Ten Masks of the Creatures from Before Time

1.

The gaps in broken glass and falling leaves

delineate the angles and the face

whose shiftings cannot blur, as wheel-spokes merge

or fighters hands trace vectors in the air,

but freeze each sectored movement in the eye.

2.

Once gleam, twice reflected telescoped gold,

like sun motes hum in the predators gaze,

the cagelike iris of the wolf that counts,

arranging constellations of sweet time.

Seconds celestial, quickly eclipsed.

3.

The cold, enfolded shadow blazes pale,

weeps molten moonlight tears that slowly pool,

a face of silver cast on umbral bone.

The winters smiling face on paling weal

and skulls slow-sung farewell to tidal sail.

4.

This masks packs fractured spiderwebs on glass

which holds the slow-constructed droplets eye,

gaze staring blankly from their inverse world

of harried girl-craft faces and a sky

shining like the ghost of a carapace.

5.

The skin here is finer than a fly’s wing

and folds around the features like that shield.

Expressions flick and twitch, a fly-leg prance,

deceptive weapons locked in silent wield,

a trance remembered dance it cannot sing.

6.

The eyes of approximate millions glare

from venom-spelling reptilian skin,

the snake of Nox (onomastically; Night)

a daemons tapestry of keratin

the legions chained up in her nails and hair.

7.

The smoke from burnt iron cores of blasted worlds

writhes, denser than the floors it seeps on, gawps

and talks, with words unfurled pennants of iron,

these tongues coronal to a boiling face,

sourceless, centreless, timeless as the race.

8.

Pinclutch of unclassifiable eyes,

Facial geography crystal splintered.

This mask is latticing the tongue in light,

igniting solar lips and bright gnathite,

bones; setting suns like shadows dis-interred.

9.

A hive of thoughts is twisting in the glass:

knots rays inside this anti-prism mask.

Omniphagic Gorgonite mouth, alas

Unstopped by its fettered portal casque

making lemniscate noms of space, and mass.

10.

This mask is the skull of the dragon, death,

who came before all days and noticed hours,

breath spilling out an absent numbing mist

bower, an architectured void that no-one drew.

This first masks fist is weft and screwed with power.