A Manifold of Misadventures

 by  Thornswrath 

I've created the fires that burned the liars that drowned the criers in their own tears. 

I've started the harrowing trends in the crooks and the bends of the direction the river flows.

Goodness knows I've stolen the show from the rest of the fools who were trending online. 

I'm breathing the air in a cold winter garden from the exhaling steam of a barrel of wine. 

I've gone completely insane for the theory of pretending we're not neverending enough. 

There's a square bit of complicity that's not scarce in the city where the rest of us sleep. 

I've seen at least nineteen tin dreams go sailing down the alleyway so very late at night. 

I've ridden on my bicycle long after dark to slide into blackness under the bridge by the park.

Stalked by good old boys in Louisiana swamps escorted by soldiers in the jungles of Honduras. Engaged in so many battles in the SCA I fought with the Vikings in the war at Pennsic XIX. I went scuba diving to depths of a hundred feet at the bottom of the deep blue Caribbean sea. Partied hard on the islands out in the night life with girl friends hitting parties and dancing in clubs. We crawled into caves with bats and sprawled out under the constellations glittering after dark. I swam with the nurse sharks during mating season in the aquamarine bay at Pumpkin Hill. I've written a few books of poetry from wild exploits in my adventuresome life. I've hit and been hit as well as been spooked by tales of woe across battles waged against strife. No substitute for ignorance, or arrogance in the age old masquerade of broken dreams. Moments have been captured echoing with screams and broken sobbing moans. Death has visited its share of brutalities over the years throughout our extended homes.  Many burials and weddings have been witnessed here underneath the wheeling stars. 

Memorials etched in our memories like the flash of a sword reflecting sunlight at noon.

Best friends lovers wives lost in the ripping tides of time's unrelenting gravitational force. 

All my life I am free never have been anything but the man I want to be staring down now. 

A manifold of misadventures to come on around again with my love and our newly won over best friend. Lord wish us luck, ain't no telling how this is going to end.

The Creeping Glass

 by   Shaun Lawton

   Evening's primal tide pulls us into her darkened girth
the Sun's heat rise severs our umbilical of birth
The shade of night falls, a filter slivered into vertical pupils 
opening silent unseen gates through which a bestiary steps 

  Into this, our world after the curtains of dusk 
are drawn shut, the theater of sleep projects fractured visions
Within our skulled cathedrals while outdoors, in the great
wall of the wild, the darker side of thy lacine thrives

  Where the children are trained to walk under the Sun all their lives
and to run from the stories of wolves that are lies cried out by the elder
Weakening in power who've been given three tries at building
their black enamel tower on the landscape of dream

  Scaring the ravens away with a crucifix looming
as its shadow leans out with the Sun going down
While the majority of men awaken from their nightmare
and its compounded gravity to walk around in the lightness 

  Of their Star, each one a beast with a mask of complacency 
or a mime without individuality or a king stripped of scepter
Just jesters tricked back into forgetting to remember
they're a member of the cast hypnotized into performing

  The dream that is played 

in the cathedrals of wilderness
for the rows of hooded monks: 

reptiles watching themselves.

Comorbidities, Inc.

  

There's a much deeper wound we've allowed to fester

People just assumed we'd have taken care of her 

  Properly bandaged and then tucked it out of sight

Never dreamed we wouldn't have cleaned the lesion.  

   Now we must sever a limb and cauterize immediately

But our pride won't let us hobble onto the world stage

   With so much as a limp (much less a crutch replacing a leg):

 The conundrum that felled a once promising nation. 

  A reflection in the mirror of the cancer that killed us

Our own vanity flashed in a compromising position 

   Doubling down on a misguided faith which filled us

 With the disturbing refusal to simply admit our mistake.

Don't expect us to beg for forgiveness, dear world 

  There's no way our hypocrisy could ever afford that 

 By misinterpreting the spirit behind our scripture 

   We'd just as soon lunge for the jugular and attack. 

Now that the flames of shame have been stoked by gas light

  Burning in the embers of his eyes aglow with ambition 

 Funny how the shadows cast on the wall are mistaken 

  Magnifying our worst fear into a parody of fiction. 

 Because we, in America, have handed over the megaphone

   To a megalomaniac drunk with power as an aphrodisiac

 Whispering promises into the ears of our televangelicals 

 With a wink and a nudge and a nod to our enemies abroad.

   The very powers across the sea with whom we've been at odds

You see, there's a hint growing towards an austere conspiracy 

   As you can hear the news reports echo that exact sort of thought 

It makes perfect sense when you factor in that type of mentality.

 

What does it appear I am claiming here in this stately verse? 

   That the villains of this country are the ones voting for democracy? 

 The bad guys are the folks here who champion people of color and diversity? 

   It should be plain the old guard's feathers are getting ruffled, you see.

  This is what happens when you let the one who mustn't be named inside

Whispering assurances through a disguise while asking if he can help guide

  You all to the promised land at the expense of those left behind who've fallen

With eyes opened as wide as his stomach before the lies you're all swallowing.

If only we'd followed the teachings true to our hearts nineteen years ago

  Practiced real courage in the face of a world whose breath was held captured

Declared to all people that we'd never be lowered to the level of desperate devils 

  Instead of ditching our dream by the side of the road to become enraptured.

 

First and foremost, your bigotry, duplicity, dishonesty, and deception  

  Pays lips service to an imposture of mockery and fake affectation 

The price to be paid for our sins remains in the lifeblood flowing through this nation

 Open your eyes and take a look at who we've invited in here for the duration. 

   

   

  

  

 

  

 

The Spectral Realm

   What is the spectral realm? There are two initial meanings of the word specter:  "of, or relating to, or suggesting a specter;" and "of, or relating to, or made by a spectrum."  Arbitrarily this presents a choice, yet who is to say that in reality the two aren't blended? Perhaps apparitions are but the next phase in a spectrum.  A specter is a visible disembodied spirit. It's something that haunts and perturbs the mind.  A spectrum may be defined in many ways, from a continuum of color when white light is dispersed through a prism, to any continuous sequence or range of effectiveness against pathogenic organisms.  Phantoms are pathogenic.   For the purposes of our narrative, we will assume they are quite virulent. That's what makes them scary.  A spectral realm would be a region where malevolent spirits manifest in a fashion not unlike a rainbow lacking a verifiable prism to produce it, one not so colorful as one might imagine.  It has been suggested that light itself may serve as the prism through which ghosts are dispersed into our view.  Certain conditions with light and juxtapositions at its dimmest may bring these phantasms into view for us, yes.  But to posit that light itself may be the prism through which phantoms are disseminated...the question arises if that would be stretching the matter, to say the least.  Others have suggested the organ referred to as the human eye to serve as the missing prism.  We will keep that in mind as we venture deeper.    

   The definition of realm:  a kingdom, sphere, or domain.  It's also used in marine geography for dividing the earth's surface.  We have only scratched the definitions of these words.  Now it is time for us to dig further, into their root sources.  'Spectral' as an adjective goes back to early 18th century meaning "capable of seeing specters" or "pertaining to a spectrum."  The noun specter itself goes further back to early 17th century where it came to mean "a frightening ghost," derived from the French word spectre, "an image, figure, or ghost."  Whereas in Latin, spectrum means "appearance, vision, apparition."  A detached fusion of these viewpoints results in a spectral realm comprised of a spectrum of frequencies surrounding us, including but not limited to one which most human beings are specifically tuned (about the 450 Megahertz bandwidth) as well as the cosmic microwave background radiation from radio, microwave, infrared, to right here in the midst of our visible light and beyond into the ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays.  In this decidedly spectral realm, multiple visionary viewpoints interlace into a singular tapestry we like to call "reality," but which does not exist without us; therefore rendering us the equivalent of the co-conspirators as well as the lost spawn of the great countenance.  Our cosmos may be considered a realm, and in fact, as it pertains to ourselves, it is our kingdom.  The differing phases which comprise the various spectra surrounding us suggest other vibrational dimensions in coexistence with our own continuum.  Here lies the great secret out in the open for only the most dedicated followers of mystery to look up from their shoes and see. 

Fortress of the Phoenix

Over the castle turrets the phoenix of dawn arose in the sky 
Sunbeams slanting down cross-lit the tops of the tee pees 
Blood candy red in the brightening day as all the birds cried
The universal fire licking at the holy ceiling in wild tongues 

A legacy soon to expire as the oxygen drains away from his face
An alabaster legend in sculpture acquired after many a havoc
With stony countenance belying no expression in this place
Leaving the only possible exchange in the air to be magic 

This White Tower nestled deep within our hearts is lost 
Within a series of nested canyons diminishing down into a drain
A place in time we can never go back to no matter the cost
Or the toll taken dead set upon finishing out a brain 

The wall of flames is woven from the stuff of our very heart 
Takes the form of plasma at a level to which we're connected
Electric blood is pumping through our veins right from the start
Whatever we see depends upon the lens that we've corrected

One minuscule part of one degree off and our drama gets distorted
We belonged to a tribe that worshiped birds with the moon and flowers
This fish story explains how any false sense of reality gets reported
And how I can just sit back and think of you and I for many hours

painting by Gregory Alden Davis

i wrote this poem for you Birdy

Iteration II: (mirror age)

There certainly appears to be a theory of all things contained in the One from whence we and everything we've been able to discern about this universe have arisen. It turns out wise to recall that the oneness of this theory materializes as another theory in and of itself because that is the nature of our theories as well as the apparent state of our existence. We must always strive to remember that our corporeality itself never presents itself as a theory, but rather a living incarnation of the cosmos. Our subsistence prospers and its deep manifestation appears as something any living sentient being (which has naturally arisen from it) should keep in mind at all times, in particular when the era begins shaping itself more toward meeting the increasingly abstract demands of the individualized mind. Don't forget the many masks of the psyche are not all found within the mirrors we set up mentally for ourselves; some guises are genuine while others are merely imagined. The challenge arises when one trains oneself to understand and note the difference between them. 

One who looks in the mirror in order to seek his true face becomes destined for a reflection of the grandest echo of theater to have ever been struck from the lonely darkness of isolation. Fables from before the oldest known causeways fading behind us may yet be remembered if only we shake the dust off the deepest recesses of our skulls found through the long carved out tunnels led there from the ears. This discipline is yet another example of the many secret arts found hidden right out in the open for the most devoted seekers of mastery the world has ever known. There are several words for it in my language yet I find it unnecessary to evoke them here in order to bestow upon my readers what I am referring to. As sacred rites passed on down through the many generations over the years from family to friends and back around again, these devotional rituals remain today more vibrant than ever amid their multitude of various adepts and masters. It's such a powerful ceremony that it influences those who have nothing to do with its creation other than to enjoy the ineluctable effects it has on anyone standing nearby with functioning ears. One set of ears splits in two just like one set of eyes splits in two like one set of nostrils splits in two like one brain splitting in two and then splitting again and again and so on down the line. 

There's only one number and that must be the number one. This inescapable fact may be mocked and ridiculed and misunderstood and rejected by anyone from the most content homeless person to the highest ranking mathematician in the land, yet its simple truth continues to betray all the insolence of institutionalization until a certain bovine species comes back home to graze divided. All numbers subsequent to one are in fact variants of the initial digit. What makes this significant is the fact that all remaining numerals regardless of their nature or classification exist for the single purpose of dividing the whole. This has been proven many times over, for example when calculating equations whose quotients end up representing an amount greater than that comprised of every possible element within the universe itself.  It's easy to forget such mental calculations are mere exercises of the imagination. Suffice it to say the pudding we eat sustains the gray matter growing within our skulls into the shape of our brains. 

This matter comes out gray not only because it refers to a conceptual aesthetic but also because those portions of our brains happen to be colored an oblique sort of shade which arguably resembles gray. There exists a known treatment for procuring a fairly well assessed judgment concerning just about any matter one might care to ponder over. It is referred to sometimes as "the spirit of the question" and sometimes as "the spirit of the problem." In either case it refers to that spirit which must accompany any human endeavor towards judgement of any kind. It should go without saying that every scenario we might consider that has potentially occurred should have done so by a variety of means and variables which have come together precisely due to the nature of the particular case being examined. Everything we contemplate must adhere to this same principle, and additionally, of being effective necessarily on a case by case basis. The spirit of the problem of our age today unfolds into our somehow lacking the motivation to see to it that the more pressing challenges in surviving as a species the encroaching twenty-first century with its barrage of environmental concerns including but not limited to global warming, the toxifying of our ecology on land, air, fresh water rivers and oceans are not only addressed in a coherent manner, but furthermore, done so with the universal spirit of the question we all inherently share regardless of our ideological and genetic differences (which effectively remain cosmetic) in the face of more pressing concerns which profoundly affect the sustainability of our mutual survival. 

Through the Creeping Glass

Evening's primal tide pulls
us to her darkened girth
the Sun's heat rise severs
our umbilici of birth
the shade of night falls, a filter
slivered into a vertical pupil 
opening silent unseen gates 
through which a predatory 
bestiary steps into this 
our world after the curtains
of dusk are drawn shut
the theater of sleep
projects fractured visions
within our domed cathedrals
while outside, in the great
wall of the wild the darker
side of thy lacine thrives
and the children are trained
to walk under the Sun all their lives
and to run from the stories of wolves
that are lies cried out by the elder
weakening in power who've been
given three tries at building
their black enamel tower
on the landscape of dream
scaring the ravens away
with a crucifix looming
as its shadow leans out
while the Sun's going down
and the majority of the whole
of men awaken from their
nightmare's compounded
gravity to walk around
in the lightness of their Star
each one a beast with a mask
of complacency or a mime
without individuality or
a king stripped of scepter
or a jester tricked back
into forgetting to remember
he's a member of the cast
hypnotized into performing
the dream that is played
in the cathedrals of wilderness
for the rows of hooded monks:
reptiles watching themselves.