This Strange Fruit

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

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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

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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

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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

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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
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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 

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

A Pinwheel Theory of Chemical Dreaming

Fire Drawn To A Bloom
by Joseph Armstead


the crash is electric,
burning invisibly
in an ocean of coolness

...majesty and fury...
...nature and physics...

and the scent of
burnt copper
on the howling wind
dances a tango
with the fragrance
from an autumn blossom

Awakened from her dark dreaming,
the Lady Fair draws a breath,
tasting the Real,
inhaling the detritus
of Time,
and gathers courage
to face the tempest.

an angel disguised
as a butterfly
alights on the bloom,
the stalk bounces,
bending from the ephemeral weight
 
...seeing, seeking...
...tasting, feeling...

and the storm fans
petal and wing
with a kiss of fire

She dances on the edges
of the lightning's
strike,
alive with the brutal ripping
of molecular chemistry,
and she sees deeper
into the world's dark heart
than ever she did before,
knowing,
this time,
that the white-hot lash
of a raging Heaven
holds no secrets
to her final destiny.

the dichotomy of nature intoxicates and strangles

the butterfly
and the flower
quake as one under skies
split by
the glint of Truth
in the brilliance
of God's eyes.

The Lady Fair
peers into the gloom
of the approaching maelstrom
awaiting her one good moment
in the glare of the bleeding sun... 

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock, "Fire Flower" by Ba-Mi, dreamstime_m_15616773.jpg

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And No One Can Know That You're Bleeding
by Joseph rmstead



It is hurt.

(imagery)

...the tarnished, golden halls of kings, tarts and dreams...
...a corridor to purpled midnight fading to black...

pain be not common -- a slow leak in a torn heart

It is a scent of nostalgia
and abandoned love letters,
a decaying bouquet
of murmuring flowers,
weeping secrets
into the cool, gurgling flow
of the brook of night,
shadowed water,
as nightingales war with crows,
each singing brittle music
heralding the death
of weary daylight,
the sounds
less heard than smelled,
a perfume
that casts a spell
of events
and emotions
that run too deeply
for mere melancholy
under gloom-dappled skin.

(sensation)

... palace intrigue: the upheaval of a sacred avarice...
... a lost child kicks a tin can down a secret road...

pain be not proud -- a storm of wounds that lingers

It is hurt.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock, "Wounded Heart" by Sundikova (Liudmila Sundikova), dreamstime_m_5489869

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Covenant in Acid Shadow
by Joseph Armstead


The music of my voice is
unheard.
Listen.
We have all come to the Gathering,
here,
in the velvetness of aloneness,
today,
to speak of things we have lost,
And of the friends
we continue to miss,
still unheard.
Listen.
 
The danger in this
is its promise
of addiction.
There are no safe havens.
No future born from past glories.
No hearth, no home,
no sanctuary.
 
No guarantee of Heaven.
 
I've a confession to make
and the nightmare in it
is the soundless symphony
streaming from my lips,
my voice,
unheard,
dreamtime betrayed,
A treachery of adulthood
where we pray to the great Unmaker
And wait, happily, for the fury
of the coming storm.
 
Listen...

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock, "Silhouettes and Shadows of People" by Emersont (Terrance Emerson), dreamstime_m_16832042

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Dissembled Vision
By Joseph Armstead



So I saw something out the corner of my

reddened and weary eye,
something moving with fluid,
serpentine
stealth

while, in the cluttered living room,
by the flickering light projected from my
flatscreen LED television,
a politician dolefully discussed
the latest details of the budgetary downturn,
blubbery lips caressing each syllable
in his grim divinations
and
all his words the music of innuendo
as he played the Blame Game,
endorsing the faux-ideas recycled
from a talking head politico from his own party
some twenty-five years past,
that thing

hallucination ... shadow ... apparition ... revenant...

that ghost I saw dancing at the edges
of my blurred vision,
played with the dollar sign emblem
on its gaudy gold jewelry,
hip hop gauche,
a sight gag from a joke reel
in a B-grade movie
no one ever filmed.

I blinked and an alternate
Reality
fell in crumbled

pieces

from out my eye.

Ain't that the way?  You always have problems.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock, "Optical Art Eyes Fractal" by Cvadrat, dreamstime_m_5365885.jpg

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Substance of Thunder
by Joseph Armstead



the voice, thunderous, echoes in the spaces between the clouds,
lashing like a whip of lightning through the open air,
ripping dream from the dreamer,
piercing the fragile veil of expectancy

Sequence acquisition, Countdown begins, initiate...

super-particles caught on the coherent string
of a randerized web suspended in ultra-symmetric solution
dissolve
falling prey
to the decomposition
of gravimetric membranes
in assymetric chronological orbit

6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 -- Echo

Launch:

memories of the last moment of tactile sensation,
transmission of subconscious intimacy
set to fading music, phantom rhythms spiralling
out
of
control
while the tears burn
wet highways down the map of her face

the voice, like the blast of a canon,
like the passing of celestial Judgment,
rockets across an arid desert
of endless guilt,
demanding your attention,
naming your sin,
calling you,
stripping you naked,
and you tremble in shame.

Fatal error.  Sequence abort.  System failure.     

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock, "Man Ego Accuse Concept" by Drx (darkonovakovic), dreamstime_m_2376696.jpg

Somewhere, Strangers Watch While Caffeine Falls Like Rain

 
Dragon Fruit and Blood Spice
by Joseph Armstead

The wolf coughs,
its muzzle wrinkling
like the onset of wisdom
on an old man's forehead,
but actually
more like the cocking of the slide
on a gun,
and it breathes in a scent
from the shadows:
The darkness
smells like pepper
and sizzling honey.

The feral beast feels the wind
fanning the hairs on the fur
along its sides
and it knows
that this is the touch of its Master,
the caress of its Maker,
and the canine hunter's
primal mind erupts
with the sensations
and feelings
of a dream of feasting.

(Somewhere in a metal-hiveworld city
where I am but one more
faceless shade
out of a million,
I look at your photograph
and I feel my blood begin to burn,
my heart begin to pound, racing,
and I reach for my cell phone...

...I stop when memory, uninvited and unbidden,
replays the thundering sound
of your last angry goodbye.
Somewhere in a metal-hiveworld city
I drop to my knees, gnashing  my teeth,
howling --

Lon Chaney,Jr., sad-eyed and repentent,
laughs humorlessly
as I surrender to the change,
the ravenous animal within at last
breaking free of the cage of my flesh...

Only feeding can stop the pain.)

In a brambled bush,
twisted and choking
on its own unchecked growth,
limbs intertwined
looping one inside the other,
thorns and rough bark
sliding edge against edge
under the prompting
of the night's wind,
a malignant tumor
of brilliantly colored flowers,
midnight lillies, shining red
and olive-shaped, a night cactus,
bloom in sinuous
reptilian
triumph
under the pale rain
of moonlight.

The fruit of the dragon's garden,
exposed for all to see.

The wolf smells the bouquet
from the treasure flowers
and shakes its great head,
the movement flickers through changes
in identity, in awareness,
like the light switch
turning from Off to On,
clearing away visions
of still summer nights
and wet, frenzied sex,
and the Beast-that-was-once-Man
prowls the deepest shadows
breathing in hot breaths
of pepper
and
sizzling honey.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Pearl Necklace & Dragon Fruit" by Lowchinhan (Chin Hna Low), dreamstime_9262174.jpg

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Diagnosing the Sickness, A Causational Wedding

by Joseph Armstead

 

(i) Signs and Symptoms

First a cough, then a fever, the waves come rolling in,
crashing against a dull and featureless shore,
fever unleashes the onset of dreams,
hallucinations

                                 --- speak, cry out, tell someone, do not drown alone ---

the canon of Archibald Garrod: "our chemical individualities are due to our chemical merits as well as our chemical shortcomings..."

biopsy frequently and often with weak substantive explanation

 

(ii) Components in Initial Prognosis

analysis of morbid anatomy notwithstanding,
it is a crisis of biological individuality
violently betrayed
by the inherited pathology of evolutionary selection

"...even in the molecular groupings which confer upon us our individualities..."

it is a management plan for a problematic soul
unknowingly cannibalizing itself

                                        --- the diagnosis of exclusion begins ---

IF/THEN statement
Draft One, Step One: Is it of environmental origin?
Draft One, Step Two: Can the bleeding be controlled?
Draft One, Step Three: Is it fatal?
Draft One, Step Four: Is it contagious?

Defeasible reasoning:

If NO, resort to tried and true treatment options.
If YES, inviegle, distort, obfuscate and then, in privacy, pray.

 

(iii) Application of Curative Hypothesis

the pain begins as an ache and then a throb,
and then it erupts to eclipse all the world,
the fever invades the brain and blinds the mind's eye

stick 'em with something narrow and sharp
inject something expensive from your pharmaceutical representative
sound educated and confident

ignore their pain

roll the dice

 

(iv) Results

The dreams cease and the pain lessens,
courage and a positive outlook,
combined with aggressive therapy,
help the recession

                                    --- speak out, feel empowered, tell someone, don't give up ---

dialectics and rhetoric trump logical positivism
Tabulate the bill

... and the Piper is paid, the devil given his due ...

 

Images courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock:  "Science Molecule" and "Money Molecule" by Prawny (Dawn Hudson), dreamstime_4103561 and 4103093.jpg; "Blue Chaos Rays Space" by Sgame, dreamstime_2012722; and, finally, "3 Shiny 3-sided Mystery Dice Roll A Question Mark" by Michaeldb (Michael Brown), dreamstime_5210295.jpg

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Surrogate Melody Played for Ravens
by Joseph Armstead

Startled from sleep,
the black bird cries
and thrashes the night air,
seeking escape.

.............It was the Winter of Our Alienation...................
.............when Time and Mind cruelly conspired .................
.............to relieve us of our sense of security................
.............and enlighten us to the harder aspects................
.............of a Reality that did not want our input..............
.............and a Life that no longer needed our..................
........................participation..............................

I want to fly away, riding this Sorrow to a place without broken mirrors

The sound of the distant surf
echoes
through the trees,
winding, climbing, spinning
past twisted, bare limbs
so old
they have seen the the buffalo
vanish
and the Blue and Gray make war,
through moonlight,
riding the last chill of winter
and into the deepest shadow,
the soft distant thunder
at last vanishes,
and the forest of a thousand
forgotten midnights
holds its breath, waiting,
until the next wave
signals the hope of life
from the far shore
of an unreachable,
beckoning horizon.

.............It was the Moment of Our One Last Kiss................
.............when our hearts sadistically scripted.................
.............a three-act play we couldn't define ..................
.............as either a failed comedy or a happy tragedy..........
.............and where all the words came out twisted..............
.............written in an ancient tongue best suited..............
.........................for mourning..............................

I want to fly away, riding the cool wind to a place without broken mirrors

The black bird's
rough song
rips
the rolling silence
as it flies
into the night season.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Raven Landing - Charcoal" by Aliencat (Linda Bucklin), dreamstime_19333731.jpg

 

Click-clack, Tick-tock, the Hollow Chatter of Winter's Clock

 
Nightblind In the Season of Lights
by Joseph Armstead

The lustre of the glittering
jewelry of revelry,
necklace of lights adorning
the tender throat of a hapless
mid-winter's season
of distress and desperation,
dulls as viscous tears
falling unbidden
from her reddened eyes slide
across their liquid pearlescence.

She cannot see
past the welling waters
of her abandonment.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Portrait of Crying Girl" by Ingadudkina (Inga Dudkina), dreamstime_14028740.jpg

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Portrait in Urban Debris
by Joseph Armstead

 

A car horn bleats
and you look up,
seeing only mechanical motion,
no details.

Grinding your teeth,
you look back down:
discarded
chewing gum wrappers,
aluminum beer can
in the gutter
and
fragments
of a broken bottle on the sidewalk,

curved like scimitars,
razor-edged fractures
lying in wait
for unsuspecting,
inattentive
pedestrians

reflecting light,
cosmic photonic jewelry,
from an overcast winter's sky,

and the dried puddle
from the bottle's contents
staining the concrete
like the leaking viscous
fluid
from the rusted oilpan
on the undercarriage
of a crappy old car.

Her voice, all accusation
and raw, tearful hurt,
echoes in the darkness
inside your head,
ricochetting
like a runaway pinball:
"I can't do this anymore."

Dead inside, you wish you could bleed.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographc Stock: "Deserted Street" by A1ik (Alexander Kolomietz), dreamstime_4882550.jpg

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The Black Dog Manifesto
by Joseph Armstead

 

The moon hides behind the thick gray cotton
of winter clouds over the waters
of the stormy Pacific.

The dog sitting on the hillside
knows that, even though it is hidden,
the moon is still there.

It howls...

They want an apology for our pain.
It makes them uncomfortable.
Like acid, it burns holes
in their flimsy armor of complacency.
Our pain.
It is a thief robbing
their lie of pastoral certitude.

It is a stain of discontent. 

Seagulls wheel over the Bay,
crying in voices like abandoned
children
while, on the shoreline below,
an eighteen-wheel tractor truck
broken down in the commute lane
of the east thruway towards the bridge

assorted remembered histories
of anonymous lives
timeslide by;
lost in reverie,
intersecting
at the most inopportune places,

don't look/don't listen/don't touch

the lost connections
of wheeled nomads
in transit,
moving on past a frozen
present-tense 
tundra primeval,
a wide asphalt expanse
where The Fallen roam.

This is not that famous road less traveled.
This is the infamy of unfocused regret,
the antonym for solace. 
This is our pain
and this, our voice,
is the manifesto of an angry hound
howling in the dark.

Seagulls wheel over the Bay,
crying in the brittle voices
of abandoned children,
while the moon above
the highway
waits behind clouds
for an apology.

Again, the lonely dog
on the gloom-shrouded hillside
howls...

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Night Howl" by Tiscali (Michele Bartolomei), dreamstime_2157458.jpg

Raining Bullets to the Brain, All the Pillars of Heaven Crumble in Confusion

 
ANTENNA
by Joseph Armstead

Listen...

There's a break in the static.

Erector set of a body humming
with mysterious currents,
energy channeled
through electronic portals
streaming tragedy,
comedy, melancholy, joy,
and insistent, insidious
commercialism,
connecting
the hopes and fears
of a hundred thousand
lives pushed to the edges
of their fragile, frenetic endurance,
it pins the polluted sky
to the dry brown hillsides
up from off the busy interstate.

It is the skeleton of a dragon
created by the desire
to stay ever connected
to the tumultuous hive-body.

It is the tattered minnaret
atop a broken mosque
dedicated
to a prophet
who stole the lightning
from the storm
and made of it a willing slave.

It is the gleaming metal pin
that popped the balloon of dreamers.

Listen...

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Male Head With Gears" by Madartists, dreamstime_5402885.jpg

ENDYMONIA WINTER
by Joseph Armstead

Invading sleep, memory overwhelms,
promising too much,
Lying with every heartbeat,
and the Psalms of Sinners
have fueled my tears.
Pride and Shame, sisters of dreaming,
My broken friends who come in sleep,
ride recollection's waves
to the waking shore.
My scars, tattoos of nostalgia,
war with the illusions
from a tale that can't be told,
And my life is so peculiar,
Desires bleeding from old ink
on my parchment skin.
Nothing new here. Just the same old story.
 
The approach of a punch-drunk dawn,
brings images of the past,
a string of fading photographs.
Winter threatens to overdose
on the sands in the hourglass...
Time is a disease
that feeds on my past,
a cannibal
Like other friends of mine.

Previously published in POETRY LIFE & TIMES, January 2007.   Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Ruined Photos" by Cartafra (Francesco Carta), dreamstime_5505047.jpg

 

 
Qubyzim
by Joseph Armstead

Last night's rain
slowly dissolves,
dried away into memory
by the assault of daylight.
Refracted images
painted
with the colors
of the rainbow,
shredded fragments of Time,
like bits of torn cloth
fluttering to ground,
remnants
from a torn photograph
spilt from out the yellowed pages
of a dusty family album,
fall into my hands
and I try to keep them from falling
through my trembling fingers,
stiff-dumb-numb,
hands of a wooden puppet,
to drop, tumbling
into the rainwater ocean,
tides rolling,
driven by strange gravity,
at my feet.
Looking at these random leaves
ripped
from the tree of Yesterday
is like peering up into the sun
through a stained glass window.

Math, visual corollaries
and ghostly geometry,
optical alchemy,
dances across the blackboard
of my mesmerized mind.
It is the art
from wave-packet chaos
trapped
within the frame of my reference.

 

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Abstract Tech Background" by Gudron, dreamstime_3537232.jpg

 

Headshot Rhapsody: Pitbulls On Parade

11th & Madison Is Burning
by Joseph Armstead

Smoke waves atop the air like a flag,
11th and Madison is burning.

Justification
for the silicon nation,
media barons and arms salesmen,
dealmaking and muck-raking, secret tribunals
and drive-by funerals,
it's a prayer wrapped in chain-mail,
education for eradication,
and all the pretty college girls
believe they should testify,
as the clean faces of a suburban jury
in-session and without peer.  

As she marches she sings like a bird,
light and soulful, earnest and true,
ethereal,
as wailing sirens
and flashing red
police car signal lamps
join her song in a shrieking choir...

Smoke waves atop the air like a flag,
11th and Madison is burning.

In the morning sun,
new sun/new light/new day, open eyes,
(newness like a sword from on-high), 
the sounds of voices,

voices ... trumpeting anger/trumpeting change,

a petition for justice,
the hint of retribution
in the music behind the words,
vox populi, rhythm of the boulevards,
throat music raised in protest,
carousel of free-form judgment,
the clock ticks away the morning
as raised fists create a new skyline...

Smoke waves atop the air like a flag,
11th and Madison is burning.

A burning bed of nails
is a platform for evolution,
a revolution under the skin,
Justification
for the silicon nation,
it's a prayer wrapped in chain-mail,
education for eradication,
and all the pretty college girls
just know they gotta testify,
and the song of the mockingbird
isn't pretty at all anymore,
light and soulful, earnest and true,
and lost in the ruckus of battle.

11th and Madison is burning.

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(Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Protesting Man Pointing His Fist" by Alehnia, dreamstime_10175340.jpg)