Free Verse

 

My Shrine is Black

Ben Wesling, US

 

Dark drops of night dripped upwards into the sky
as day slithered off into the bushes and my heart
shed another skin within its armor plated motors
spinning and whirring in hummingbird precision.
Hey you she said from a slit in the wall of time
and as she slowly fell into view her skirt rode up
on her smooth thighs and her hair blew back from
the wind coming off the cliffs where the full moon
is coming up soon whistling a pale melancholy tune.
Hold me tight I said before the next day has a chance
to fulfill its unknown destiny and possibly take us
away and out of our minds with cinnamon and ginger
roots growing out of my guitar as it sits on the chair
I sit in when I write the words that become the real
things that appear soon after I write them down.
Music poured from her fingertips in muted tones
of silver and gold as she clasped me in her embrace
and I fell into the no mans land in front of a red wall
that she seemed to enjoy pushing me through over
and over again with no mercy whatsoever.
By brick and mortar ye shall have no quarter
eye of newt and wing of bat ye shall let the black cat
cross your path and break the mirror in the haunted
mansion that we are entering at this very moment
cant you feel it welcome us with open arms as if
to say finally you are home at last.
Light the candles and say the prayers
its time for bed and then the dreams will start
when the shadows slide up and out the windows
and dance on the rooftops with shrieks and
screams that echo down the valleys to the quaint
cottages and dwellings where the simple folk live
god what would it be like to live like that just
for one long sunny happy care free day in the sun.
But there is no way you say to go back to that existence
you belong here with me by the sea
where gardens and crows and winding streets and strange
pungent flowers crowd the narrow alleys with explosions
of weird colors and my love was reborn in deep ripples
of crimson knives sunk deep in the flesh I could not see
but my god could I feel it cutting and reshaping me
as the wind tosses a kite and makes it dance in the sky.
Each time she greeted me at her door a new initiation
began and ended simultaneously with camouflaged
kisses masquerading as honey drenched tenderness
but underneath it was really the empty face of the
mask of death grinning and grinding me into dust as
fast as my dreams would come and go.
I refuse to accept the mask I said and she just laughed
and smiled because there is no way to deny the
temporary nature of our bodies as they caress and
touch and try to get close to the lover that appears
when we are in the love stream and ready to
receive the blessing of the little star.
Get in my dreams and get out of reality she implored
and I stood and watched as she put oil on her legs
when she did not know I was there.
Curves and lines are all we are when you get right
down to it and the sooner we all get used to it
the better she told me and I have no reason
to disbelieve her.
Summer came and summer went in colors I had
never seen before and maybe never would again
until a new year heated the coals under the fire
of futures yet to come in hazy misty downpours
umbrella filled and cloud parted blue sky wet
and pine scented with the winter and all its
quiet subdued joy.
Paintings of huge flowers spread their openings
wide for me as I looked deep into their canvas
crevices of lust and longing at the gallery where
transparent people seemed to float away as we
approached in all our glittering heat and the glory
of our love as it radiated out in huge waves of
jeweled rose petals adorned with drops of rain
pain and the stain of life as it kills us a piece at
a time until chaos silences all at last.
Late at night I sit alone with my thoughts
such as they are
and I think of all the magic still to come
and all the magic that has gone before and it is
in these solitary times she comes to me and looks
at me with eyes of soft fire that burn in the night
and light my way so that I can see the way to her
heart and the tiny kisses she bestows on my
fevered brow and god knows I am grateful for
the chance to love one last time on this earth
when most never even love the first time.
Passion beauty and the memories of each day
are interwoven in each of her spells as they fall
from her lips in ways that only I can see and catch
in my outstretched hands and sometimes I can
hold onto them long enough
only just long enough to place on the narrow ledge
running along the edge of despair and trust but
no one will ever see it no one can ever discover
the secret places I put the pieces of her inside me because
my shrine is black.

 

 

Suberrenea Mysteria

 

Morbid strains of music filter through
the windswept valley as the shadow
within a silhouette of the dark sweeps
on by with barely a whisper.
This is how I sense the night as it comes
down on me and the little world I have
constructed about my fortress my castle
my interior rough walls lined with torches
that hide more than they illuminate.
Crimson slow moving stains creep down
blackened cracked walls of peeling plaster
to come to rest finally at the floor where they
pool and fester and stagnate in the dimly
reflective way that love appears to me
when it begins to falter and fail and all
the fatal flaws are revealed at last in all
their facades of faded glory.
The threadbare tapestries have long since
given way to the permanence of dust and
the eternal presence of some nameless ghost
that waits in the upper windows at midnight
overlooking the decaying dead garden and
clanks its chains reassuringly at least to me.
Sometimes I cannot sleep until I hear the echoes
of moans deep in the old house that tell tales
of torture of the soul and the trivial ways that we
destroy our own happiness piece by piece.
When my mind turns to the stories of the ancient
ones buried out there on the silent hill beyond
I pick up my pen and put it to paper and pray
that this time I will be able to write my own words
and not just those that they tell me to write from
somewhere that skeletons hold sway and flesh is
but a sad old memory.
Bleeding from all sides the house keeps me sane
or so it tells me when I try to question its wisdom.
You are better off without love it says under its breath
and waits for me to respond and yell and scream and
stamp my feet in anger and fear and regret but I am on
to that game so I just sit quietly and watch the flames
dance in sanskrit symbols of orange and red.
I remember wooing and courting and romancing and
the love notes and the passion contained in a sigh
that drives horses over cliffs in pure devotion and
the insanity of obsession for something that in the end
is really so intangible and fleeting that it only leaves
a gaping hole and a bloody wound when it does decide to
take its leave at last.
These days I concentrate on initiation and the attainment
of the thing that I discovered quite by accident that now
dominates all my waking thoughts and actions and dreams.
It all started during an eclipse of the sun and then got worse
during an eclipse of the moon as if to say nothing is stronger than
me so don't even try to go against me and so I don't.
Something new floats in my blood
some strange new sound reverberates in my ears
some new colors are painted onto the world now as
I looked inside myself to see what is really going on in
the outside that I have manifested and created around me
and it suddenly came to me that all my limitations were
like smoke and I could just blow them apart and away if
I really chose to once and for all.
My wings are stretching in leather and peacock feather
my eyes are opening to the abyss as it really is
my fists are holding air so gently it nestles in my palms
like a baby possum all alone in the world but still content
to wait for an eclipse that never comes.
I have everything I need and more besides if I just let it
flow and don't stand in its way as it rolls downhill towards
me in a spinning wheel of fire that burns all in its path
just like buddha must have done in the 5th century when
all the assassins sent to annihilate him were converted to
his followers the instant they lay eyes on him.
Love is never in vain it is not stopped by pain
it never compromises it never gives up and it never
never submits and this is why it
is the engine of the universe that drives us all to seek
its perfection and its beauty and its subtle way of
kissing us on the lips when we least expect it and when
it pushes us down on the bed and tears all our emotions off
roughly and we are lying there naked and breathless
and quivering that's when it leaves its mark that
indelible incredible mark that never washes off the soul and the
heart and the mind and yes the body as it writhes and
contorts into the shapes that I once saw in a book of
sigils and signs and omens that had an odd title that
I never forgot no matter how hard I tried to burn it
bury it give it away sell it destroy it but that's how love
is when it comes alive it is indestructible and reaches
from the stars right down into the creased pages of the
subterrenea mysteria.