Narcissus-X Contemplates Chittering Hamsters

Enfilading swarms of presumptuous gerbils.

Ermine-tipped hamsters scurry from canvas to canvas: sniffing; nibbling; chittering unconscious clichés.

Narcissus-X will not swallow the bromides; permits platitudes to pass, disdained.

And yet it is such as these that seek the work of Narcissus-X.

Narcissus-X Contemplates a Century Passed

Decorative decoupage, Aubrey's sinuous lines. A century later, Gesamtkunstwerk's a gesundheit. Ardent efforts.

Mass production for masses. Massive mediocrity.

Abide intricate inadequacies of industrialized crafts Narcissus-X will not. For Narcissus-X is the fine, the pure, the clean, the dark: for in secret necrosis of millwork grows elusive, illusive, fungoid shapes of crystalline wonder.

Narcissus-X Contemplates Bleakly Banal Bandwagons

Bleakly banal bandwagons beckon. How easily Narcissus-X could step, step, step, step up to the side: climb in and be carted away. Lovely lucre.

But no! Narcissus-X is artist. Not for Narcissus-X the tawdry trappings of crass commercialism. To be constrained? To be directed? To daub and draft and draw in dreary, dismal, debilitating drudgery? No!

Narcissus-X is artist. Narcissus-X creates. Narcissus-X perceives, ponders, weaves dark threads among the gray.

Narcissus-X, paid for putting paltry pablum before the masses? Ha! No such demeaning insult will Narcissus-X heap upon Narcissus-X. For Narcissus-X is artist. And art must be sustained.

Narcissus-X Has Seen Beyond the Caverns of Crystal Oblivion

Gibbering gibbon, gibbous moon, Gibbons' tale of gathering doom.

Pallid perceptions, pellucid panes, views of conventional artists' names.

Rhymes to the right them, rhymes to the left of them, into the valley of fame rode the ten thousand.

Narcissus-X seeks not fame: Narcissus-X is artist, creator, perceiver. Narcissus-X understands - but Narcissus-X cannot expect understanding.

Narcissus-X must create: for Narcissus-X has seen beyond the caverns of crystal oblivion.

Enchiladas of Cretaceous Crustaceans

Enchiladas of Cretaceous crustaceans frolicked in Patagonia mire. Chitinous tortillas, wrapping chthonian inamoratas in polymeric armor.

Enceladus, writhing and wounded and buried 'neath mountain, whose breath is the source its fiery fountains.

Chthonic halls, whose barred doors guard - what?

Narcissus-X Gazes Into the Eyes of Sargon

Pure stereopticon dissolving one image into the next in planar display of temporal order. Time marches on, and on: one view succeeding another in cosmic cadence of pyramid and tomb, time on a loom, shining filaments of shadow and doom.

Impure stereopticon images of Assyrian tombs. Amenophis and his double stride through muraled lives, ka enduring after.

Narcissus-X ponders Tyre: island-city; purple cloth; Hiram's home; founded Carthage. Nineveh: Ancient crossroads; Sargon's library; Sargon's head. Bearded head, cast in bronze. Wounded eye. Does he smile?

Odin, they say, gave an eye for wisdom at Mímir's Well. Did Sargon do the same?

Does Sargon smile? Or is it pain?

Nineveh, Tyre, Harappa, Ye. Names remembered, places that were.

Manila, Seoul, Jakarta, Chicago. Names known, places that are. For now.

Narcissus-X gazes into the eyes of Sargon. They are not eyes. The head is bronze, the eyes are empty: dark portals to the void where Nineveh and Tyre drift, and forgotten kings sit on silent thrones.

Narcissus-X Rejects Artless Bastions of Banality

Philistine fears! Toilers amid interminable clauses and minutia! What cares the artist from whence inspiration springs, save only that the artist may grasp the clay, mold it, transform it in the likeness of what the artist's inner eye beholds.

Did the sonnet-slinger of Avon care, what preceded the pecuniary plays? Did he writhe at the thought that he re-cast carts into juggernauts, rolling down the centuries? Narcissus-X thinks not.

Narcissus-X rejects the corporate colossus, with its fears and foibles and fantasies. No more will Narcissus-X offer such purveyors of prosaic pablum the geistkinder of Narcissus-X.

A tale of ancient yearnings, hapless hope, futile faith inspired by a doom-star! And these mental microbes, these artless bastions of banality, have not the vision, the inner sight, the aesthetic sense, to take what Narcissus-X offers! No, for it might upset the scriveners, the banausic barristers, the crass councilors of caution.

Narcissus-X turns away from such tawdry trivialities, to face the night. Alone.