Rosa Mundi a poem...excerpts...H.D. Carr (Aleister Crowley) & Auguste Rodin... 1905

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Limited edition, 488 copies printed with a full page watercolor drawing by Auguste Rodin signed in the plate.

pencil and wash design by Auguste Rodin

1. ROSE of the World!
Red glory of the secret heart of Love!
Red flame, rose-red, most subtly curled
Into its own infinite flower, all flowers above!
Its flower in its own perfumed passion,
Its faint sweet passion, folded and furled
In flower fashion;
And my deep spirit taking its pure part
Of that voluptuous heart
Of hidden happiness!

2. Arise, strong bow of the young child Eros!
(While the maddening moonlight, the memoried caress
Stolen of the scented rose
Stirs me and bids each racing pulse ache, ache!)
Bend into an agony of art
Whose cry is ever rapture, and whose tears
For their own purity's undivided sake
Are molten dew, as, on the lotus leaves
Sliver-coiled in the Sun
Into green girdled spheres
Purer than all a maiden's dream enweaves,
Lies the unutterable beauty of
The Waters. Yea, arise, divinest dove
Of the Idalian, on your crimson wings
And soft grey plumes, bear me to yon cool shrine
Of that most softly-spoken one,
Mine Aphrodite! Touch the imperfect strings,
Oh thou, immortal, throned above the moon!
Inspire a holy tune
Lighter and lovelier than flowers and wine
Offered in gracious gardens unto Pan
By any soul of man!

...

Matchless, serene, in sacred amplitudes
Of its own royal rapture, deaf and blind
To aught but its own mastery of song
And light, shown ever as silence and deep night
Secret as death and final. Let me long
Never again for aught! This great delight
Involves me, weaves me in its pattern of bliss,
Seals me with its own kiss,
Draws me to thee with every dream that glows,
Poet, each word! Maiden, each burden of snows
Extending beyond sunset, beyond dawn!
O Rose, inviolate, utterly withdrawn
In the truth: -- for this is truth: Love knows!
Ah! Rose of the World! Rose! Rose!

excerpts from Rosa Mundi by H. D. Carr (Aleister Crowley)

Patrick John Larabee...drawing & poem

 
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Janus

An Invokation of the Hidden Light

I call forth to the Eldritch Spirits of the Dark Abyss,

Thee who don the Masks of Earths Gods,

I am Enchanted as a Light in the Dark,

Illuminated Rays ever searching for You.

Fiery Serpent of Wisdom I call forth to You,

Mighty Angel of the Absolute,

O' Sacred King of the Witch-Blood True,

To the Land of Man Thou hast Come as the Leader of the Way,

Let Thine Blessed Radiance impregnate this Red Clay.

I look forward into the Past,

I awaken the Soul of my Ancestor Qayin,

I bring to light the Hidden Wisdom of Midnight's Gods,

O' Gates of mine own Self be open!

O' Light of the Soul,

O' Brilliance of the Spirit,

Forever Shimmering is the Light of the Peacock Angel,

Descending from the Heavens to Earth to Embrace

the Flesh of the Existent.

Wisdom and Truth of the Light I seek,

Ever to be found in the Gnosis of I,

Self-Knowledge of Mine Ever-Changing Ways,

Forever swirling about the Point,

As an Un-Earthed Treasure ever abiding in the Dark.

Sacred Fire of the Most High shine from Within,

Illuminate the Mind of the Wise with the Vision of the Eternal,

O' Secret Light cast by Witches Fire,

O' Secret Light cast by Sorcerer's Pyre,

Burn bright, grow high, forever alight in the Mind's Eye.

Patrick Larabee on Etsy

I am first and foremost a practitioner of the Traditional Witchcraft Mysteries as a Walker of the Lonley Road. My work is concerned with Arte of Magick and Sorcery. Secondly, I am an artist and writer who seeks to bring to light the Mysteries of the Darkness through Image and Word, Rite and Praxis.

 

Patricks Artists page on Facebook

Anne Sexton (1928- 1974)... self portrait & poem...

Self Portrait Undated

'You are the answer, '
I said, and entered,
lying down on the gates of the city.
Then the chains were fastened around me
and I lost my common gender and my final aspect.
Adam was on the left of me
and Eve was on the right of me,
both thoroughly inconsistent with the world of reason.
We wove our arms together
and rode under the sun.
I was not a woman anymore,
not one thing or the other.

O daughters of Jerusalem,
the king has brought me into his chamber.
I am black and I am beautiful.
I've been opened and undressed.
I have no arms or legs.
I'm all one skin like a fish.
I'm no more a woman
than Christ was a man. 

excerpt from ~ Consorting with Angels by Anne Sexton

J Karl Bogartte... A Curious night for a double eclipse..2011

Received my copy today of a collaboration with a favourite poet/artist  JK Bogartte...

The levels of consciousness passing through at unfamiliar angles, aroused by intuition and the enfolding future of wasps in a secretive handshake... The word for venom is always glowing in the dark. The storm takes your shape, impregnates those clear-cut moments of primitive bliss and darkens them. Everything unknown comes from deceptive distances. Authenticity enlightens death.

J Karl Bogartte

click on image to enlarge

   

Life is another identity to the one you call your own, and the mystery of who desires its own form, follows the rush of nebulae...

    The missing links ravishing the landscape, hesitant poses, reluctant portraits, the erotic gathering of phantoms that cast themselves skimming over the water, where you and your shadow mediate with death, shaking the clarities between the poles of unconscious desires, striking up the band, of thieves and precious stones, languorous nights collaborating with philosophers haunted by wolves in the foundry of priceless shoulder blades... Bone is like breath when it reflects the sun. It is like devotion, even when it slumbers and dreams of a desirable climax, a beautiful havoc no one can resist.

   There is joy and longing in the skeletal remains of the astronomy that announces your passion, in quadrants, so completely out of step, so flint-like in those moments before waking, where you cannot even be seen...

   “Eat me, my love, live on me with animal-thirst, in the charade of a diamond split open for perilous novelty. Lick my fleece and draw blood into enchanted circles... Suffer for me, my eager shadow, sip the nightshade of my buzzing and my antennae, and cling to my stake, glow for me in the shallows of all that resemble the artifacts of confusion and dismay... my love, enter me and become my hunger for you...”

   Gold is time compressed into a diamond. Time is the process by which infinity lifts her dress just enough to unsilver the mirror that reflects your absence. Your breath is the completed triangle of a furious glance. Night trembles, because it knows you...

   Desire and desperation unfold like roadblocks on a street of glaciers burning up the architecture of fear, where swans mimic giant prisms and autopsy implements fondling the brightest of your glimpses, with passion and concern, with empathy and idealization, a little violence and projection, a passing semblance of erotic devotion, and yes, filled with a certain grace, moments of acceptable doubt, an anguish that allows us to evolve... If we do not falter...

    You are, in spite of yourself, a series of references, and ingenious designs, however brilliant and often too intricate for precise placement in the moment, and we become medial angles taunted by candles and poetic crimes in progress, crossbows of a lunar eclipse, and chaste fountains in the middle of the room with opened arms. We follow you with intent to commit mayhem. We love you endlessly, your propellers tearing up the forest, and when your transparency astounds us, we love you even more. A lunacy of longing dwells in us like words that have no meaning, but animal cries, torn linen, a loving defiance... There is hope for fire.

Dolorosa ... a drawing for Harry Crosby 2012

...if it were not for you...

Dolorosa  2012 ~ for Harry Crosby

The Sun in unconcealed rage
Glares down across the magic of the world

The sun within us, that sways un incalculably.

At night
Swift to the Sun
Deep imaged in my soul
But during the long day black lands
To cross

And it is faith in the incalculable sun, inner and outer, which keeps us alive.

Sunmaid
Left by the tide
I bring you a conch-shell
That listening to the Sun you may
Revive

          And there is always the battle of the sun, against the corrosive acid vapour of vanity and poisonous conceit, which is the breath of the world.

Dark clouds
Are not so dark
As our embittered thoughts
Which carve strange silences within
The Sun

 HARRY CROSBY ~ CHARIOT OF THE SUN

Dolorosa... new drawing 2011 & Ithell Colquhoun poem...

Dolorosa ~ Arch Old Inquest ~2011

Sent Away

Sent away

By Light of day

I return

When candles burn

Ithell Colquhoun

František Tichý & Gerard de Nerval ...Chimeras 1949

Front cover illustration by František Tichý  for Chimeras by Gerard de Nerval 1949

Gilded Verse

And so! Everything is sentient!

-Pythagoras

Man, free thinker! You think you alone think

In this world where life splatters everywhere?

You're free to dispose of your charge,

But the firmament's gone from your schemes.

Respect the spirit that moves in beasts:

Every flower a ghost that opens to Nature,

Every alloy harbors the secrets of love;

“Everything is sentient,” & everything can change you,

Fear the eyes in blind walls,

Even dead matter is infused with a verb,

Don't use it perversely.

Even in the shunned ones lives a secret god,

Like a nascent eye obscured by its lids,

A pure spirit blooms behind the veil of stones. 

The Chimeras ~ by Gerard de Nerval  translated by Translated by Mark Lamoureux

Ernst Fuchs... Vision... 1953

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previous Fuchs

A vision

I lost the love of heaven above,
I spurned the lust of earth below,
I felt the sweets of fancied love
And hell itself my only foe.

I lost earth's joys but felt the glow
Of heaven's flame abound in me
Till loveliness and I did grow
The bard of immortality.

I loved but woman fell away
I hid me from her faded fame,
I snatched the sun's eternal ray
And wrote till earth was but a name

In every language upon earth,
On every shore, o'er every sea,
I give my name immortal birth
And kept my spirit with the free.

John Clare

(1793 - 1864)

Edgar Allan Poe poem... Dolorosa pen & ink sketch...

pen and ink sketch Dolorosa

A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow--

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand--

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Maman Brigitte ... Jessica Grote, poem & Claude Saintilius, art.

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Maman Brigitte by Claude Saintilius

~~ Our Lady of the Cemetery: Maman Brigitte ~~

The Face of Death

Ruby-red drops of blood mix with the white flour. The strong

alcohol is still burning in her throat. Passion overcomes her,a

yearning, a desperate physical hunger, spreading her legs wide

open, shivering through her body. She wants to embrace...the

Dead. 

Fixing her gaze on the purple candle, raising it high

above her head, she whispers... Maman... Ma mere... An irresistable

urge has her pouring the purple wax over her body

while calling out to HER...

You are walking down the long and sparely lit hallway.

Following a noise, a whisper, the distant echo of MY voice.

It is cold, you are alone and yet you know we are all around -

waiting for you.

Treading on the path of the unknown, you feel fear, my child,

I know.

Be brave, go ahead, follow MY call, open that door.

I am over here, standing below the willow on that old cemetery

Yes, it is music coming out of this crypt. Have a look, go inside,

you will see strange rites but also merry dancing and laughter.

Dance with the Dead, my child! Dance with my children!

Do not take yourself too serious!

I am the Mother of the Dead and we are everywhere. In fact

everyone is a walking Dead.

So why not laugh in the face of Death?

by Jessica Grote ~October 2010 excerpt from Atua

Robert Taylor... Pen & Ink drawings and Poem...

Rose ~ pen and ink

Sri Yantra for the Kali Yuga ~ Pen and Ink

 

Flower of  Freya ~ Pen and Ink

The Pointillist

In the gathering indigo of evening
at the twilight of the day,
as ghosts of blue smoke be rising
from chimeys red and grey,

an ink-besmeared drawing board,
testament to lonely nights
of labor-intense endeavors
where his patient work is wrought.

The small key rolls the tumblers
of an oiled, aged lock
that opens the door to stillness.
He feels for the light switch
to vanquish the dark.

Alchemist of the stipple-pen
in his black kitchen of art,
pursuing the endless journey
from ink to pen to dot.

His hair now streaked with silver,
Myopia dims his sight.
His years in dots are measured,
subtracting from his life...

more wonders here at the Red Salon

Gerrit van Honthorst.... Saint Sebastian... c1623

click on image to enlarge

The Love Song of St. Sebastian

T. S. Eliot

I would come in a shirt of hair
I would come with a lamp in the night
And sit at the foot of your stair;
I would flog myself until I bled,
And after hour on hour of prayer
And torture and delight
Until my blood should ring the lamp
And glisten in the light;
I should arise your neophyte
And then put out the light
To follow where you lead,
To follow where your feet are white
In the darkness toward your bed
And where your gown is white
And against your gown your braided hair.
Then you would take me in
Because I was hideous in your sight
You would take me in without shame
Because I should be dead
And when the morning came
Between your breasts should lie my head.
I would come with a towel in my hand
And bend your head beneath my knees;
Your earls curl back in a certain way
Like no one’s else in all the world.
When all the world shall melt in the sun,
Melt or freeze,
I shall remember how your ears were curled.
I should for a moment linger
And follow the curve with my finger
And your head beneath my knees---
I think that at last you would understand.
There would be nothing more to say.
You would love me because I should have strangled you
And because of my infamy;
And I should love you the more because I mangled you
And because you were no longer beautiful
To anyone but me.

1914

Shuji Terayama... Collage & Haiku poem...

click on image to enlarge

while an ant
toiled from the dahlia
to the ash tray
I was forming
a beautiful lie

more here > UBUWEB

Felicien Rops & Victor Neuburg... erotic print. & poem excerpt...

L'Amante du Christ, 1888 ~ Felicien Rops

Sweet wizard, in whose footsteps I have trod

Unto the shrine of the most obscene god, and

Let me once more feel thy strong hand to be

Making the magic signs upon me! Stand,

Stand in the light, and let mine eyes drink in

The glorious vision of the death of sin!

from 'The Romance of Olivia Vane' Victor Neuburg.

Edward Estlin Cummings...poem & drawings...

i like my body when it is with your

 

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

previous posts EE CUMMINGS

Edmond Jabès ... poem...

From "Groundless,"

by Edmond Jabès (b. Cairo, 1912–d. Paris, 1991)

Translated by Keith Waldrop

I

No-man's-land, obsessed page

A dwelling-place is a long insomnia

in the hooded trails of a mine.

My days are days of roots,

love's yoke extolled.

The sky is always to cross and

foreground to be bed with new nights.

I form, in my weeds,

a wedge in the wall's opaque brightness.

The earth is steeped in

empty dreams of travel.

VI

Land beyond night, which the sun wrenches from

meditation, from the thorns of doubt.

Flowers parade their artful candor. The stems

emulate grand adventures in space.

Honey flows between stones

which this cement will join.

VII

Around the branches, the world mimes its hunger.

So many cries for a tree, fragrant god to

plant, to bend by a magic round. . .

My secrets are orchards.

There is no trick to the mystery.

* with thanks to Ruairi

Paul Holman... poem... 3

3

 She had been earthed

( had i earthed

her by my intrusion? )

eyes no longer turned

upon phenomena I

could not locate.

She considered me a 

plunderer, a facund man,

a madman: one who

scries alphabets

of daggers, of arrows.

Zigzagged tights in a

knot in her pocket,

the tip of each

hair luminous a fox-

fire or rotten wood,

she opened the violet

gate at her throat

to release the fractal

silhouette of Pan.

Published in a wonderful collection of esoteric poetry and essays > Datura by Scarlet Imprint 

previous POEMS

 

PAUL HOLMAN is the author of The Fabulist (1991) and The Memory of the Drift (2000). He was co-editor of Invisible Books in the 1990s.

Harry Crosby... Sun Testament....

SUN-TESTAMENT
(For W.V.R.B.)

I, The Sun, Lord of the Sky, sojourning in the Land of Sky, being of sound mind and memory, do hereby make, publish and declare the following to be my Last Will and Testament, hereby revoking all other wills, codicils and testamentary dispositions by me at any time heretofore made.

First, I hereby direct and elect that my estate shall be administered and my will construed and regulated and the validity and effect of the testamentary dispositions herein contained determined by the laws of the Sky.

Second, I give and bequeath absolutely to my wife, the Moon, four octrillion centuries of sun-rays, this legacy to have priority over all other legacies and bequests and to be free from any and all legacy, inheritance, transfer, successions, taxes or duties whatsoever, said taxes or duties to be borne by my estate.

Third, I give and bequeathe the sum of one million centuries of sun-rays net free from any and all legacy, inheritance, transfer, succession, taxes or duties whatsoever, said taxes or duties to be borne by my estate, to my Executors, to be used for the erecting of an Obelisk to the Sun.

Fourth, I give and bequeathe to my beloved wife the Moon my assortment of sunstones, my sun-yacht that for many aeons has navigated the sea of clouds, together with my collection of butterflies which are the souls of women caught in my golden web and my collection of red arrows which are the souls of men caught in my golden web.

Fifth, I give and bequeathe to my sons and daughters the stars, my mirror the ocean and my caravan of mountains.

Sixth, I give and bequeathe to Aurora Goddess of the Dawn a sunrise trumpet and a girdle of clouds.

Seventh, I give and bequeathe to the planet Venus all my eruptive prominences whether in spikes or jets or sheafs and volutes in honor of her all-too-few transits.

Eighth, I give and bequeathe to Lady Vesuvius a sunbonnet, a palace of clouds and the heart she once hurled up to me.

Ninth, I give and bequeathe to the Sun-Goddess Rat the Lady of Heliopolis and a garden of sunflowers.

Tenth, I give and bequeathe to Icarus a sunshade and a word of introduction to the Moon.

Eleventh, I give and bequeathe to Horus (Egyptian Hor) the falcon-headed solar divinity a thousand sun-hawks from my aviary to be mummified in his honor.

Twelfth, I give and bequeathe to Amenophus IV of Egypt my golden gourd that his thirst for me may be assuaged.

Thirteenth, I give and bequeathe to Renofer, High Priest of the Sun, my shares in Electric Horizens and Corona Preferred.

Fourteenth, I give and bequeathe to Louis XIV of France, Le Roi Soleil, my gold peruke.

Fifteenth, I give and bequeathe to Arthur Rimbaud a red sunsail.

Sixteenth, I give and bequeathe to my charioteer Phaeton my chariot of the sun and my chariot-horses Erythous Acteon Lampos Philogeus.

Seventeenth, I give and bequeathe to each of the Virgins of the Sun in Peru, to each and every citizen of Heliopolis, to the Teotitmocars of Mexico who built the giant pyramid to the Sun, to each and every of the Incas, to the Hyperboreans dwellers in the land of perpetual sunshine and great fertility beyond the north wind, my halo, rainbows and mirages, to the Surya-bans and the Chandra-bans of India to each a sunthought and to my lowly subject the Earth ten centuries of sunrays.

Eighteenth, I give and bequeathe likewise to the Japanese Flag whose center is a Red Sun and to the flags of Persia (the Lion and the Sun) and to the flags of Uruguay and Argentine my fiery flames and furious commotion.

Nineteenth, I give and bequeathe to all the inns, cabarets, bars, taverns, bordels whose ensign is the Sun, pieces of brocaded sunlight.

Twentieth, I give and bequeathe sunbonnets to various high monuments in particular the Eiffel Tower, the Woolworth Building, and to an imaginary tower built by the combined height of the phalluses of men.

Twenty-First, I give and bequeathe to Apollo of Greece a temple of the sun to Osiris of Egypt a temple of the sun to Indra of India a temple of the Sun this legacy is over and above any and all commissions to which they may be entitled as executors.

Twenty-Second, All the rest residue and remainder of my estate of whatsoever kind and nature, wheresoever situated, not specifically given or bequeathed hereinabove, including any and all void or lapsed legacies or bequests, I give, devise and bequeathe to Mithra of the Persians and to Surya of the Hindus, or to the survivor with the request that they establish therewith a fund for Sun-Birds (i.i. poets) to be organized and administered by them in their sole discretion and judgement, this fund to be known as the Sun and Moon Fund for Sun-Birds.

Twenty-Third, I hereby nominate, constitute and appoint Osiris of Egypt Apollo of Greece and Indra of India Executors of this my last will and testament.
In witness thereof, I have herewith set my hand and seal to this holographic will, entirely written and dated and signed by me at my Castle of Clouds this nineteenth day of January nineteen hundred and twenty eight.


Signed : The Sun

Signed, sealed, published and declared by The Sun, the Testator above named as and for his last Will and Testament in the presence of us who at his request and in his presence and in the presence of each other have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses thereto.
Hu of the Druids
Ptah of the Egyptians
Vitzliputsli of the Mexicans




Sleeping Together
cry in your sleep and implore
cry autumn’s fire still small
cry as the door to the wind
cry for the touch of the snow upon snow
cry of the things that you fear
cry in the darkness a distant
dream in my ear

(from Sleeping Together, 1929)





previous Harry Crosby

Francis Picabia ... Untitled drawing & poem

Gstaad

The sea pitches endlessly

The role mirrors her pupils

From memory

So mirthful

Swaying of gravity

Expresses a resonance

Of constant desires

I have excuses

And lack strength and courage

influence is a useless thing

She is the most beautiful of the women

On my mind 

more poems > 

previous PICABIA

Justin Lee Brown (Desiderata)... Of Dreams and Madness ...poem&drawing..

Of Dreams and Madness

I am one stutter-step away from the rails, too late for a hail mary pass. I've become an intentionless phen-omega-non, tearing it up in a senseless dynamic, tearing it down in the mine fields of mutilated flesh where the bloody stumps of a futile resistance twitch out before the final paralysis. Flex paradoxical, just for the thrill of it. Pussy, pussy, run. Don't you see? In life birds fly where cats can't follow, towards a seemingly unfathomable destiny; climb towards ferocious heights where tender hope and unmolested sky momentarily erupt into the plausible. But not for me, the untouchable one.

In these final days of absurdity I AM the gravitational pull. I am the freedom that must extend, spiraling downward towards the rhizome, the mechanism of molecular, towards the intention itself in spite of all its pointlessness. I seek out the lowest level of libidinal energy rendered down to its quintessence, deconstructed and abstracted to the point of consummate alienation just to see it rise above terrestrial. I am the only conviction of my own contradictions, in the end the solitary breath that I draw from the collective will be drawn in the isolation of a solipsist consciousness. The journey of ages begins and ends with a solitary gasp.

It took me decades to find my voice, recognize it, flesh out my screams against impartial instruments and enigmatic signifiers, my ferocious investment only partially returned before I flipped the switch of void. Still alive and swollen with the genealogy of rage, I come to merge the violence of the self with the rogue cells of sadistic attraction. I AM blood. The native ancestry of a florid massacre. Against whom do we release our suicide? Who's skulls do we crush with rubric truncheons of dereliction? Step to the center and slide right. Five squares and three circles intersect at madness. The schism of imaginary presence augments a glistening archetypal voidness where the clatter of runes speak but leave no trace. I dissolve into this lush unified field of consciousness, an incandescent surreality of disaster, then cathexis, until I am a ruin of my own imagination. The aesthetic revenge of a simple madness comforts me as I descend.

Bathed in quiet rings of latern light, the figurative darkness of cognition divides me until I am scattered, only lonliness remains intact. Pushed along by cool atomic winds while pursued by consumptive assassins with cold enamel eyes, I sing ludicrous ballads while choking on shards of ivory bone. Three obsidian figures from childhood aberrations appear beyond the rumor of distant cries. Their starling smiles encode death and empty me of fractal infinites. Have you come here to dream code with me? How long will you stay before the Machinic explodes? Suddenly I am elsewhere in this discursive amalgam, sequencing dread through involuted time. Its symbolic order expressed through ripples of multilevel perception searing its way through waxy axon terminals, mindflesh, and the endless paroxysmal twitching of my eyeballs. I begin at last to see.

I AM become the manipulations of the paranoiac as I plunge through strata of cosmic drift. I float naked in its ether above Byzantine gardens, through a sudden burst of metallic rose petals quivering like dragonfly wings, float further down across pools of cobalt blue tipped with jade quantum foam. An ensemble of grey stone herrings suddenly take flight, flood my synapse with a cultivated integration of pain. The sound of wingbeats rushing around me, a soft static noise of cruel.

Voltaic penetration as an act of malice invades my dreaming with disquieting dialog of subatomic consciousness trapping me between layers of earth and stratosphere. The smell of seared flesh wraps around me to the point of suffocation. I struggle through emptiness, cryogenic tears pound like hail against my skull. Illumination and exposure bind me. Am I still dreaming? Who has come to judge my emptiness? I say, bring me the sweet enigmatic growl that I can adhere to. I much prefer the sun when obscured by cloud and your mouth when sewn tightly shut.

Justin Lee Brown /aka Desiderata

more poetry featured  in The Plebian Rag  & Clockwise Cat

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