"Atlantis" by Ross Balcom

Atlantis

Ross Balcom

Her body was a drowned city.

In opalescent halls,

I lost versions of myself to the blue flame,

sailors torching themselves in holocaust of mute desire.

A neon obelisk bore her name.

Electric corals thrummed,

and towers rose from canyons lost in Quaalude slumber.

Schools of multicolored fish found a single voice that seared the brain,

that spoke in light,

a napalm rainbow.

"Temptation" Watercolor on Paper
By J. Artemus Gordon

Her skies,

her eyes.

Mirage that seized and emptied me,

that scattered my bones on far-off isles

and resurrected me.

I swam again her streets,

labyrinth of flesh and precious stone,

as her body remembered me.

A shark guarded her very breath;

its raven shadow sanctified her love,

solemn as tomb of elder gods.

Conch as big as whale blew a trumpet golden;

whorls of sound enrobed her form,

naked still to eyes entranced by beauty.

Her thighs,

her sighs.

Eros wove a destiny that captured sailor me,

waif of wreckage lost--and in her city found.

Love upraised a temple tall.

Her adorers gathered there for sacrifice.

No one died unwillingly;

all gave their lives freely to the glowing gong.

"Sound is the solution,

sound and the illimitable light.

We are delivered by the vast vibrations."

Atlantis:

I slashed my wrists upon her name;

I bled to death on throne of pearl.

Quoth the merman,

"Love unites us,

sea and shore.

Our memories live in sunken cities...evermore."

Poet's Notes:  Atlantis is the great attractor; we are all destined to drown and die there. Sex and death and a watery grave. This poem is dedicated to Davey Jones. I thank Edgar Allan Poe, whose influence is manifest in the final stanza.