This Strange Fruit

No Blessing Hides Among These Corruptive Verses

It Gets Darker, My Child
by Joseph Armstead



I see... a translation of retinal stimuli,
making assumptions and drawing conclusions
from incomplete data,
seeing is believing.

particles of electromagnetic energy
traveling in photonic packets
across the measurable wavelength spectrum

capturing images, pictures
a cognitive interpretation,
observing Truth
in neural transducement,
frozen moments in Time,
lies and history,
dream and illusion,
Order and Chaos
at Eternal War, all

caught

between the invisible infrared
and the invisible ultraviolet

The light from the sun does not illuminate.
Truth is hidden.  Everything is masked.

I see...

the colors bleed like cheap dye
as their spectral instensity
... shifts...
......the fundamental duality......
.........primary propagational direction.........
............polarisation and optical refraction............
...............Pierre Gassendi's Corpuscular Theory of Light...............
shifting like the tides of the sea,
a Newtonian mapping of the contours of Quantum Reality
in the large scale structure of space-time,

imprisoned

forever at war
with the relentless,
evolutionary onset
of an endless, obsidian
ocean of dark

the valiant light of a single candle
strangling
in the gigantic fist
of eternal night

Perception is a struggle
to quantify
how visual processing creates
what is actually seen.
Proximity, similarity,
symmetry and continuity,
inconvenient Gestalt Laws
summarizing the indefinable.

Poking at shadows with a blunt stick in the dark.
Truth is hidden.  Everything is masked.

I see.
And yet, I don't see.

I see, but do I believe?

It only gets darker, my child.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Alone" by Dawnallynn (a.k.a. Dawn Allynn), dreamstime_m_546271.jpg

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Saints and Slayers, Drawn As One
by Joseph Armstead


I'm like the ghost of a spark
frozen in the blink of an eye
and I'm yours.
An image out of Time, the Past rearranged,
the forgotten words to a song
that won't leave your brain
and I'm yours.

Hiding behind your doorway, a silhouette of regret,
studying pain in the details of the crucifixes you've made,
waiting for a savior to step out from the summer rain,
arguing with the hallucination
of an old love
about the difference
between Redemption
and Revenge
and not one damn bit of it makes sense,
and you wait, just keep waiting
for that single miraculous moment
when you can step out into the light
without getting burned,
afraid of the flame kindled
by a crime of the heart.

Things never seem to fit. Is it Bad timing?
I don't know.
Is it the wrong dream?  And who is the Dreamer?
Which of us is real?
I don't know.

We're all Saints and Slayers, Drawn As One

Recollections of loss haunting the dead eyes of abandoned lovers.
Specters stalk your doorway, dust devils dancing on your porch.
They scream their names into the silence
you wear like a bridal gown
And at the strike of the Witching Hour
the voices fade into hungry shadows.
But like an evening's rain, it falls into the twilight
carried away by a breeze that warns of eternal winter.
It is the acid regret of a midnight kiss.

Royalty cloaked in a sweeping, savage beatitude.

A ghost frozen in the flame of a spark, and I'm yours.
A fading photo like a nostalgic scar, and I'm yours.
Like a pain under the ribs, like a bone in the throat,
a crime of the heart, a poisoned passion play,
and not one damn bit of it makes sense,
but still, I am yours.

We're, all of us, Saints and Slayers, Drawn As One

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Chained Fanatic" by Igorigorevich, dreamstime_l_29629303.jpg

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Discordia (Rain as A Function of Desire)
by Joseph Armstead


Some days the rain can't stop from falling.

The wind is a whisper,
words spoken unkind,
sad truths revealed
while trembling fingers
are plugged into cold ears
to block the sound,
and the world
holds its breath
while the rain falls
from a sky
dark as secret sin.

When the fighting starts
it's always about
the same old thing:
a Betrayal with a kiss.

Voice:
"They say they don't believe in Sin,
They says its an artifical concept,
a cage made by Man to create a
homogenized, stylized
Morality,
dictated by people who are
Afraid of everything,
anything
that could make their pulse race,
but when I ask Them
about the lies They've told
They fall silent and Their eyes
accuse me of slavery..."

...never loved me, never understood me,
want to control me, why can't you
just let me be me, and that's because
everytime I give you an inch
you want to steal a mile...

Thought:
Always got to hide behind
some rhetoric or another
because They couldn't find
an honest answer
to a straight question
to save Their lives...
and that's just it --
They each need to save
their own life
and
They're afraid to risk
being wrong to do so.
They're afraid of
being honest with
Themselves
because They know
it's all just selfishness.

I don't want
to think about this
anymore.

... not lying, just don't need to bare my soul to you
everytime we speak, some things are just my business
alone, I need space, want to control me, treat me
like a child, should just leave me be me, but you always
do something to disrespect me ...

Action:
Turn away, shut them out,
Rage, Accuse, Villify,
Blame Them - Damn Them - Hate Them,
Anything but wrap your arms
around them, even if They fight you,
and hold them so close They
Feel Their heart beat
in time with yours,
Hold Them
until They can't stop
Feeling.

When the fighting starts
it's always about
the same old betrayal:
naked lust,
lonely need,
masquerading
as intimacy.

You both listen
to the wind whisper,
and words are no longer
necessary
to dispel the dark,
and the world
holds its breath
while the rain falls
from a sky
gray as fading summer.

Sometime, the rain has to stop falling.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Desire" by Toddtaulman (a.k.a. Todd Taulman), dreamstime_l_402976.jpg

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We Die in the Rain of Iron Light
by Joseph Armstead


The blinding glare from a thousand, thousand suns
sears ragged holes in the retina of a two-faced god.

The world is a hollow bowl
bobbing atop the tumultuous tides
of an angry sea,
tossing, spinning,
forth and back,
near and away,

gyroscopically unstable

cradled by the unbridled chaos
of Time and Space and Place
as these strange components rage

and the sky, wider than all of infinity,
looks down, looming, cold and impassive,
on the serpentine, unpredictable path
of the hollow bowl on the water...

It is the topology of stratified infinitesmals
seen through the filter of a transcendent lens.

"The lambs are screaming, Clarisse."

This is where the cathedral burned.  This is where we died.

This is a contaminated crime scene,
and
the evidence is hopelessly tainted.

And the sizzling light from a thousand, thousand suns
pours molten quicksilver over the face of a mad deity. 

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Meteors to the Sky" by Jordygraph (a.k.a. Giordano Aita), dreamstime_l_29259237.jpg

Tears Plummet Recklessly Down the Gloom of An Infinite Well

And Fearless, Surrender Nothing to Death
by Joseph Armstead


The grinding metallic growl and stacatto clacking from the aging gears
of a truck barreling down the street outside provides a moment's distraction
from staring into the depths of the shifting shadows, a thirsty vortex
swallowing the bulk of my wary attention, as I peer into the far corner
of the tiny room.  Chaotic piecemeal memories of ash and cinder dust mix
with the aroma of old nightmares and secret shame riding the billowing
winter's wind; all bleach-scented ice and the water from dead oceans.
The thing, that strange, foreboding, amorphous intelligence given unwieldy
mass by some arcane science I cannot name, sits patiently across the room
from me, wrapped in an undulating cloak of gloom and I am

repulsed

by the knowledge that it somehow knows me.  Intimately.  It is a serpent, patiently reptilian, waiting for me to let down my guard so that it may pounce, ferocious and merciless, launching a final all-or-nothing assault against my bruised and wounded psyche.

No.  That's not right.  There's no truth to that.  Hyperbole and drama.  Sensationalism.  It's not that spectacular.

But it is deadly.

The room, sparsely furnished and modestly decorated, is on the fourth floor
western corner of a building that was once a machine shop, a place where metal was

cut and chopped,

where tools were lathed, grinded, assembled, industrialized.  It is a room where razored-edged shards and fragments of metallic litter have been strewn across an oil-stained floor.

I don't know how I got here.

We are predators watching one another, each waiting for a momentary lapse
in attentiveness, playing a strategic wargame wherein we each wait for the
Other's defenses to crack or break.  Yes, a wargame.  That's closer to the truth...

John Coltrane is weaving the tapestry of my Reality: I don't know whether
or not I'm hallucinating this collection of start/stop/invert-and-reverse/unmelodic/jazzy/non-linear images.  The time signatures are confounding.  I have to listen without making assumptions,
let the music lead me where it may.  No, no, that's far too allegorical. 
The description is not right.  I can hear these dreary colors, I can taste
this dimming light.  It is imagery, right?  It is not a thing so much subject
to interpretation as it is subject to translation.  I'm looking out, not
bleeding in.

I'm looking at something, ageless and calm, measured in the alien way of
a spider in a colossal web, looking back at me.

Yet that's not quite It, not really accurate, there are layers, innuendo
and insinuation, varying shades of meaning, that complicate a true definition
of the hours-long stand-off.  Has it been hours?  I think so.  But Time,
as a concept, as a thing in and of itself, is broken, I can feel it. 

The ragged edges are rubbing up against one another, grinding.

It is a war of wills.

I think it moved.  The inky black thing in the enveloping veil of grayness,
it moved.  Not with me.  Independent of me.  In defiance of me.  It moved.

This is how it starts, isn't it?  Madness, that is.  This is how they say it starts.   I mean, that's what I read once, a long time ago.   In a different room, in a different life, experiencing a different hallucination under a different name.

The inarticulate steel-made rumbling of some wheezing, bulky vehicle of
conveyance pierces the contentious silence within the gloom-enshrouded room.
I can smell the primal perfume of ancient glaciers wafting past my nostrils.

I don't know how I got here.  But I think I belong here.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Angel" by Fotokostic (a.k.a. Dusan Kostic), dreamstime_m_25327226.jpg

Metacognology and Other Poisonous Wisdoms

Only the Ugly Know How to Tell Beautiful Lies
by Joseph Armstead



The moon is a crescent, like a scimitar,
waiting to open a beautiful wound.

... Mammon abides, langorous and reptilian,
the seductive darkness of her streets,
like the velvet lining of a leather glove
clutching the handle of a smoking gun ...

He smells the dryness of the rust
adorning the skeletal remains
of the fallen Towers of Commerce,
an metallic aroma of miserly
reminiscences
filtered
through the simmering anger
of past hostility,
and he adjusts the apertures
of his night-vision goggles
to allow more light to flow through,
outlining his targets
scrambling though the rubble
across the rubbish-strewn street.

Born of Jackals,
he is a ghost, a haunter,
a kevlar and velcro,
tactical-clad voyeur
witnessing the aftermath
of a slow-motion Apocalypse;
child of industry and spies,
he moves, swimming in shadows,
watching and waiting.

He listens for the night-songs of The Ugly.
The secrets they sing cut so deep.

Out the corner of his eye,
in the distance,
bathed in the green IR glow
of his enhanced optics,
he can see the battered and unkempt,
ragged children of war,
orphan tatterdemalions,
dumpster diving for scraps,
ever mindful of unexploded
improvised explosive devices.
Their quiet, reserved, brittle laughter
tinkles
like the music of shattered glass
as they go about their treasure hunt
for food and sundries and maybe, perhaps,
just that one unbroken knick-knack
that reminds them the world was once
a place alive with Joy ...

... before the war, before the collapse,
before menstruating Mammon
bled out her infectious poison
onto her dark, rough streets ...

Twisted and Ugly, they croon their lies to the night.
The secrets they sing cut so deep.

The moulting serpent has yet to shed
her dying skin.
She evolves even as she rots.

Overhead, the uncaring moon
is a glowing, curved dagger,
a Damoclean chandelier,
a razor-sharp shamshir blade,
anxiously waiting
for its cue to cut deeply.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Cracked Evil Face" by Adinabulina (a.k.a. Adina Nani), dreamstime_l_17758841.jpg

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Like Blood From A Prayer Wheel (Revised)
by Joseph Armstead


Birds perched on telephone lines,
like winos on the street corner,
feathered cylindrical forms
perched on fiber-optic spindles,
witness the hesitant arrival
of a nervous daybreak.

Their chirps are a tantric chant
of primal atavistic enlightenment,
spinning avian mantras purifying
negativity from the world above
while we unconsciously bleed wisdom
on the floor of the world below.

Let the recitation begin...

Clouds, windborn prophets
in the cathedral of the sky,
tickle the upper edges
of our collective vision
while the taste of green tea
tickles our tongues.
Isolated, I stare past the panoramic 
glare on my window,
seeing the waves of the Pacific
on the far horizon,
and I watch traffic flow,
watch the light of the sun
glint from off the metal
of a hundred automobiles
as they rumble towards
the grey steel metropolis
across the mammoth snaking,
dragon's spine
of the bridge across the Bay,
and I am fervently
wishing,
dreaming,
wondering,
burning the incense
of incompleteness
as a silent prayer,
a psalm from the Id,
seizes my lips,
unbidden.

I am drawn towards a tomorrow
I cannot hope to anticipate.

The birds flock into a graceful
and complex
murmuration,
flying rhythmically clockwise
following the movement
of the sun across the sky,
a jazzy, improvisational
Bodhichitta counterpoint
to the concreteness
of daily Reality.

Somewhere Thirteen Buddahs,
marked with angelic tattoos,
blind with eyes sown shut,
weep past clenched teeth.
Bodhisattva versus Prophet
in an unending game
of existential chess.

While the sun still shines,
the first cold drops of rain,
spray from a severed Sanskrit artery,
begin their sacrificial
freefall
onto the window's glass.

Above the road and sea,
the prophets of the cathedral
momentarily cease their quest
in the accumulation of wisdom and merit,
and, manifesting a more
protective energy,
allow themselves the luxury
of, at last, beginning
their lamentations...

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: dreamstime_1138017.jpg

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Memory At Play In the Fields Below the Storm
by Joseph Armstead


Thunder rolls, the sound lost.

It happens behind the eyes, it does,
it is a storm of silent ragings,
quiet bolts of lightning,
million volt spider's leg-scalpels
scratching the arid surface
of a cold ocean
imprisoned
in a Dyson Sphere of
mathematical dark,

quantum consciousness, ID-space,
an algorithmic abyss
of lucid numerical dreaming,

the place where the monsters live.

Recollections
of being alone and lost
within the labyrinthian
recesses, maw of a hungry serpent,
of Grandma's house,
a dreamworld atmosphere
scented with lavender and
impending death,
the taste of ozone
tainting the air
sucked in from between
clenched teeth...

(sing-song whispers)...come play, come play ...

startlingly, lightning flashes, rupturing shadows

the savage light strikes
the surging, rolling surface
of the barren ocean of night,
an angry arachnid
scrabbling across
a blackboard,
and the mind sees it,
spotlighting the chaos,
fractured abstract imagery
becomes iron-hard actuality

here, in the place of dreaming,
here, where the monsters live,
here in the prison of computative
complexity

through the proverbial Looking Glass,
in the deepness of Grandma's haunted home,
memory hijacked by trauma,
it happens in the ID-space
behind the eyes, it does

...come play, come play ...

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Storm" by Mega11, dreamstime_m_17758841.jpg

The Fruitless Asymmetry of Retrograde Hysteria in the Dreamstate

Villainous Saints in the Hausdorff Dimension
by Joseph Armstead


Madonna with wounded flesh,
her aloneness
squeezes life from her

...sometimes she cries...

It is an euclidean invariance.

The door slams shut and the gunshot sound
reverberates
down the shadowed hallway,
moebius strip enclosure,
as pounding footsteps retreat
back behind closed doors.

Surprises abound,
unexpected ferocity,
betrayal of trust,
as the tears fall,
each a silvery-clad town crier
and harlequin
for a soul wounded
by the inevitabilities
of Life together, encumbered, enmeshed:

stress/frustration/encroaching age/dead dreams,

sliding
down the warm,
membranous surface
of her face,

--- ill-defined irregular subsets
of a greater isomorphic, metric outer measure ---

and leaving wet, silken traces,
tattoos
of memory
in their slow wake,
each a cemetery daydream.

Her aloneness
squeezes life from her

...sometimes she cries...

At the other end of Netherspace,
down the corridor of angry twilight,
behind the door separating
independent parameters
linked to cartesian coordinates
of the fixed point
in this melodramatic
topological dimension,
he rages and he curses,
heresy vomiting from sneering lips,
and his heart hides behind armor,
a fortress unto itself.

He is fury
bred in isolation

...tearless, he weeps...

They are both compelled,
as a hidden subset of One,
to create new
fractal scars
with lethal
regularity.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Fractal Wires" by Keilaneokow, dreamstime_m_16809997.jpg

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Pilgrimage of the Atomic Bride Through Strangelet Melodies
by Joseph Armstead


She eyes the road less traveled
surveying the physical manifestation
of a dream of dead romance
with a morose cynicism belying
her patrician beauty and ethereal grace,
hypothetical particles, the possibility
of an appearance by a Higgs boson teasing,
bouncing between superconducting magnets
that open

m  u  l  t  i  d  i  m  e  n  s  i  o  n  a  l

doors to memory,
the far frontiers
beckoning
from the edges of the map,
a Feynmann Diagram
of the promises delivered
through the subatomic truths
conveyed by an everlasting kiss;
she watches the highway to Forever
sighing as spin statistics theorems
fan the supersymmetry of her cascading hair
in a breeze spawned in the depths
of the miniature black hole
that holds her
frantically
beating
heart...

the fiery inferno of her passion
is the nucleus of a strange quark,
dark matter femtometer, a desperate fury
so profound that Those Who See
weep under furrowed brows,
prey to the disquietude
of wave-particle duality ---

The Dogs of Subatomic Hideousness howl
and she listens for the echoes
of broken promise, dreading
the approach of a light
from over the hill
cresting the top of
that road less traveled
winding
through her
sad and lonely
dreams.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Fractal Sphere" by Milagal, (Ludmila Galchenkova), dreamstime_m_13389567.jpg

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The Combustible Children of Lingering Night
by Joseph Armstead


This Life is a commercial
where the sound cannot
be lowered
and where the channel
cannot be changed,
selling a product,
new and improved,
that you are unaware
you already own.

There is no philosophy here.
There is no metaphor.
Alliteration is a badly told joke.

Everything here burns.

The television screen is always set to
black & white,
a fog of snowy reception
scattering the picture as scratchy
sound
resolves into a passionless
newscaster's drone
depicting a landscape
rife with disaster
and the channel never seems
to pull in clearly,
the focus is never sharp.

The little savages dance around the blazing pyre
waving their spears and their knives
looking for fresh meat

.............They are abandoned............
.............They are friendless...........

(No hearth, no Home,
the City Primordial
their hunting ground,
their season is eternal Winter)

.............Adrift on a sea of Unreason.......
.............Members of a broken tribe.........

The little cannibals
dance around the inferno
pleading with the God of Pain
hoping they are heard.

The fire is fueled
by unanswered prayers
and a sorrowful litany
composed of the word,
a gasp, a sob: "Why?"

This Life is a summer repeat
where the story never changes
and the actors are ghosts
of their former celebrity,
a spinoff from a more
successful
long-running program
you were already watching.

There is no philosophy,
no metaphorical fable here.
Everything here burns.

Why?

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Android" by Fasa, (Roman Mindek), dreamstime_m_4603416.jpg

A Blade Ripping, Tearing Wounds Across the Sky

Sorrow in the Harsh Winds of the Trapezium
by Joseph Armstead



I thought of you and my spirit spiralled skyward...

higher than the wind...
beyond the highest mountain's top...
beyond the most distant wisp of cloudcover...
beyond the moon's serene and lonely orbit...

...away...

Infrared light brings no heat
to the polar iciness of the Void.
 
A desert of dry clouds,
invisibly irridescent, gather
in the ocean of dark matter
enveloping the ghostly cluster
of brilliance at the blazing heart
of a ruined and ancient sun.
Arcs and bubbles
formed by stellar winds
glow
as they collide
with the strangeness
of Gallilean nomenclature,

swirling
[transitional magnetospherics unleashed within the boundaries of a discrete or diffuse aurora]

within the cloak of the parent nebula,
adrift in the gravitic pull
from the asterism of four bright stars,

charged particles
[products of a collision of ions achieving new properties in the fourth state of matter]

like fleeting daydreams
dancing past the mind's eye
of a dazed celestial amnesiac...

Sightless,
solemnly striding
across the pockmarked, pitted face
of an asteroid tumbling
end over end
through a silent stampede
of extraorbital planetesimals,
upright and defying
centripetal gravity,
I will not be thrown off
this rocky rodeo bull,
I wander blind through the dust
of eternal dusk,
and some splinter of you
sticks in my mind like a thorn.

No spectrum of light brings heat
to the glacial iciness of the Void.

...away ...

beyond the highest mountain's top...
beyond the most distant wisp of cloudcover...
beyond the moon's serene and lonely orbit...

I thought of you.

 

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Asteroid and Earth Planet on Starfield Background" by Mozzyb, dreamstime_l_20112051.jpg

Bleeding Away the Last Acid Drops of My Wet, Red Religion

Born As Scorpions, We Slew the Oracle
by Joseph Armstead



As one, the Choir speaks,
many voices possessed
by a single thought,
proclaiming
from behind bronze masks
of Olympian faces
frozen
in a tragedic grimace: 

"We have seen.   We have felt.
This we know, this shall we do..."

Waking, inhaling sulfur and sand
from off the face of a rock,
cast off from a shattered ruin,
a fortress in the desert sands,
the rock hard and unforgiving,
made from crazy angles and sharp edges,
our unblinking eyes
quickly
focus
on a dry diaspora, an arid cosmos,
made of minutia, an endless diversity
of small details --
dried brush and twigs,
wrinkled, dead cast-off flesh
from molting serpents,
dung beetles, scurrying ants,
and wind-scattered crystalline silica,
the footprints left by passing reptiles --
memories from another life
invade and possess
a primitive mind,
hunger and predation-driven,
the logic of angry insects,
a mind
not made for self-aware
complexity,
stretching our multiple limbs,
armored carapace crackling,
we move out from the burrow
and into the harsh light
of the fading day, the blistering heat
registering as an afterthought,
and we remember what it was like
to laugh and sneer
at the concept
of a Karmic Wheel,
sure in our arrogance
that we would never be punished
for the crimes
we committed
as Men.  
Hungering, awake,
inhaling sulfur and sand...

As one, the Choir speaks,
many voices proclaiming
from behind cold bronze masks:

"This we know, this shall we do..."

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Metallic Scorpion", by Aliencat (a.k.a. Linda Bucklin), dreamstime_m_711286.jpg

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I, Colder Than Night, Sing Silent Psalms of Light...
by Joseph Armstead



"... DRIVEN BY THE NIGHT / 'TIL YOU COME..."*

It often happens after the end of the workday, after fighting crowds and commute traffic, after feeling the first wave of the onset of mental exhaustion as we change identities from corporate working stiff or retail service worker or construction worker to that of the primal apeling we truly are, as the sun begins to wane in the skies over the Bay..., it is both a spiritual and a physical epiphany. We have had our fill of our responsibilities, our glut of the falseness of our public face. It is a frisson of unease and anticipation, born in the depths of the shadow at our feet, that races up the spine and spills an ancient weariness through our bones. We stand in the dying orange light from a colossal fading celestial ember and spread our arms wide, surrendering to the moment...

Please, let the shadows come, embrace me in the gloom of twilight, let the night fall soon.

It is encapsulated in a sound: the soft, doleful strumming of a lone guitar, the reverberance of that last note of a solitary piano tune held until it fades into memory, the hollow echoes of a runner's panting breath at the end of a race...

The sound... inside,secret, personal, archetypical. A Native American chanting at the coming moonrise, an Aboriginal song sung in gutteral sing-song tonality as the sunlight bleeds upon the desert, a druid monk in worship, a secular monk raising their baritone in chant, the rhythmic chant of a flamenco balladeer as the dance begins a sensuous drive towards a fever pitch, the sound of a dervish calling to a-god-who-hides-in-the-sands as he dances, whirling...

It is the Truth of a caged heart's beat.

It crawls out from the pores of our skin, changing us, coating us in a perspiration of fearless morbidity, an envelope of macabre tribal shamanism, our cyber-age animus peeled naked, revealing our chrome wireframe skeleton festooned with small animal bones, lizard's heads, and bird's feathers and warpaint.

We see it in our life's frustrations, we see it in tattoos that remind us of our flesh, we see it in the flash of desire in a stranger's passing gaze --- it is music we can see, it is a song we can feel.

Enwrap me in the night. See me dance as the curtains of cosmic inkiness descend, let the shadows come.

For that moment, that single stuttering universal pause in the Great Civilization Machine, our hearts are joyful black things bleeding release. In that moment we surrender to the thing that hides in our heads, that thing we see only at the edges of our dreams, that too-infrequently stands center-stage in our nightmares, and we become what we are.

And we are not ashamed.

It happens.

Wordlessly. Quietly.

An unvoiced prayer to the dark thing that hides in the fabled kingdom behind the stormclouds.

It calls. We answer.

If only for a moment.

... let the night fall soon ...

-- END --

*(excerpt from the song "Look Back in Anger" by David Bowie)

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "The Emotional Mind" by Rolffimages, dreasmtime_m_21962435.jpg

****************************************************************************************************************

Diver Dark
by Joseph Armstead



The satin of black neoprene
gleaming in pale,
fog-strangled sunlight
as the waves tumble
towards the shore,
tossing bushelfuls
of clear rhinestone wetness
onto the rubber inkiness
of an artificial skin,
polymerized synthetic lace,
while the pounding advance
of the eternal ocean thunders
relentlessly
against breakers
made from ages-old rock
and pitted blocks
of man-made concrete.

I take in a deep breath of moist air.

Elastic, spongy-foamed armor
the color of a moonless night
adheres to my gangly frame
as I awkwardly
wade into the rolling chaos
of a turbulent
liquid waterverse.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Scuba Diver Above Underwater Cave" by Scuba13, dreamstime_m_9299098.jpg

 

An Exodus of Redemption, A Hangman's Crusade

*********************************************************************************************************************

Triskaidecagonally (Mushin No Shin)
by Joseph Armstead



Like the wind, it passes over you and ruffles your fur...

This is not how it should be.

It is the artificial methodology of dissected grammar in perpetual disarticulation,
a projection for which the range "U" and the null space "V" are orthogonal subspaces.


Act, react, intuit, absent of discursive thought and judgment,
flawless execution of practiced motion, forgetful of all techniques,
   a still pond clearly reflecting
        the inverted imagery
                of the moon
                    and trees


There are no wolves in the forest, but you hear the echoes of their howling:
infinite recursion of unacknowledged perceptions in the dark.


An incomplete
representation
of the unfathomable,
this is the doorway unlocked by effortless effort,
work as an expenditure of pre-distributed energy,
that opens onto a pocket universe
of multisymmetricity
on an infinite plane
of 152.308 degrees,
geometric quadrirection


        
        dimensional polytope, cyclic, equilateral, isogonal, isotoxal

                physically inconstructable
                       with either compass
                                    or straightedge

                the beauty of automatic skills

                  It is not, therefore it is.


A manifestation within the subset of unconscious dreaming in symbolical form,
there are no wolves in the forest, but you hear the echoes of their howling:
it is the locus of implicit knowledge, cognitive unconsciousness with teeth.


Like the wind, it passes over you and you cannot suppress a growl.

This is not how it should be.

 

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Fractal Image" by Telemack (a.k.a. David Espin), dreamstime_m_23326180.jpg

Surreality Ascendent, But Not Transcendent

The Night Season
By Joseph Armstead


Stare into the shadows and gloom
And curse the endless chatter
Of your restless, unquiet mind.

In Purgatory, a proud heart,
abandoned in Perdition,
still beats.
A single, courageous soul
stands firm
and withers not ‘gainst the fearsome
and the foul. 
A solitary ray
of brilliant light, the last fallen warrior,
unintentional hero
and reluctant rebel, braves
the darkness of the eternal pit
and journey’s ever onward, searching…

The time is not yet come to sleep.
Close not your tired eyes.

In Purgatory, a flower dares blossom.
Trapped and caged, the lone bloom,
an explosion of fragile color
in a vast and ugly landscape,
is yet strong enough to expose
the pristine nakedness of its
individuality
without doubt or guilt or regret.

The time is not yet come to sleep.
Close not your tired eyes.

This is a domain without a future,
a place where past regret, past cowardice,
past greed, past wantonness,
past tense -- past imperfect -- pastime
of the lost and the twisted,
are forever imprisoned,
an empire built on pointless fury
resounding with aborted yesterdays
and stillborn tomorrows.

Denied passage to the Dreamspace,
You shall not reach the Quietude
of the Timestream’s singing waters.

In Purgatory, a paradox sleeps.
in Perdition, an enigma slumbers,
at once uncomfortably
familiar and yet utterly alien,
a dream not yet envisioned
by a sleeper not yet succumbed
to the impressionistic metaphor
of the Id’s many insecurities.

The time is not yet come to sleep.
Close not your tired eyes.
You cannot look away.

The shadows sing cold night music,
until the arrival
of the broken light of a new dawn.

Sleep…Purgatory needs its hero.



Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: dreamstime_m_549285.jpg

****************************************************************************

Tears of Antimatter Falling
by Joseph Armstead


Stasis: I've been waiting and
Time is frozen
still.

Tau particles,
mass energy without
internal structure,
flutter through the buzzing
Void like polarized
snowflakes...

I've been holding on to
the edge of the singing
Abyss
and Gravity is a vampire
draining my courage.

The hourglass is
meaningless,
the sands tumble over the
edge of the map,
"Beyond this point
There be dragons",
uncharted space,
and I can't
remember your name.

My heartbeat echoes
cold thunder
in the empty ocean
of weeping space.

This is not a constant
for all particle interactions.
I need reassurances,
your voice,
your face,
your touch,
a promise of tomorrow,
A lingering Hope
that this search for
elementary particles
does not result in
decaying charges and
electroweak unification.

I desperately need
to see (too see!) a future
with you yet in it (yet remain!).
Am I asking too much?

Time does not stand still
so much as slouch towards
Oblivion, desultory and
dejected, a gravitic ballet
of loss and regret,
lies and neglect,
a spark of passionate joy,
strange charms affecting
neutrinos, and all my
particle data
pours off the edge
of the quantum waterfall
into the cavity
that once held the    
atomic furnace of
our two hearts.

Stasis: I've been waiting and
Time is frozen still.
The hourglass is meaningless.

I pray for Critical Mass.



Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: dreamstime_768px_12_simplex_t3_svg.jpg

****************************************************************************

Sleepwalk in Denial
by Joseph Armstead



I can't sleep.
I hear the metal music of a train passing in the distance.

My reflection hides on the frozen silicon surface
of a mirror in the dark, across from the doorway, hanging
framed on a dirty wall I never notice anymore
when I pass this way on my path out the front door

--- repeating your name to resound in the spaces in-between,

water puddles on the floor, micro-oceans in the night,
bleedings I tracked in hours ago
from the wounded body of the world outside,
and I think I dropped the remnants
of my memories on the floor,
sloughed mindflesh,
the wreckage of an incomplete pupation,
metamorphosis interruptus,
and I notice that there is still the kiss of winter
tainting the newness of this spring evening

--- rambling, mumbled monologue replaying an unvoiced argument,

Those wet footprints will stain the pristine gloss
of the polished wooden floor, an idle thought, and
I ruminate on how much of me is lost
in a wrinkled, shapeless mound left lying in dust
on the floor's smooth, damp surface
as I grab my jacket off the coat rack, throw it on,
and I

walk...
...away...
......from this......
..........forced imprisonment..........

leaving my reflection frozen, hanging
in silvered glass in the dark.

--- I think, belatedly, that I should see something profound in this,

Traffic noises whisper faint lies from the boulevards outside.
I can't sleep.



Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: dreamstime_m_15497824.jpg

**************************************************************************

Seasons of Noh
by Joseph Armstead



Black blossoms appear
heralding sad history,
shadows weep her name.

Noh:

They pass the windows ignorant of their own reflections,
hurrying in the spring rain, conscious of time, blindly dutiful,
each secretly knowing they have perhaps missed
their last chance at the passion of a lifetime.
It is the price they pay for their homogeneity,
it is a ball and chain of security, shame and cowardice.
If their faces looked back from the polished glass,
their stares would accuse them of treason.
Blind and faceless, they become the rain.
One looks back and sees...

Jiutai:

He is one of the crowd,
call him Gungen,
call him Ulysses,
call him Father or Son,
call him John Doe,
and his sadness
defines his existence,
tragic, broken, walking wounded and bleeding, he searches
for that singular moment when he can revisit past glories.
He rejects his present. He fears his future.
His journey is one navigating in an ocean of anonymity.
The memory of her name pains him. 

Kyogen:

Loss is Destiny, Destiny is Fortune, Fortune is dreaming,
eyes wide screaming, facing away from Heaven, embracing
the arrival of Night, Mother of Shadows, lost and friendless
in a forest of faces, this puzzle, this question, this Everyman
who is a No-Man, stops for coffee, bitter and black.
The aroma that rises off the dark nectar
is a memory of romance.

Jiutai:

He is one of the crowd,
call him Gungen,
call him Ulysses,
call him Father or Son,
call him John Doe,
and in silence
he sings
an enka tune about lovers parting, broken hearts,
and a longing for hearth and home, sings a yano tune
about who it is who cries, why there are tears,
and what is gained by such naked wretchedness.
Not he.  It is all so unseemly,so uncomfortably real,
and he hides what he can from the light of day.
It is a futile flight from his own heart.

Noh:

He stops, no longer walking,
the crowd parts around him
and
he turns his face away
from the curtain of evening
falling upon the wet streets
of the city that has molded
his brittle manhood,
and
he changes direction,
striding purposefully
against the flow of the crowd
walking back
into the memory
of her comforting arms.

It is a small battle
but a good death.

Embracing the scent,
black blossoms in the rain
haunt his waking dreams.



Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: dreamstime_m_4930397.jpg

***************************************************************************

Seagull On a Cross
by Joseph Armstead


A seagull bathes in the rays
of the morning's sun,
perched on the wrought iron crucifix
of an aging brick and mortar church
on a street corner in a part of the city
where urban regentrification
has made only timid inroads.

The dirty white marquis of the church reads:
"Through my eyes I see a dusty crossroads in the rain.
Through His eyes I see the purity of an infinite Hope."

The seagull sees there are three
garbage dumpsters
nearby where it can scavenge its next meal
of discarded leftovers.

The corner it straddles is a four-way intersection
that was once the place where tribes
of warring Native Americans
met to air their differences, strategize
or talk peace
during times of famine, disease or violence.
Now it sits opposite an auto mechanics' shop
and an Afrocentric Moroccan cafe
with free wireless internet access,
its nearest neighbor on the same street, to the east,
being a music store reselling old vinyl records
of dead or obscure jazz musicians and big band orchestras,
and, to the south, a four-story tall,
private practice psychiatric clinic.

The Lord obviously believes in irony and subtext.

The bird preening its feathers atop the cross
believes in the smells on the wind over the streets.

A weary homeless woman pushing a shopping cart
believes she is being watched by agents of the CIA.

It's the end of spring and 7:15am
on a Saturday
and the church's doors are locked.



Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: dreamstime_713005.jpg
*************************************************************************************

Dissent, Loathing and Gunfire Over a Sausage Casserole
by Joseph Armstead



(...the crackling hiss of static,
like a fire in a garbage can,
as the television ignites to life...)

Awakening with sand in my eyes, vision blurred,
my mouth dry as a desert and hunger
stabbing my belly
like an impatient street mugger.

Get up.  Turn the T.V. on
while I scavenge breakfast.
A rage of global psychosis floods in through my cable.
I bathe in the electron downpour as if showering.

Corporate news broadcast delights
in a festival of murder,
somber tones, a junkie's eagerness,
sharing rumors and exposed secrets,
Politics and religion and economics
inspiring a legion of assassins.
We all have a reason to kill, white hoods and burnt crosses
We all have a reason to kill, oil prices and dead prophets
We all have a reason to kill, market crashes and lost profits

Brown sausage and drain.
Place on bottom of 9"x 13" casserole dish.
Place bread on top of sausage
and put shredded cheese on top of bread.
Mix with eight eggs and one tsp dry mustard
and two tbsp Worcestershire sauce,
then beat in large bowl:

March in lockstep and do what you're told,
March in lockstep and do what you're told.

My family photos are burning, and I watch the images curl and crisp,
The names of the Dead resound like the strike of a Judge's mallet.
We all have a reason to kill, minnarets and mullahs,
We all have a reason to kill, kevlar vests and grief-stricken mothers,
We all have a reason to kill, shiny metal badges distrust all the others

Pour liquid mixture over ingredients in casserole,
Bake for 45 to 50 minutes in 325 to 350 degree oven.
Cut into squares, serve hot.
Curse, lick burnt fingers and listen to the traffic report.
Corporate news broadcast morphs into a deoderant commercial.

Awaken to the clangorous music of a brand new day. 
March in lockstep and do what you're told.

I can't taste anything I eat
and
My hunger still burns.

(...the shushing silence of a vacuum,
like the air escaping a punctured lung,
as the television fades to black...)

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock:  dreamstime_1864967.jpg

Stumbling Down an Alley in Dubai, I Heard the Darkness Weeping

Tropic of Luciverium,
or Notes On Topological Pattern Complexity and Sand-Demons on Horseback
by Joseph Armstead


I don't like to travel.  As it was once
written in a proverb,
"It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive."


...forbidden character input
rejected by device interface:
invalid substitution, entry truncated,
sync attempt incomplete...

A forty-five minute mass transit train ride
spent in agony sitting next to a young woman
journalling in her internet blog,
bitterly cursing all the while
about her job and her boyfriend,
via an App on her sleek and wedge-shaped
fifth-generation mobile phone,
ends with disembarking at the station platform
and immediately dropping my briefcase,
all the contents spilling out onto the scratched
and boot-heel streaked tile floor.

It's Wednesday and the sky is gray
while cascading waves of cold wet drizzle
ride the polluted breeze from off the Bay.

... there is a rip in the firmament
and the teeming viruses of Multiplicity
are seeping through from the festering
petri dish of the Great Unknown...

Ninety-six hundred miles away,
it is just after four in the afternoon
and the remnants of the searing heat
that had assaulted
the cracked and baked
desert plateau
begins to dissipate
as winter's shorter daylight hours
ensnare the sun and pull it towards
the undulating dark line
of sand dunes
on the far horizon...
a slender woman, enervated
by her busy schedule, draped
in a charcoal black Abaya cloak
reads from her electronic tablet's
high resolution multi-touch display
and sighs her disappointment
to the evening's wind. 

... entries replicate without reason,
unbidden, the resident algorithm aborting,
then unexpectedly restarting, pre-planned
pattern asymmetry not engaging, resulting
in header line database corruption... 

On this side of the Meridian,
it is Thursday and only an hour
before a lightning strike created
by a massive sandstorm fries
the sophisticated circuitry
of the city's central
telecommunications tower. 

... the open wound in the wall of Singularity
bleeds a torrent of toxic infection,
rampant Randomnicity,
past its ragged lips and into
this unsuspecting Pocket Universe...

There is no full backup from which to restore.

Irritably, I start scooping up the spilled
chaotic mess of loose papers, pens, uncapped thumb drives,
and self-burned DVD media, shoving it all back
into the briefcase, and rise from my knees ---

To suddenly stand face to face
with you
and surprisedly, nakedly
stare,
without guile or ego,
into your eyes
as you rush over to help.

For a long heartbeat, we lock gazes...

Upload link reconnected.  Replication re-engaged, Synchronization resumed.

I still do not enjoy traveling, but some destinations are, indeed, magical.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Saharawi Women Garnet Dress, Desert Background" by Outsiderzone (Fernando Cortes), dreamstime_l_15844713.jpg 

******************************************************************************************************************************************

The Whisper of the Djinn at Deepening Dusk
by Joseph Armstead


Like some dread messenger
of vanishing hope,
night descends over the oasis.

Mile-long tangerine streaks stripe
the cloudless oceanic sky
as the mechanical caravansarai
settles in for the night,
the coughing of combustion engines
harshly competing with the rattling
of the day's last dry breeze
through desert thorn bushes
and spiky clumps of fountaingrass,
the distant call of a falcon
brittle as glass to the ears,
and a small army of khaki-clad
travelers, five hours riding across sand dunes,
spill out from their dusty vehicles,
their sunburned faces hidden
under soiled bandanas,
they are glad to unfold
their sweat-dappled bodies
and stretch their stiffened limbs.

Soundless,
something calls to them,
a susurration
from within
the Well of Time.
 
They have come to the necropolis,
abandoned last bastion
of a forgotten empire,
to listen to the dying whispers
of the slumbering djinn. 

"What would you have of me, my master,
what favor will satisfy thy heart's desire?"

Within the fractured, crumbling walls
of the fallen fortress, the shadows
of ancient myth twist and contort fitfully,
displeased with the intrusion
of The Living into their static domain.
In the rubble and dust lie the corpses
of rumors, entreaties, demands, threats,
and the faithless promises
of Kings and Pharoahs,
the dessicated bones of humankind
left as an offering
to sorcerous legends
and fantastical beings.

"What wouldst thou have of me, my master,
what favor will satisfy thy heart's desire?"

As the shadows lengthen, the teeming cadre
of explorers pitch tents and set up their camp,
eager to start the new morning
digging in the dirt,
ripping the secrets of antiquity
from out the skeletal grasp
of ghosts of a faded world.

The dread messenger arrives
and the cloak of night descends,
enwrapping the oasis
under the baleful glare
of the spectral djinn.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Desert Ruins" by Kyolshin, dreamstime_m_12546359.jpg   

The Paradox Behind the Complexity of Carnivores In Love

Icicles Like Fangs in the Devil's Smile
by Joseph Armstead



Something between us is broken.

It is too much like
music video imagery,
surrealism and cinematic cliche,
commercialized dreaming,
watching a silhouette
solemnly play piano
atop the ice of a frozen lake,
against the backdrop of endless
winter, and yet there is Truth
in it, a plaintive statement
of isolation, elegiacized
and
romanticized,
pomp and perniciousness,
but robbed
of the excitement
from any hint of scandal,
a scotch advertisement
depicting a dandified
Lord Byron
holding a gun,
striking a James Bond pose...

The words are not coming out right.
The message stays caught in our throats.
We stroll in silence when we should scream.

Separately, we each wonder if bleeding would help.

We walked through a field of fallen leaves,
the ground loamy and moist beneath our feet,
and we listened to the fading calls
of distant birds
and
we did not speak
for fear of tearing a hole
in the fragile fabric
of loneliness
hovering
between us --

such cowardice,
a lost opportunity,
such melodrama,

stupidstupidstupidstupid

the falling snow, muffling the music of bleakness,
and we, afraid of the music, wearing masks
like jaded Venetians parading the streets
during the costumed festival
before Ash Wednesday,
the costumery of the alienated,
bereft of shadows,
the snow and ice
an albino carpet
blanketing the road to Hell
and
visions of icicles,
festooning the trees,
like fangs in the Devil's smile.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock:  "Winter" by Vojtechvlk (Vojtech Vlk), dreamstime_m_5190690.jpg

The Revels of Abandonment, So Like A Blaring Of Trumpets

To Gethsemane Do We Devils March
by Joseph Armstead


As I pass the headstones
in the cemetery
I think of rain
falling on the meadow
over the hill
and the flash of light
off the drops
speckling
the fenders of my bicycle
are rhinestones;
I am a child in transition,
a thumbtack
on the corkboard
of Realities,
wading through water soaked grass
down a trail
through a silent
necropolis...

To Gethsemane do we Devils March.  

In the heart of the labyrinth,
howling wind erases my voice,
music of the spheres
cast in case-hardened steel,
set upon the double-cut teeth
of a diamond file.
I am an armored Priest
of the Church of Anguish
and my flock is gathered here
for a sermon
speaking of those things
we are driven to do
by urges from the darkness.

Promises festoon our shields
in the dazzling light of the sun
like steel spikes
glistening silver
and
I give the column the command
to move forward in rigid
formation ...

It is the cadence of a drumbeat,
the rhythmic march
of a thousand feet
upon cracked and dry
desert sands,
an army with a million eyes
and a single mind,
focused on a fractured image
from a half-remembered dream.

To Gethsemane do we Devils March.

A child I was, a dirtied bauble
dropped
to roll across the floor
of Infinity,
unaware of its importance
or its identity
as part of the necklace
draped around the neck
of Possibility.

The memory of the cemetery headstones
haunt me, whispering in an aged croak:
"I beg of you, do not abandon me
to the fury of the storm."

There is no answer.

To Gethsemane Do We Devils March...

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "On the Merzouga Desert" by Nuriajudit (Nuria Abad Redondo), dreamstime_m_12275636.jpg

*********************************************************************************************************

The Cadence of Her Breath, Echoing, At the Cliff's Edge
by Joseph Armstead


The rhythm of the waves at the shore
...rolling surf under wintry skies...
the pounding of her heart's beat in her ears
...her memory bleeding in drops of mercury...

She knows how it feels when the world turns cold,
She knows where it was when the walls fell down,
She recalls who she was when the fractures widened,
And she remembers all the choices she ignored ---

--- the world stops spinning between each of her breaths.

The pain is her private symphony of hushed tyranny.

Standing
at the edge of the abyss,
breathing tragedy and sorcery,
confusion echoes
in the hollow corridors
of her crowded mind,
She's falling, falling faster
her speeding descent
steeling away
each precious new draught
of air...

breathing the atmosphere
while tainting the atmosphere
while piercing the atmosphere,
slipstreaming,
timesliding,
skyweeping,
as the ocean above
so the ocean below...

She knows how it looks standing alone
on the edge of the precipice
And she anticipates the shattering
impact
when she breaks apart,
when she finally strikes
the tideswept shoreline ---

--- each of her breaths stops the world from spinning.

Falling, she dances to a private symphony of hushed tyranny.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "My Smoke, My Risk, My Pleasure" by Novic (Armen Zhenikeyev), dreamstime_m_2757826.jpg

********************************************************************************************************

An Orchard of Cannibal Wolves
by Joseph Armstead


Alone, atop the hill, The Traveler 
peers down through the gloom,
looking into the depths of the city...

Liquid evening descends
and drapes itself,
like waves of wet eternity
bleeding with surety
from an open wound
in the body of Creation,
spreading irresistably
across a rolling landscape
of city skylines
while the wind
whistles hollowly
through the steel parapets
of the midnight metropolis,
a pin cushion landscape.

It is an orchard of teeming Life,
surrendering again to the rhythm
of a recurring hibernation.

The Traveler keeps his distance.

Wolves gather at the forest's edge,
footsteps from The Travelers back.

They are hungry, battered and ragged
from the rigors of an endless Winter.
Feral lupines, eyes alight
with anticipation of the hunt,
their muzzles wrinkled
against an onslaught of smells
from the city beyond,
The Traveler's presence
is secondary to them,
an after-thought...

Their prey slumbers under shadow,
unsuspecting, unmindful,
and unprepared, drowning
in an ocean of dreaming.

The Traveler keeps his distance.

The wolf-pack flows past him,
focused on the reaping to come,
moving quietly as relentless Time,
rushing silent
past a rock, immobile,
centered
in an icy stream.

Fangs shining in the moonlight,
down into the darkened city they flow...

A cruel Harvest has come to the orchard.

As ever, The Traveler keeps his distance.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Wolves Pack with Moon" by Saniphoto, dreamstime_m_10652971.jpg

*******************************************************************************************************

Sylvia Shines Like A Dagger In the Sun
by Joseph Armstead


It is like a movie,
made from someone else's
train-wreck romance...

We all play our parts.

Jazz guitar and saxophone
waft through the air,
dancing with the incoming fog
from off the bay on the dusk
of a passing spring day,
music drifting softly
from the open window
of the car parked at the edge
of the meadow at the marina,
and I look past her face,
where sunset casts
gentle flames
across her smooth skin,
and a breeze
from off the tumbling waves
tosses the reddish-auburn
serpents of her hair,
while I remember the lie
I caught her in,
remember seeing her
locked in intimate embrace
with a stranger
who made her smile
with a fierce satisfaction
and feline freedom,
I could never inspire.
Gently, my name spills
from her smiling lips
and the falseness of the sound
cuts me deeply as the slice
from an assassin's dagger.

Little murders dance behind
the musical soundtrack
to our foreign film
masquerade
of a picnic.

We all play our parts.   

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Woman with Finger Blades" by Vukvuk (Branislav Ostojic), dreamstime_m_20566903.jpg

*******************************************************************************************************

Twilight Weeping Moonglow on the Stones of Her Heart
by Joseph Armstead


twilight,
next to a stream,
cool water rushing
over smooth black rock
lodged deep
in sand and silt,
as the evening wind
blows gently
across the moving, wet liquid
bringing the scent of roses,
juniper and cherry blossom
to spiral around the weeping girl
listening to jazz
on headphones,
tears falling
onto denim jeans,
she hopes the music
will wash away
her sadness
and grief

alone
on the branch
of a nearby tree,
a crow watches,
incurious,
through cold,
ruby red
eyes,
the sparkle of moonlight
on teardrops
mesmerizing

jazz plays on,
Mingus, Coleman, Coltrane,
dissonant, polyrythmic

the waters of the stream,
bathed in dim moonglow,
never stop to look back

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Waterfall at Night at Sunset" by Udra11, dreamstime_m_19419488.jpg

Truth Is Watching Sandcastles Drown In a Torrent of Tears

Strangling Eagles
By Joseph Armstead



Astride the Towers of Reason,
suffocating
in the clouds most high,
We're the lightning
that drives the heartbeats
of the Angels who kill things
too beautiful to eat;
How sharper than a lion's tooth,
more savage than a rhino's horn,
More faithless
than a motel romance,
Slicker than a thief
picking pockets,
We few standing breathless
in the rarified atmosphere
sing "Glory hallelujah!",
our voices masked by the roar
of the Beasts at our feet.

We'll give you the black symphony
of broken love and willful lies,
rumours of a faded postcard Heaven
where miracles
are never
what they seem
A kiss of Decomposition,
Welcome to the Choir,
neither Salvation
nor its Dream.

Brave enough to believe,
strong enough to be crazy,
We see rewards for these Faithful
despite their feet of clay,
despite the pools of bleeding
innocence
drawing them deeper
into the quagmire.

Save us...

Reflections of the Towers
shimmer in the quicksand muck,
too dark to see the gates of Heaven
too distorted to find Revelation,
We breathe the air too thin to nourish,
asthmatic airways straining,
and we wait for you to tell us
just what you believe in now.

Windblind, the beasts look up.

We are Wonder.  We are Divinity.
We are Mercy with a sucking chest wound.
We're the lightning
that drives the heartbeats
of Angels who kill the things
too beautiful to eat.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Night Moon Over Mountain Eagle" by Truelight9 (Dan Collier), dreamstime_m_1850501.jpg

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As Midnight Wounds the Day
by Joseph Armstead


Like chariots of stone racing 'round the sun,
the planets follow a Sacred Geometry
defined long before the dawn of Memory,
an imperfect dream that hypnotizes, mesmerizes,
and taunts us with the promise of Heaven,
as we sail along, voyagers through Time,
our vision draws our gaze towards the lights
that burn the ocean of the dark...

The timepiece is broken.

Beautiful and yet Damned,
Innocent yet stained by Sin,
we are children of the madness
drawn to the edge of sharpened steel,

clickclackclickclackclickclackclickclack

each tick of the clock,
the sound of a cosmic metronome
channeled though a guitar's phase-shifter,
kills another piece of the universe,

tocktocktocktocktocktocktocktocktocktock

and our miracles grow darker by the hour
while we drift around a star
that is slowly dying.

As midnight wounds the day,
the blood of fools paints a tapestry
of myth and loss and sadness,
as midnight drapes
the hourglass
in shadows. 

We are born from angels, kin to ice and flame,
diamonds in the rough, we raise our eyes
to a sky grown dark with prayers,
the leaden gates to Paradise
rusted and graffitied,
we sail along, voyagers through Time,

(sshoosh... the electron winds blow cold
over a sea of fading minutes ... whoosshh!)

dancing 'round bonfires
searing holes in the ocean of the dark,
our seething miracles
betray the shadows
birthed within us...
the timepiece is broken.

And eternal midnight wounds the day.

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: dreamstime_10382320.jpg

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Shadow on the Surf
by Joseph Armstead


Surge in, slip out,
rolling, rushing, swirling,
the seagulls gather,
their mottled white bodies
bobbing
like torn confetti
cast carelessly
upon the restless waters...

The dry fierceness
of midday's heat
emanates and radiates
from the windswept beach
as footsteps
puncture
its pristine
dunes,
inexorably leading
to the mercurial
liquidity
of the cool,
tidal waters
carrying ghosts
from distant lands
into the dark kingdom
of my looming shadow.

Empire and Dominion,
arrogant whimsies born
from Time and Ego,
washed away from Memory
by the accusation
from a goodbye kiss.

Rush in, roll away out,
surging, swirling, frothing,
the seagulls chatter
and screech,
bobbing on the waves
like loose pages
torn from an old calendar.

The date doesn't matter.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Coast and Night Moonlight Path" by Wildman (Yuriy Brykaylo), dreamstime_m_5982022.jpg

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Actualization
by Joseph Armstead



This is going to hurt.

Peering through squinted eyes,
cold sweat pouring
down a wrinkled forehead,
watching the cruel sharpness
of a drill bit rapidly rotate
only millimeters from this face,
the inevitability of invasive,
unrelenting, brutal honesty
smelling of oil and metal
as it closes the distance
towards trembling flesh,
it is
an hourglass
heralding doom
with every
falling
grain of
sand,
this is
belief,
metaphysics
made real,
stripped
of intellect,
philosophy
and
metaphor,
pain become truth,
savagery ascendent.

The drill comes nearer,
the buzzing of the electric motor
growing louder than thunder, louder
than the pounding
of your racing
heart.

This is going to hurt.

A lot.

Good.

This is how we learn.
 
Peering through squinted eyes,
cold sweat pouring
over a wrinkled brow ridge,
breathing quickly
and shallowly
through distended nostrils,
belly full of angry worms
and hysterical
mosquitos,
lips cracked and dry,
this is Faith,
Reality
and
Knowledge.

Lightning flashes as the drill bites deep...

Applauding
would be
in such bad taste.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid" by Iqoncept, dreamstime_m_18682831