The Poetry of Mark Daniel Milbocker 
The Emerald Cave

Rivulets of damp moss pour from its mouth
dark throat descending at a reclining angle of
gravelly pools bejeweled with blanched salamanders
the forest detritus fading to cave-dweller bones
until all that remains are the naked draping 
veils of sugared calcite funnel cake spear spires
a heaven hovering just above fallen pancake ceilings
vaults leaning over to pinch the skull lurching
forward to emerge around the next precarious bend
a dogged molarity[1] slipping between rainfalls to
enjoy crystal ballroom oases before following the
next neuronic[2] tendril to an end or endless network
of sprayed kilroys[3] and hastily abandoned mud finger
cave art[4] venturing patiently until past footprints
no longer point the way and the deepest ledge 
by an unskipping stone reveals itself a cliff and
the cry of the downward torch echoes only shadows
nothing left but the skirt of the edge of the silence
cold and breathless warmed only by the passing skullduggery[5]
of the curious who struggle long enough to find 
that the ledge opens up to yet another long granite 
hallway with yet more dusty pocket room remnants
dejavu[6] bouncing off the mind's desperate wallmapping
here in these former beryllium salty sodapop veins 
if one pauses to chisel into the dark chromic crevices
verdant mushrooms would fluoresce like jaguar eyes
a jardin[7] of green lace veils suspended between six faces

the darkened mind soon spots the luminescent[8] glimmer
dangling[9] in the murky depths that lures the unascended
to tarry while the tethered yolk[10] ever dwindles yet 
for this moment, the thousand-eyed kamiokande kaiju[11]
awakens and from its anchored[12] precipice peers up at	
the festering ocean[13] above and its dissipating atmosphere
obscuring the fall of stars and the gunfights of constellations
then far across the oriental and occidental[14] faultlines
before inhaling the vastness of disinterested[15] solidity
and staring down into the radiating nucleations[16] of the
molten metamictic[17] mix of crystal scintillations doping 
the silica soup of strangulated gases and feldspar flow

a primordial[18] pool of razor clam realizations harboring
a pearlescent dream nexus of uncivilized[19] liaisons
progenerating strange unaborted chimerae[20] that prance
in the eternally emerald Eden dining on fallen crabapples[21]
immune to self-awareness yet bearing ancestrally[22] echoed
faces reborn with a grin of sharp isotopic[23] incisors
so we may taste of their unswallowed ruminations
and though the malus[24] fruit may drop from our lips
like eyes unscaled[25], the amazement crescendoes over the
tiny squabbles of good and ungood[26], and fluoresces
from wandering into the ultraviolet uninhibited unable
to shroud the radiation of unfathomable brilliances[27]

a shake[28] of the head realigns instinct to its prey
leaves the jaguar to sleep out upon its hydrothermal limb[29]
traces the vantablack[30] walls until they give up safe passage
and the squid-eyed can relearn to let in whiter light
and sublimate[31] the cacophony of colors into a solitary
heliotropic[32] yearning that governs those who fall back
to the surface soon to be unable to muster remembrances[33]
of the night of Narnian[34] play where lamb dined on lion
and the jester stood laughing at the loose[35] king's head,
it was an asylum[36] of metamorphic orgy-goers garbed in
moist evergreen[37] with paraiba eyes behind nacred masks
yet from this conquered maw, only mud-mute golems[38] emerge.
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©2025 Mark Daniel Milbocker  All rights reserved.