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.

Narcissus-X Ponders Plutonian Patterings

Angora clouds weep, shedding darkly on crouching grass. From the roof, indistinct muttering. On the windows, tick-tick-tickticktick. A shade of memory from some Plutonian shore.

Narcissus-X hears pallid patterings, the mutter of - what? Is this how the Artist is heard? As some somber, tenebrous impression of voice, heard beyond a roof?

Narcissus-X in the Cubical Cubicle of the Commonplace

Narcissus-X embarks on a clerihew quest, rhyming and chiming: a commonplace jest.

Ipswich, Suffolk, suffering folk.
Folk music sways like a pig in a poke.
Shiny green ice cream, prunes in a jar.
Cantaloupe postcards from Vina Del Mar.

Cubical cubicle, dutiful particle,
Patternless carpeting deadening sound.
Taupe as an accent on putty-plane surfaces.
How can the workaday toiler endure?

Who would seek Vina Del Mar in Oxnard? Yet Oxnard's imposture, deceivingly laid in curvilinear streaks, assuages the eye with tile roofs.

Strawberry fields lie on Oxnard Plain, Narcissus-X prefers pistachio.

Narcissus-X Ponders, Penguins Stalk

Thoughts arise like drowned muskrats surfacing in a bog.

Empathetic Euhemerists skedaddle in chariots of fine wire, sounding horns of brass. Cornucopia of cupric kaleidoscopic cadences. Horns of brass, city of glass, its leader is fallen, forgotten: alas!

Penguins haunt forgotten lands. Grim penguins with loon-red eyes, harvesting toadstools of forgotten kings. Narcussus-X does not forget, Narcussus-X cannot forget. 'Forget! Forget! My kingdom to forget!' So might cry the prudent king. For uneasy lies the crown that holds the king.

In eerie silence penguins stalk toadstools. Flee, toadstools! Flee! But they flee not.

Narcissus-X Follows the Whispering Nostrils

Nostrils of Narcussus-X whisper silent songs of dirigible dance.

Do none mourn the mockingbird? Shall no one mock the roc? Mockable roc: flightless in physics, yet mighty in myth. And myth takes are likely unless the manual is thoroughly read.

Manuel! Servant of Fawlty, native of Spain, student of English and eager to learn.

To learn, perchance to think: aye, that's the rub. For in that learning comes sleep deep as death. You'd think they'd have better air conditioning in those classrooms.

Classrooms. Narcissus-X has known classrooms. Desks in columns under rectilinear array of acoustic accouterments in planar alignment: softening sound, dulling thought. Drone of the pedant, patiently plodding through pastures of preferences. Ostentatious offerings of overtilled fields of study.

The whisper.

Narcissus-X hears the whisper.

Hears the silent whisper.

Nostrils of Narcussus-X whisper silent songs of dirigible dance. Thought's dirigible dance carries Narcissus-X to - What?

No matter.

For Narcissus-X follows the silently whispered song.