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
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