The Arkanean

The Arkanean

I

All those left
On the face of the land
Boarded the great Arkanean
The living city
Grown, cast, and built
To sail the vast
Realm swallowing sea

II

A world once consumed
By massive, teeming cities
Industry, advancement
Progress
Light-shedders
Towering skylines eroded
Evolved into sinking deserts
Ranging edge-to-edge
Spilling from every crumbling cliff
Roving bands
Fueled by desperation
Traversing once lush forests
Now petrified, rocky, dead
Dry inland sea beds
Bring cracked feet
In contact with
Fossilized creatures
Flippered and webbed

III

One day, the sightless seers
Collected all the sobbing tears
Into foggy glass bottles
Blown from
Granules of sand
Gathered
As the penitent poured
Like lemmings
Into the vibrant
Evaporating azure expanse
The dying, acidic land
Driving every madman
From the scorched
Cracked clay
A ritual was poured
From the heart of every
Healer whom life continued
To adore
Their song shook the ground
Broke the heart of the sun and cloud
Finally causing
Beads of condensation
Heavy and wet to collect and
Plummet from the firmament
Drenching those who had
Gone without their entire
Parched lives

IV

Rejoicing lasted for weeks
Rippling puddles
As their heels
Rhythmic pounding hardly ceased
Subtly forming into
Shivering lakes
Crowds breaking out
Into clamorous song
Thunderous dance
Giving thanks until the
Droplets failed to roll
From barren land into
Teeming sea
Saturating the repellent ground
Every low point eaten up
By the rising tide of
Reality

V

Every available plank
Every once-living branch
Reclaimed
The fledgling green
Scraped from the
Newly drowning plane
Transplanted
Shaped and formed into
Slats and sung into
Sprouting by voices untamed
A vessel miraculously
Crowning
Round the needs of
Dwindling humanity
Only surviving in the
Event of successful
Inhabitant mobility
The great Arkanean
Answering the desperate cries of
Those waterlogged remains
Of humankind's last band
Fifteen floors high
Scoured with the sands of sorrow
Held together with nails of
Twice refined dreams
To save mortalities' future and
Search the endlessly rising rains
Built on a dry patch of land
In a once paradisaic
Tropical hidden cove
Set up on massive stone blocks
And costly wooden scaffolding
To shape the swirling stairs connecting
The massive gaping mouth
Of a deck to the towering top of
This sky-kissing catastrophe

VI

Floating as the water rose
Wooden layers repurposed
Into reinforcements for the
Sweeping ascending entryway
The colossal rudder and counterbalance
Formed
Waiting for the perfect moment
When blessed water
Raises the floating capital
To the level of the blind cliffs
Their saving grace
And launching point for humanity's
Final voyage into the hungry mist

VII

All finally aboard the
Amalgamation
Of wood, metal, and flora
The embodiment of
Human indignation
Unwilling to go quietly into
The soaking darkness of eternity
All ready to sail on the
Apocalyptic pilgrimage across a
Swallowing sea overtaking the
Entire planetary body

VIII

Embarkation point
Fading in the past
Like the red, arid sands
Now, turned into the
Floor of an Ever-deepening sea
A supposedly Impossible feat
To reach that
Settling, murky sediment
As any lost
Now fall on the former land
Never finding the true Depths
Lamentation
Droning songs of woe
Tales of terrors
Gone unknown
Sung from the bow
Hung from the mast
Just as joyful tunes
And melodious psalms
Rang aloud, striking the stern
With a most cheerful
Sound as the global
Crossing commenced

IX

Traveling with no set path
No designated expectation
Tends to lead to immense
Revelation
The unthinking, jubilant praise
When on the thousandth day
Spotted
Off starboard side
Was a fleet of carriers
And barges a rag-tag band
A metropolis bounding
O'er the bounty main

X

These long bereft of anything
Resembling hope
Thought themselves the last
A remnant
The only that remained
The whole world o're
Through the mass aboard
The massive Arkanean
Passes a rapturous
Wave, cries of exuberance
Some begin to race up the
Twisting stairs to get better views
One frenzied man desperate to
Leave the reeking, rocking raft
He'd been remitted to for
What had started
To feel like a soaking eternity
Sprinted up the
Circuitous steps leaping onto
The waving claret banner
Using the weight of his
Dangling legs
Swinging wide to
Gather momentum
Without leaving himself
Time to decelerate or think
He sailed in a slow-motion arc
Over the drink
Instead of landing in
The midst of their deck with a thud
He sailed straight over that, too
And splash
Into the bottomless blue
He goes

XI

Panic ensues
The wailing alarm sounds
Out goes the call,"Man overboard"
Over two years at sea, had
Seen dead a plenty
This was their first casualty
Of the ocean wars
As they soon found out
These weren't the only ships about
And they weren't stopping
This flotilla was bounding across
Rising waves
Fleeing their stalkers
The Arkanean was ill-equipped
To turn and dash
Braced itself for
The worst
Readied themselves for a clash

XII

There was never any chance
A frigate approached
Blasting its cannons
Aiming first for the top
Taking each tier out laughing
Bones splintering as easily
As if they were wood
The screams of the innocent
Like pepper for their meager food
The levels tumble and collapse
As another round of iron smashes
As the fire Spreads to the block one lower
Mired screaming chokes
Thousands more splash down and
Crush those below
Attempting to avoid
Their cold, sodden fate
Until the hull starts taking rounds
Without so much as one return volley
Ending all hope
In a tsunami-like finale

XIII

The Arkanean had one fatal flaw
An island alone
Needs no weapon nor guard
The shortsighted elders
Failed to provide for
Their needy flock
Any means to defend or repel
They'd long ago decided their land
And lives were the only existent
Or worthy
Of obtaining the future prize

XIV

Drowning is the kinder fate
As the marauders draw harpoons
Reel in the catch of the day
The sun, the sea
It turns men mad
That's on a good day
When sense they've had
What of those who leave
Land senseless with fear?
Devoid of righteousness
Like shattering spears
Their targets hunt
Waging destruction and death
The satisfaction they sought
Though humanity Planned and prayed
The evils of fear and
Mindless burning rage
Extinction has wrought
The final page, torn and tossed

K.B. Silver

This is both a narrative poem and an ekphrastic poem. I created that picture while trying to get a specific piece for another piece of poetry. My prompting process goes about like this. Start with general terms, see what the generator spits out, adjust the models first to ensure I have the right feel and look, and then become more and more detailed in my terms.

Sometimes, I get a few oddballs that aren’t bad; they just weren’t what I was looking for. I know creating AI images is taking up resources somewhere, so I try to keep the good ones I don’t need, and use them some other way.

In this case, I was inspired to write an apocalyptic tale of a world in an environmental crisis.