A sweat-stained coolness clings to the velvety paperback expanse,
covered by a somber, questing night-sky,
years of perspiring excitement smudged over a humid cover,
peeling with curled-over edges,
whipped by riptides of passion,
the lone figure
depicted amidst waves of dunes
harkening back
to the clacking keys of a typewriter
stained by perspiration
in the raging summer of the 60s’,
unraveling in a boy
sunk deep into a beanbag,
keeping warm in the wintry chill of 2019,
as a promise teased over the cover—
“soon to be a major motion picture”
—unleashes a fire that keeps him warm
in the darkest depths of a pandemic winter
and the harshest storms of adolescence,
a mythology unleashed
amidst flickers of the news,
wars,
and environmental collapse
crystallized in the pages of a genius futurist,
the self and body transcended through space and time
by a young man stranded, both on the page and in front of it,
the sunset of the future made clear
through the thickets of time and space,
transmuting across years,
to artificial humans
in existential terror
aglow on the silver screen
lit by the flames of a beacon
burning divination
in a boy,
swimming in the currents of genre,
illuminated by those before him,
he finds a new footing,
with pen and paper,
creating his own world,
scribbling away
the heart of a sixteen-year-old,
found in the cracked spine,
worn with creased lines,
and split down the middle
by adolescent thrill.
to Frank Herbert who lit the embers
and Denis Villeneuve who lit the beacon,
Thank You Very Much,
I offer my gratitude, forever,
G.R. Nanda
G.R. Nanda 