Prelude to what….. I see you, / you / yes, come into my…… laboratory of alchemist mystical languaging. where arsenic spills into the whirlpool of thought and savage syntax shatter like glass on concrete. Where Titans clash their pens both spear and shield signifier and signified in eternal dance. What truths lie hidden in the battle's tolling roll call. Just what secrets do these conflicts yield to The death of their author. The heart bleeds blue and black ink. watch as the mind screams suppressed in a hyperreal silence. each drop a universe of unspoken pain. (marginalia: Is this poem writing itself? Or are we writing it together dear reader our souls intertwined in this literary labyrinth?) This poem is not here..... You are not reading this??? The author is dead!!!! Long live the text / a rising falcon from the fog-enshrouded mountain of lost.....intent..... Enter the picturesque scene--Hemingway / Fitzgerald / Faulkner..... State what is your Nature of Reality ~ We enter a smoke-filled Parisian café time t I c k s s l o w I n g giants three of prose locked in partisan war funny their Twitter feuds / would have broken / the internet a digital Colosseum of words scarred by trenches Hemingway his pain shows brutal, life's truth needs no metaphor; for you see I write. I am bleeding. It's u n i f o r m. his ice-berg theory floats in a sea of minimalist prose. sentences each a scar. each period. a bullet ~ lodged in memory. jazz age's golden boy / Fitzgerald / famed for flappers feuds with friends But deep in the night, green light still gleams Your spare prose misses the dream's importance; different are the rich: adjectives four-dimensional they have words shimmer like his vintage champagne bubbles effervescent yet, bittersweet Faulkner haunted / hunted by Southern Ghosts breathlessly adds words winding his river flowing endlessly weight baring carrying generations of sins unspoken and dreams unfulfilled / meandering ~ through the kudzu-choked landscape of memory and regret chaos in beauty and meaning bloom Like magnolias in the mist of breaking dawn sound and fury he's signifying everything choiring voices each chant a life a history a sorrow Is reality dark stark or a tangled poison vine..... Do we carve paths or lose ourselves in thickets divine T+ The truth ~ a chameleon changing with each blink of the mind's eye??? feel as the whiskey burns The typewriter clicks The past never dies each keystroke a heartbeat each sip a memory f a d i n g Hemingway's ice-berg theory collides, crashes, with Fitzgerald's green-light sight and Faulkner's stream in a whiskey-soaked sea of literary might The acrid smoke of Gauloises mingles with whiskey breath as egos large as their royalty checks are small clash in logomachy A battlefield of words where ink flows like blood and ideas are the spoils of war (Marginalia: Friends turned rivals their words eternal light This stanza deconstructs itself as you read Watch as the letters rearrange a provocative literary meaning) Step forward Ms. Woolf and Mr. Bennett Tell me of the Female Experience or lack thereof... room a sanctuary Virginia in deep contemplation Where stream of consciousness can flow f r e e l y The yellow wallpaper peels, revealing layers of self of woman..... of writer.... of human... A reveling tribulation of identity each layer a world unto itself world of Bennett's externals tightly wrought Clashes with her inner reality / her thoughts His characters trapped in amber beautiful but static You paint the virulent shell, she cries, quill in hand But miss the pearl of great price / that lies within The lighthouse beam sweeps 'cross the sand Illuminating what has existed always been once overlooked..... Her words a tide washing away the sand castles of convention He scowls / scoffs dismissively Your musings? Castles built on sand Structure Ms. Woolf is where true tales began A proper story neat and planned Is how the reader's heart we win His pen a mason's trowel building walls that both protect and confine In this end times of literary minds a larger war: Who defines what a woman's voice is her .. very .. core..... The battlefield: the blank page the stakes: the soul itself The clock strikes The pen scratches Time passes A room of one's own fills with unspoken truths Each tick a revolution each scratch a declaration of independence W O O O L L F F O O R M S This section shapes itself into a lighthouse guiding readers through the storm of words Feel the beam of insight cutting through the fog of prejudice When the page decides to turn with the wind a new chapter arises with part 2