The House on the Rock - Topic Powered by eve community

Well here it is. Pretty much the finished article barring stuff I spot introduced due to my bad proof-reading. All of the poems were inspired by the House on the Rock. SOme are more straightforwardly descriptive than others.

Note I can't get "The Mikado and the Unseen Orchestra" to display how I wanted (in two columns) so I've had to compromise. It should be two spoken poems read simultaneously - one in normal type, one in itallics.

Enjoy.
And feel free to comment.
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The House on The Rock

Come up to the House on the Rock.
March by to the tick and the tock of the clock.
Come to marvel at mysteries, or simply to mock,
But come, nonetheless, to the House on the Rock.

Enclosed Infinity

There is no end to the line,
To the infinite, imprisoned, unchanging design
That stretches beyond and before and around,
Between Heaven and Hell, between sky and ground.
There is a world I can see,
But the glass holds it separate from me.
As I press my face hard to the cold
And watch this reality as the stories unfold,
The vertigo viewpoint succeeds
In feeding and watering the paranoid seeds,
And I think, far away, I hear music that plays
Metric and measured, a stately and slow polonaise.

Step into the House on the Rock,
Where time does not rule, there's no tick, there's no tock
Just the shifting and subtle illusions of shock
When you venture inside, at the House on the Rock.

What kind of person would live in a house like this?

Was it built? Did it grow? Did it just appear so
Overnight,
One night?
Did it spring from the Earth, did the Angels give birth
To this sight,
This delight?
There's a taste of the East, and a hint of the Beast
In the gloom
Of the room.
There are shelves filled with books in the crannies and nooks
But for whom,
Do they loom?
There are eggs made of stone, there are figures of bone
In array
On display.
There's the sound of a band but there's no mortal hand
Here to play,
For today.
There's a Tiffany lamp but it carries a stamp
There to show,
That it's faux.
It's a box of delights, It's a trick of the light
But the glow's
Getting low

What kind of person would live in a house like this?
Who'd dance with bogeymen down on the sharp precipice?
Who'd haul rocks to the top of the mountain and do it by hand
Just to see if the mountain would turn out the way that he'd planned?

Was it built? Did it grow? Did it just appear so
Overnight,
One night?
Did it spring from the Earth or did Nature give birth
To this sight,
This delight?
A man stands in the rocks. He's surrounded by flocks
Of strange birds
It's absurd.
All this bric-a-brac shines in a thousand designs
Till we're spurred
To find words
For the things that we've seen here and there and between
But there's more
To explore.
It's time to be going and we march on unknowing
To the door
The new door.

Come back to the House on the Rock,
To jewels and the gems and the schlock
To the weird and the wonderful stock.
Come back to the House on the Rock.

A collection of collections: Part 1: Hemispheres

In his house he had a case full of tiny Universes,
Of frozen explosions, of luminescent flowers,
Of slices of time and spirals of space,
All captured in hemispheres of glass.
He showed them as a child shows a mayfly,
Captured in cupped hands, precious and fragile,
Eternity trapped in a moment of grace,
Undying, unchanging, waiting for the world to pass.

A Collection of Collections: Part 2: The Golden Age of Steam

In his house he had a room where motion was caught
Behind a window in the wall, upon a shelf,
Where it became forever the Golden Age of Steam,
And the liveried engines stood in a trackless waste.
He showed them as a young man shows his car
Exuberant and boastful; this is mine, this is me,
See how I have taken hold of the dream.
See how I have tamed and conquered reckless haste.

A Collection of Collections: Part 3: Looking After The Pennies

In his house he had a wall where everything was safe,
Where the tokens of pecuniary hope were held
Inside minute houses and animals and heads,
Inside the tin-plate mechanisms of desire.
He showed them as an old man shows his treasures
Reluctantly, protecting them with the tightest irony.
These toys that should be holding are held instead;
Symbols of acquisition turned to objects to acquire.

Come along now through the House on the Rock,
Praise it in whispers, raise voices to knock
Stare at the strangeness that stands chockablock.
Come along now through the House on the Rock.

The Devil's Carousel

I will pass by the mouth of Hell
I will not ride this carousel
I will not heed the tolling bell
I will pass by the mouth of Hell

Above the circling angels see
The carnival that's tempting me
But I remain apart and free
While still the circling angels see.

The fabulous, fantastic wheel
Turns and turns to still reveal
Monsters strange, deformed, surreal
Revolving here upon this wheel.

I have no need of surpliced priest
For though I watch each prancing beast
That Hell's menagerie released
I do not need a surplus priest.

The fabulous, fantastic wheel
Turns and turns to still reveal
Monsters strange, deformed, surreal
Revolving here upon this wheel.

I will pass by the mouth of Hell
I will not ride this carousel
I will not heed the tolling bell
I will pass by the mouth of Hell

Keep going on through the House on the Rock.
Stroll slowly along to the end of the block.
Pause to consider, rest to take stock,
Then keep going on through the House on the Rock.

Streetwise

It's a small town in a bottle
In an everlasting twilight
Never quite escaping daytime,
Never stepping into night.
All the people have deserted
Their positions and their posts,
And the sidewalks and the storefronts
Have been left to twilight ghosts.
The horologist stepped out
Of his allotted time and place.
The clocks he left behind him
Are fully wound and keeping pace.
The apothecary's gone
From his powders and his potions,
From his pills and panaceas,
From his liniments and lotions.
The barber's chair stands empty,
The porcelain is clean,
No blood stains mar the razor;
The shop remains pristine.
The fire truck's gleaming pumps
Are polished up like gold.
The firehouse dog is sleeping.
The fire-bell's never tolled.
In the sheriff's office
Stands the Head of Joaquim,
Pickled in a jar,
Looking shrivelled, old and grim.
The picket fence surrounds
The house at Main Street's end
And the visitor with half-closed eyes
Can silently pretend
That the past is trapped in amber
And this is somehow real
Not a fantasy of history
Built solely to conceal.

Small Leviathan

Carved on the tooth of a whale,
A whale,
A tiny perfect evocation
Of the leviathan.
Minute whaling ships
Surround it
And smaller still
Deck-bound harpoonists,
Have their arms back,
Trapped in the moment
Before the motion,
Before the battle
With the beast
Whose tooth
Begins the tale anew.

The Mikado and the Unseen Orchestra: a poem for two voices

It begins,
It begins,
The faint tinkling
The slow drawn bow
Of prayer bells.
On violin strings.
Mannequin eyes
Mechanical
Move in motionless
Movements by unseen
Faces.
Hands.
Gongs sound,
Cello
Strings vibrate,
And viola,
The wu-man and the pipa
Timpani and piano
Join the mix.
Join the mix.
A crescendo builds,
A crescendo builds,
A rising cascade of sound
An emergent symphony
And fury.
Of melody.
The Mikado
And the unseen orchestra.

Come down deep in the House on the Rock,
Where the darkness holds sway, devils mocked
And it seems that your escape is now blocked.
Come down deep in the House on the Rock.

Inferno : Part 1

These monstrous engines drive the world;
The boilers, shafts, propellers, cogs;
The pistons, blocks, the pits of flame.
Around these loathsome shapes are curled
The paths where sinners creep like dogs –
Stripped of dignity, of pride, of name.
This inferno is the engine room,
the very base of base desire,
The foundry where all sin is made
And loosed to call all men to doom
And eternity within this fire.
Here are our weaknesses displayed.

Voices in the Void

And yet…
Even Hell must have light and shade.
Without virtue there can be no sin
And so the engines sometimes pause and fade
And still for a moment their clam'rous din.
So as the engines fall silent, one by one,
Then the void is filled with voices wailing
And when the tumult is, for an instant, gone
It might seem that even Hell is failing.

Inferno: Part 2

But then…
The hum begins again, the shafts resume their turning
And the sound of mighty organs accompanies the burning.
There is thunder in the darkness, an inferno in the hole.
There is everlasting pain in every corner of the soul.

Move up through the House on the Rock.
Follow the sound of the bleat of the flock.
Listen again for time's ticking clock.
Move up through the House on the Rock.

The Dolls' Carousel

"Oh Mother! Aren't they a dream?"
I hear a child whisper.
I do not agree.
This carousel of dolls makes me scream
At the frozen fleshless faces,
The eyes that do not see,
Following without moving,
Fixed on me.
I feel my flesh creep and die.

"Oh look at that tiny one! Divine!
Such gorgeous clothes,
So petite, so sweet."
It isn't sweet, I can't define
The way they make me feel,
Their rank and file, perfect, neat
An undead, plastic army
Of incomplete
Soulless homunculi.

Step out of the House on the Rock
And back to the world of the clock
Where time flows once, tick and tock.
Step out of the House on the Rock.

Dragons in Daylight

I have escaped into morning
But even now in daylight
I still see the dragons
That haunted my darkness.

Dream of the House on the Rock,
Of all that was seen, and all that was not
Of all you recalled and all you forgot
Dream evermore of the House on the Rock.

Coda: Things I Never Saw

I have walked inside a stranger's mind
And seen the flotsam left behind
As the tides of sanity receded from the shore.
I have felt the things a stranger felt,
Played the hand that he was dealt.
Was this a simple game of chance?
Was it really nothing more?

I never saw the circus clowns.
I saw no sceptres, saw no crowns.
I never saw the planes and cars,
The butterflies and killing jars.
I heard no music boxes play.
They must await another day,
For if I could look for ever more.
There would be things I never saw.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
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