epistemological metaphysics
of
rhetorical hallucinations

Michael Dickel

i
wind itself tries
to kick your brain in
with strident steps
to pull it out by roots

                            despairing
that you have stood up
to the scream

your ears humming
the buzzing bees
your mind drifts on

as you steer
narrow streets
skyscraper valleys

leaking mists of your
crocodile tears

Hallucinations i
digital landscape from photos
©2017 Michael Dickel

ii
apparently alone
one listens to the furious
sirens screech exhausted
and ready

                               to turn in all
directions ready to follow
the enchanted human
howl of need

desires follow close behind
eager to pounce and divide
the leavings among shredded parts

of you could anyone
ever have captured this
nightmare or imagined
before waking

each grain of oak
strains to escape
its cellulose walls
and burst its
          destiny

Hallucinations ii
digital landscape from photos
©2017 Michael Dickel

iii
realizing falling star
blaze glittering
wish-comet returned

elemental state
sears sky
tears seams

celestial imagination

each grain of oak
maintains its claim
on the acorn

despite blazing fires

each grain of oak
wishes for its right
the acorn birth

Hallucinations iii
digital landscape from photos
©2017 Michael Dickel

iv
but in sirens' howl
who can deny flames
oak's urge
to pull itself apart
to seek its double-helix

beginnings and beyond

who could cuddle
the wind in hands

dive for rocks
beneath a road

urge failing to act

strive to unleash
the archaic

                                    you
do not hear voices—

it is always my voice
this mythic urge

despair and flight

towards the dream
of that which is not
yet ever—

urging you toward

                   shipwreck

there is so much
to see there
amid torn limbs

who decided
these rocks
mean ruin

                     rotting
adrift in fouled
primordial minds

the wreckage
may resolve
our survival

a solution of chemicals—
hormones we call self—

who carved
the stone cliff
you plummet up

who worships

this oak relic
dug from Pharaoh's
tomb

Hallucinations iv
digital landscape from photos
©2017 Michael Dickel

v
your bones have faded

           bleached
now so white
now clear wisps

cloud steam ghosts
adrift from you

you revealed

each oak
tree wind-scarred
deciduous

along with desire
cloudy white bones
slip away lost

thoughts of law
decayed and tattered winds

it is time for you
or for me

to release—

my skin
burnt in this wind
hardened into bark

dash your head
on walls of rage
for there lie—

salvation

release
form you imposed
upon yourself

but these voices

me singing
in the empty shower

my voice
bee-stung
dead

Hallucinations v
digital landscape from photos
©2017 Michael Dickel

vi
my embalmed hands

in death throes
writing hieroglyphs

                                  reduced
to geometric structures
structure to molecules
molecule to atoms
atom to particles
particle to energies

all energy light

my form stains

                                   light
a shadow played out

yet
barely slowing
for this

how I remember
nothing ever was

imagine me
oblivion insisting on
worn paths—

perhaps to prefer
the power-over
of desire over
under-powered
release