“Tome of Stars” is a 100 sonnet journey, equal parts art, therapy journal, and exorcism, both a celebration and an elegy, a single narrative arc tracing the birth and death of a relationship. All poetry by Stargazer. The verse and accompanying synthetic art and music are public domain, CC0, with no restrictions on use. Nothing is monetized. See below for links on how to access the print, PDF, audio, ePub, video, and music files. 
Website: https://www.tomeofstars.net/

In the classical margam of bharatanatyam, the varnam is the recital’s centerpiece, its longest and most emotionally charged performance. In “Tome of Stars“, the varnam appears as the twenty-nine-poem section “Senescence”. Following the exaltation of Anthesis, the beloved as a celestial goddess, love now descends from the stars into the gravity of human frailty. 

This sonnet dramatizes the arrival of the Stargirl as a figure of transformative power within the poet’s life, imagined in mythic terms as a celestial, salvific force. Positioned after two sonnets of trauma and psychic disfigurement, this third part of the “Once Upon a Time” quartet reframes the meeting of the poet and his beloved as the sudden rupture of darkness by light. With imagery drawn from fairy tale, classical myth, and cosmology, the poem captures the feeling of being saved, if only momentarily, by love that seemed both otherworldly and inevitable.

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Lyrics

Designers of his doom spun forth their game,
And bound him deep in sorrowful descent,
Then raised before his eyes a circled flame,
And through it soared a spirit, radiant.

A fairy, woven from the god’s bright threads,
With eyes agleam, as stars upon the sea,
Her cosmic wings about his form were spread;
Her touch—a spell, a binding sorcery.

She breathed her sacred sign into his soul,
Ten tones of power, born of realms divine;
Songs starshine steeped—a mangled mind made whole.
He drank her fire’s consecrated wine.

Hell’s chains were shorn; her dawn embraced his night,
For one brief eon, ever filled with light.

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Internet Archive
Book of sonnets:
https://archive.org/details/tome-of-stars/

Music:
Item 1, Anthesis: https://archive.org/details/Anthesis/
Item 2, Senescence: https://archive.org/details/senescence_tomeofstars
Item 3, Sporogenesis: https://archive.org/details/Sporogenesis_TomeOfStars/
Item 4, Anemochory: https://archive.org/details/Anemochory_TomeOfStars
Item 5, Quixotosis: https://archive.org/details/Quixotosis_TomeOfStars
Item 6, Scripture: https://archive.org/details/Scripture_TomeOfStars

Bandcamp:

Item 1, Anthesis: https://stargazer-elentirmo.bandcamp.com/album/anthesis-item-1-of-tome-of-stars
Item 2, Senescence: https://stargazer-elentirmo.bandcamp.com/album/senescence-item-2-of-tome-of-stars
Item 3, Sporogenesis: https://stargazer-elentirmo.bandcamp.com/album/sporogenesis-item-3-of-tome-of-stars
Item 4, Anemochory: https://stargazer-elentirmo.bandcamp.com/album/anemochory-item-4-of-tome-of-stars
Item 5, Quixotosis: https://stargazer-elentirmo.bandcamp.com/album/quixotosis-item-5-of-tome-of-stars
Item 6, Scripture: https://stargazer-elentirmo.bandcamp.com/album/scripture-item-6-of-tome-of-stars

Once Upon a Time Part 3

Stargazer Elentirmo