking, multi-cultural languages.

He steps forward when he is called
and writes his name backward and upside down
with the whetted tip of an indelible pencil.
At the edge of the final letter
engraved onto the glistening white-board,
he notices a hazy yet familiar figure
emerging from the moving mist.

It is SHE!
She approaches him like a thousand-year ache,
a fevered consort, a long-lost lover
clothed only in a slowly dissolving
ribbon of rainbow dust
burning the chaff off the dark of his soul
with the fire in her red-hot eyes.

This is the moment he's been chasing
for a thousand million light years
down a hundred trillion pathways,
highways, trails and byways.

He's been searching before the seas were seas;
since lakes were only rivers,
and mountains were only mesas,
valleys and small rolling hills.

In the wake of weary exultations
and magpies chanting mad madrigals
the desert entourage edges ever closer
to the heart of the hallucination.

He steps through the dissolving white-board
into the moving mist.
She grasps his heart with her soul
and unshackles his earthly handcuffs.

Unchained, reborn and baptized in her fire,
his pulse runs wild through her blood.
His spirit separates from his body,
and steps into her beckoning essence.
They melt into each other
on the shifting sands of the Sahara
and rest in the dreams of the sleeping desert entourage.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

PART 3. God's Microscope

I peer through God's discarded, broken microscope
in order to see the stains left behind
from the tears of fallen angels.

In the corner of a cluster of clouds
a seer sips psychic tea; drains the teacup,
turns it over on the saucer and spins it three times;
then she waits for a pale violet colour to enter her mind.
She waits for a silent clock
to strike the midnight hour.

She picks the cup up and squints into it.
Inside the cup she sees the hearts of matadors
opening to the horns of the bulls
and heaven bestowing wings on mangled pentagrams
drawn and quartered in a crumbling marble arena,
ringed with maudlin mannequins
crying through mouths wired closed
with jagged barbs and stainless steel.

I focus God's microscope
and see the Lord's prayer written in gold
on a stark white pristine pearl tablet.
An old scarecrow is climbing a mountain too high.
Hot tears well up and fall from my eyes
onto the nape of its neck.

A high-pitched keening
pierces the thick atmosphere
An amethyst arrow
is loosed from the bow of a wandering angel.

If I look to my right
I see dead horses
flailing and falling in stark fields.

To my left
I see wreaths of blood red roses
floating in the darkness.
I walk on patches of neon grass
leaving luminous footprints
on the circular stepping stones of time.

I cut the hands off the clock of heaven
Cracking the wheels of fate.

The world and the sky stop spinning
and I swear I will never do that again;
swear I'll never do that again.

I walk gingerly on driftwood, seashells and agates
along the shorelines of life.
The waters of a looking glass fable
turn into a black onyx lake.
A circle of drums appears in the ripples.

I'm a stranger in a strange land.
I see shamans dancing with dragons
and lions laying with lambs.

As the sunlit fingers of day
claw open the curtains of night
I am still conversing with an adept
in the heart of this dream I am dreaming
In the soul of this illusion that's mine.


The magpies have fallen silent.
The ravens have landed.
The eye in the sky has closed and


"O Nigh" …
the weary desert entourage has fallen asleep.