Immortal Musings

by Bard Constantine

  always denied;

  and in the dark is

  where she cried…

  The Tempest

  Teeth of concrete I

  negotiated; I

  ascended from the depths, the

  conflagration, the

  maw Of the fiery Dragon.

  Upward the

  humidity lifted me from the

  torridity, the foul oppression

  that I had to escape,

  if only for a moment.

  Atop the towers of stone

  I saw the approach; the

  air was still, as though dreading

  the Herald of its passage.

  Darkness drew nearer in its

  ever shifting form, in

  hordes that stretched like thirsty

  fingers; an ominous hand

  cast its shadow over me,

  the solitary figure

  feigning defiance.

  The wind shoved me

  roughly, brooking no insolence;

  I was startled by its

  brusque attitude, the

  unmerciful display of

  ill-disposed temperament.

  Somewhere in the heaving darkness

  lightning flickered;

  a promise of unspeakable

  power, of

  galvanic cords of shimmering fury.

  In the uncaring embrace of

  the billowing sweeps

  I felt the temptation to

  fly;

  to drop into the mercy

  of the winds and be

  aloft, borne by the wispy ghosts

  that moaned and shrieked as they

  fluttered overhead.

  I stood with arms outstretched, but

  my only answer was

  tears

  stinging my eyes,

  soaking my garments, and

  shattering like broken crystal

  upon the uncaring stone.

  Dejected, I returned to the

  smolder, the cavernous belly of

  the Beast of industry,

  forever engraved by the

  touch, the singular moment of

  freedom

  in the visage of the tempest.

  Bard of Darkness

  He walked into the misty moonlight,

  guided by some

  phantom insight;

  not instinct or mystic art,

  but by the dark inside his heart.

  He slew them softly with his words,

  his whispered verse and his

  proverbs;

  depression seeped into their minds

  as he revealed the clandestine.

  Then slit his wrists

  and watched them bleed

  on paper for the world to read;

  so every word that he had said

  had from his very heart been

  bled.

  Sparks danced around

  his fingertips

  as dark psalms whispered from his lips;

  his evensong that pierced their hearts,

  and hymns that picked their minds apart.

  Then lightning struck and

  thunder rolled,

  as he captivated souls;

  high on a cliff above the sea

  he cast poetic sorcery.

  And as the morning fog rolled in,

  to hide the

  fierceness

  of his grin;

  they prayed in silence to

  survive

  the bliss of being

  sanctified…

  Outcast

  Exiled in the bitter night,

  I peered inside at the

  light;

  where in the past

  my heart would long

  to find a place

  where I belonged.

  Yet tutelage under

  rainy skies

  forced open my immortal eyes;

  for those around me all became

  identical,

  one and the same.

  When they could not

  assimilate me,

  they found it easier to

  hate me;

  a black sheep outside of the fold,

  cast out into the bitter cold.

  I gazed inside at that bright place, a

  sneer of contempt

  on my face.

  In the dark

  I had grown stronger;

  I need their company no longer.

  City of Glass

  There once was a city of glass, of

  emerald and gold-chased dreams, frosted

  like sheets of frozen diamonds, and

  dusted by the smiles of gods.

  This was where the

  young, precocious, dreaming

  boy entered, enraptured by the streets

  of lace, the rivers of honeyed nectar, the

  glowing beings that drifted on

  gossamer wings

  like butterflies in springtime, and

  laughed like the wind.

  This young, naïve, foolish boy was

  led by the hand, taken to the

  sky-chasing towers, fed honey-cakes

  and lemon tea, while singing with the

  chorus of angelic, sweet smiling beings who

  danced with him across tiles of spun gold

  until at last he was taken to a room, a large

  glorious chamber with a bed of down, and

  pillows stuffed with sweet dreams.

  This childish, trusting, young innocent boy laid his

  tired head down and drifted to dreams of

  meadows and fawns until he was

  snatched from his sleep by iron hands tipped

  with steel claws; by dreadful beasts whose

  tresses were hissing serpents, whose

  yellow eyes gleamed with hatred of all

  living things.

  The bony-knobbed monsters

  dragged the screaming foolish boy by

  his hair, and he saw that his room was

  not glorious at all, but lined with

  bones and broken dreams; cracked and pitted

  like the ruins of a past best forgotten.

  He was dragged

  under the glassy city, where all

  the fallen, misbegotten, lost, foolish

  boys and girls were locked away in

  chains, scourged with lashes of

  fire and spite, until the well of their

  tears

  was spent, until submission and

  indifference replaced the bones of

  their existence.

  This was where the

  boy, foolish no longer, toiled day and

  night, fed scraps not fit for swine, and

  beaten

  twice a day until he began to

  harden, his skin calloused so

  he hardly felt the blows, until he

  hated for the first time in his

  life, until he dreamed of death and

  vengeance and woke up

  smiling, until he began to forge a

  weapon, a blade of iron he called

  Muse.

  In secret he would

  sharpen it until was keen enough

  to make the air bleed, until

  one sweet, splendid, glorious day, he

  struck the creature beating him; the

  blade parted bone like water, and

  the bitter, vengeful, angry boy

  delighted in the shower of black

  spurting blood that

  rained across his face.

  He danced among the creatures like

  a smiling nightmare, their

  screams

  were honey to his ears, until

  all were thrashing

  in their death throes.

  Then the strong, courageous, warrior boy

  struck off the chains, and led

  the children up the stairs, startling

 
the beautiful, angelic, winged beings, who

  cowered in fear at the sight of

  the army of children led by a blood-spattered

  demigod

  with a bright sword in his fist.

  He lead them Beyond, out of

  the city of glass where he looked and

  his breath caught, for his

  reborn eyes now saw the

  tentacles that ran along the seams

  like throbbing veins, the

  electric eyes that pierced

  flesh and bone, the

  sighs of oppression that carried on

  the wind.

  So he lifted Muse before his face, and

  hurled it with all of his might, and

  when it struck the glass, the rainbow-hued

  plates of Turkish Delight, the

  scream was almost human as the

  glass splintered and cracked until it reached

  the spire in the sky, then

  the city fell in shards of glittering

  glass.

  The sound of the collapse

  was like the sea if it were frozen and

  struck by Mjollnir; and the

  scarred, hardened, weary boy

  led his people away, to the

  lands by the Sea, chasing

  dreams in the sky;

  chasing dreams…

  Gutterfly Kisses

  The gutterfly drifted

  most times,

  for her wings were

  battered

  like sails that had

  seen too many storms, her

  colors had faded from

  the oppression, the

  blistering heat

  of the merciless sun that

  made her long for her

  bygone prologue when she

  flitted among the windblown spectrum of

  shimmering jewels, the expanse of

  multi-colored flower petals; enjoyed the taste

  of succulent nectar, the ambrosia of

  the roses that she

  delicately lighted upon.

  But that was before the

  maelstrom

  that had smothered the sky,

  roaring in like an ocean of

  fury, beating her

  senseless and scattering her

  paradise like glittering shards of

  a shattered kaleidoscope.

  So she flitted

  aimlessly among foreign forests of

  concrete and steel, where

  hordes of Nephilim

  lumbered onward,

  oblivious to her despair.

  In quiet moments she dreamed

  of a sleek, gleaming gutterfly with

  razor-edged wings and eyes of

  onyx that would

  lead her away from the

  stench, the soot, the

  gutters, and take her to

  where the air was

  gentle; where they would

  soar across the cobalt iris

  together

  and share gutterfly kisses

  that tasted of honeydew.

  But she awoke in the

  gloom, in the clammy embrace of

  dead branches and knew

  dreaming was useless, that

  she would have to

  find the name of the

  wind

  with her own battered wings.

  Runes

  And so I write, until

  broken fingers stagger,

  staccato a broken

  drumbeat; delirious,

  inebriated on the ambrosia, the

  absinthe of written words.

  And so I write,

  fire and ice and

  greenmagic;

  I cast them into the wind like

  dandelion dander, every

  whisper potent, every arcane

  rune that has been carved

  across my soul,

  tattooed.

  And so I write, I

  capture dreams in

  butterfly nets, sip of their

  essence before they

  dissolve, before I

  awake from the esoteric, the

  clandestine world of poetic

  sorcery.

  And so I write, until

  crimson

  stains the pages, until

  the cogs rust and

  crumble, chalky dust powders

  across the keyboard,

  teardrops

  fade into the gnarled

  valleys, twilight

  swallows every star

  in the sky.

  And so I write…

  Medusa

  I approach her cautiously,

  for she’s spurned all who came before.

  The shining malice in her eyes

  has cast them outside of her doors.

  For she can turn grown men to stone

  from the coldness of her stare;

  and who can know the serpentine

  coils of her braided hair?

  Who can know the causes of

  the hatred she has for all men?

  How I long to lead her to

  a time when she can love again.

  But for now she hides behind

  a mask of sheer maliciousness;

  slaying men that come to her

  with sayings of mere senselessness.

  Yet I know that deep inside

  the wounded woman in her cries;

  that is why I drop my shield

  to stare deep in her baleful eyes.

  Nocturnal

  I lay awake at night because

  it whispers softly

  in my ear.

  Serpentine sounds, melodic sighs;

  the aria of darkness

  calls and I comply, I

  slither out of the window.

  With moonlit eyes

  I behold the lustrous

  splendor

  of the twilight. I glide

  across the murky lake

  under the amethyst-tinged sky,

  and part the curtain of the fog that

  veils the dimly glowing meadow;

  I traverse

  the misty chasm

  where silver lightning flickers,

  and advance to the glimmering city.

  Streetlights wink their evil eyes

  but I stride unobserved,

  past cars with steam-obscured windows

  from the carnal acts of

  whores and husbands.

  Past the neglected strangers who

  dwindle in the alleys; disregarding

  neon signs and drunken fights, until

  I stand outside your window;

  my silhouette against the moon,

  my shadow cast

  across your bed…

  The Eruption

  The gentle touch of

  cornsilk grasslands caressed

  softly, stirring almost fluidly…

  Twin lakes mirror the emotion,

  capture the moments as the

  sensation

  travels to the mountains,

  whirling

  across identical peaks until the

  pressure builds, the earth

  trembles;

  rumbles across the

  taut surface, a glacial slide

  to the valley

  where the flowers bud in

  rosy colors.

  Deep inside, the basin

  quivers;

  gently at first, then slowly

  reverberates until the geyser

  erupts;

  the valley quakes as the

  rivers are flooded and the

  terrain heaves and gasps with a

  satisfied sigh…

  November Love

  I’d just left October when November came to view,

  draped in reds and oranges, smelling sweet as honeydew.

  And from her flailing tresses a tho
usand trefoil leaves would shower;

  to weave their shawl upon the autumn summer they devoured.

  I chased her through the evergreens; the wind carried her laughter;

  toward December’s cliffs we raced, in spite of the disaster.

  But down the hidden path we slid, to lie upon the shore

  of rippling tomorrows, mystery and foamy lore.

  And on her naked boughs I saw the tattoo of her sorrows;

  of living life with all her might, for there was no tomorrow.

  For flesh of flesh was scarred with all the pains of yesterday;

  and in her eyes were unshed tears of words she couldn’t say.

  For what’s the point of speaking when nobody understands?

  is what she’d say to me while spilling dreams like desert sands.

  While I would remain silent, because I was never bold;

  never warm enough to thaw a heart frozen so cold.

  We were wounded, wounding us far back as I remember;

  so it was no surprise that she would leave me in December.

  Fallen

  Dust from my breath…

  I lie on the chalky ruins,

  painful and twisted.

  Recollection escapes me,

  striated winds mock me;

  sharp like daggers, like

  the jagged stones

  beneath me.

  With a gasp I sit upright

  alone;

  under a sky so gray, so

  fathomless and angry.

  The air is foul, sulphuric;

  the shadows slinking

  like the hissing creatures

  that lurk inside them.

  And I remember

  as I look to the sky, to the

  gargantuan mass of ebony

  rock; the mountain that tears

  through the seething cloud cover

  where flickering lightning

  expresses its fury;

  the place where I climbed, the

  view I had seen, where the

  light

  glowed like silver, like golden

  rays of untouchable hope;

  before the betrayal

  by the rocks beneath my

  feet, which

  crumbled…

  And I realized that I have

  fallen again,

  alone in the darkness

  with fading visions

  of eternity…

  Weak

  A poisonous kiss

  from your scorpion lips

  is all that I desire,

  before I expire.

  Your mouth on my neck,

  as soft kisses inject