An Invocation

Whom do I ask? Invoke?
To whisper magic in my ear?
With radiant Calliope hitherto
Distant crumpled stardust
Unable to breathe and emit
Much less lead and inspire
I turn to wonder what has
And shall – undeterred
Outlast our careless mire?

In which case, O Virgin Plastic
To you I direct my prolonged passage:

What in a score I have bemoaned
Carried its weight within unforetold
And kept my deluded commitment
I shall herein name, place, and crystallize
For if I do not nurture, love, and attend to this
I shall retain no honest other thing
Have enforced no necessary blunder.

Plastic – in hope of outliving as you do,
I shall invade and pervade as you prescribe
Store and sublimate my feelings inside
Lead with thine example as my guide
For why perish if there's more time than Life?
And more life than Good? 
And more good than Justice?
Which leaves room for trifling Hope
To subsume and promote little else.

Plastic – you immortal youth,
In my angry, renewed thoughts of you
And all you unwittingly promote
I supplicate and solicit you
With rare imbibed resolution
To gift me your corrupting force
The invisible spark of smokeless,
Deathless fire and the audacity
And will to entrap it for my device.

Endow me this blinding soliloquy,
A changeling spawn of stellar marvel
Because your common, uncanny matter
Which today is little loved and stored,
Tomorrow and elsewhere beams eternal
A weapon of forgetfulness abused
An unknowing tool of silent war
For what else shall exist beyond us?
Who is to witness our tidy reckoning?

Perhaps I am deranged to task you this
And yet still I wonder and implore
With little hope and abstained refrain,
When hardly it seems there might be to gain,
I take this cheap, hedonist's medium
Whose tools blaze vastly on public domain
Herein I steal, lie, and cheat – and yet do not sin
As mind's camera obscura trails this tale
In ways it cannot overtly commit.

Herein we present our mythic spin
In society of spectacle made great yet again
Where evil, better felt, hasn't faltered
And good, better known, isn't offered
I beg thee listen, undeterred as I
One colorful, blasphemous creature
Embark to expound the ways of men
Espy those obscured among women
And belie those permutations therein.

---

This excerpt was originally drafted for a senior writing seminar at Barnard College, inspired by ancient epic poetry conventions and the blank verse style of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. “The Invocation” is my interpretation of invoking a Muse (common in ancient Greek and Roman poetry), and serves as the introduction to my English thesis project Blackstar.