Gift Of The Demiurge (The Boy With The Phoenix Tattoo)

“But he grew old–

This knight so bold–

And o’er his heart a shadow–

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.”

-Edgar Allan Poe

The foghorn moans so mournful and loud,

Like a mechanical Poseidon.

I’m lost in a sea of faces,

At a banquet prepared for nobody.

I’m blowing formaldehyde-tainted breath,

To keep the hungry flies away,

While stuck somewhere I was never meant to be–

Robotically waiting on something precious,

That’ll never satisfy.

Just another empty promise to myself,

That tomorrow I’ll find my way back home–

Knowing full well that tomorrow is just another someday,

And someday never comes.

You know I’ve always said to live now,

And suffer later.

There are no churches on 13th Street,

You won’t find God under the freeway.

If Christ or Buddha or the One True King returned,

Would we even recognize him?

A dope sick angel sang in the subway,

Her voice penetrated the shadow and sin.

Her words spoke of coming down to unknown depths,

And remembering all the high places we’ve been.

I found Jesus panhandling in front of the 7-11.

We talked of why all the men smoke cigarettes,

And all the women smell like heaven.

He told me “Heaven is only as real as your love for me,

And neither could I ever grasp.

History and hell both repeat themselves,

Until you get over the past.”

Voiceless Part IV: Freedom’s End by Jesse Stonefield

“Who I am is not important. Today is about you, not me.” -Jodey

I used to try to hide my cigarette while sitting by your side.

I let you use my T-shirt while soaking in the dripping end of night.

All the burn holes in my heart remind me of your eyes,

But I could always still face you freely ’cause I really thought you’d be my Gemini.

I was so caught up in the girl who walked downcast through school halls.

Now, I only ever drink for fear that this life is my own fault.

I once gazed at your damaged perfection sleeping in my bed.

I once felt your razor-bearing pinky promise tracing all the scars within my head.

Drenched in karma as I rebuke every sickly deed I haven’t done,

And with your ring chained around my burning neck I knew the futile battle’s lost and won.

I wish you knew how it made me feel when you said you would’ve played with me those years I was alone.

When I grew up without a family in an empty, broken home.

I haven’t slept even to escape since the fading day we met,

But for the smallest glimpse of your lost soul i’d almost go through it all again.

I actually thought I was happy for a dying moment there,

But now I know beyond a shadow of your doubt you probably never truly cared.

The clock is blinking, stuck at midnight just like everything that doesn’t count.

Every time a young heart breaks does it even make a sound?

Maybe so many open legs, gashes, and lies came before you I knew it wouldn’t last,

But, come on now, please tell me why I believed I could trust you with my past?

Yeah, as if you’re even bad enough to suck up my worst dreams.

With this black ship in my bottle I can just drown out the chorus of siren screams.

The clouds bled so beautifully the day you walked away.

I guess our blue sky wasn’t meant to be and I have nothing left to say.

Voiceless Part III: Faulty Guidance by Montana Munn

In two months time,

I’ve had 4 in mind,

3 in my mouth,

and 2 in my heart.

If only they all knew that I’m falling apart.

Sure they see my painful blows,

Gagging on the temporary truth,

Putting aside all of my woes.

Until they become the sleuth.

I am the girl with kaleidoscope eyes,

Searching for an impeccable disguise.

I could have 20 in line,

Begging me for forgiveness,

But still end up with none of them mine;

Not like I should have gotten up in their business.

They don’t deserve these games I play,

Searching for this opulence,

“This isn’t me”, I’d say;

Leading to awaited consequence.

I feel so blind,

I’m at a loss for decision.

To have reason for being so unkind,

My life is in need of revision.

Once I’m out of their focus,

I’m adrift, seeking liberation.

Only to find exactly what broke us;

Unwanted temptation.

They tell me there’s many fish in the sea,

But they don’t REALLY see me.

I go through this cycle of being reused,

But every time dirtily reduced,

Polluting my system:

In this past years time;

Fuck, I just can’t seem to resist them.

He gave me a ring,

But it’s not that type of thing.

This man, not just some body.

Refreshing memory of security,

Widening my thoughts broadly.

If only I had a little more maturity.

Maybe I shouldn’t have either,

For both of their sakes.

It’s best to go with neither,

Since I just make too many god damn mistakes.

Voiceless Part II: Wrist by Jesse Stonefield

You wear so many faces, I don’t know which one to kiss.

Yet your eyes would put the clearest sky and the deepest sea to shame.

If you can ever bring yourself to fly away before you drown,

I’ll willingly slave away to gather up the shattered pieces of your smile.

You claim to walk on the clouds I blow out from my lungs,

And I cough up my heart while I chase a foil-crowned sun.

That sacred rain-slicked fire burns hot while I’m deep within your abandoned womb.

And yet, I can only feel your angel-soft broken hand in mine.

Build me a darksome tower of river rocks just as high as you will,

So we can lay in fleeting solitude dreaming dreams of fabled faraway lands,

And plans we’ll never make.

This all seems too familiar.

Maybe because I’ve been through this circle before.

But why can’t I find my way back out now that it was you who was my guide?

Voiceless Part I: Montana’s Baby Blues by Montana Munn

The emotions run high,
As the blood travels through.
The scenery in my eyes whilst I cry,
Conceals all truth behind blue.

Maybe you didn’t notice..
But they’re green too.

Specs of every blade of grass
I’ve let stain my jeans;
Forming a layered ring of opal glass,
So I may see what it means;

To look upon visions of purpose,
Within every picture.

My obvious unclouded sky;
Built from the moments chlorine stung,
With salty elements to purify.
Desiring to blind all my words unsung.

I do not regret my pain;
For a little adventure.

I haven’t seen what you have seen.
You have not witnessed the same as I.
So widen your view to my blue and green,
While I reveal to you my open sky.

Gypsy’s Ghost

We used to frolic in my bed ’til midnight,

When you would fade away into the stars.

Tender, loving sweat and moans,

Under a fog bank of pot smoke and your soft breath.

I miss the games we played.

We had so little time together from the start and in the tragic end,

But we made our jinxed moment last forever,

Pressed between our warm bodies.

Yeah, I miss the games we played.

I can still smell you on everything I wore and everything we shared.

With our eyes we touched for hours past long ago.

Even as the picture of your face dims in the murky depths of bittersweet memory,

This pain remains unbearable.

Girl, I miss the games we played.

I would never give up meeting you,

But I’d gladly give up the loss that followed right behind.

I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again without you giggling naked in my arms.

God, I miss the games we played.

You remember what I always said?

“One day we’ll grow up and never be happy again”?

Now I’m shivering, aged, and frail, but your boundless youth…

Remains eternal.

Damn, I miss the games we played.

Queen Bloodletter

Dark minds dream of light.
It’s easy to die, better to stand and fight.
The slow blade penetrates the silence.
Quietly, you express your love with violence.
All of your words bear the weight of heaven,
But my lucky number is one above five and one below seven.
Three times over you sucked out my last breath.
Three times over your evil was blessed.
You’re inside my heart and there’s blood everywhere.
I’m out of your mind, but trapped in your empty stare.
You cut so close to the bone, lady, what good am I dead?
I’ll never forget the phony broken romance we blindly force-fed.
Murder she wrote and murder she sent.
Would she dare bring me back if she saw the horrible place that I went?
Get a few drinks in me and the words just pour out,
But even without slurring nobody knows what I’m talking about.
Sometimes I can almost live with myself.
Tell me, can you, as well?
Even fully knowing you threw me straight to Hell.

Head Factory Part III: Savage Messiah

If the Devil says get down, I get down.

Fuck, I drench this dry concrete desert in malt liquor from the Fillmore to the Mission,

And back home soaking and shook-up from the war.

…

The hours of life’s seamless continuum grow long and late and heavy with paranoia,

For such antsy, twitching night owls.

So craven and suspicious, fierce wide eyes peering cautiously at every passerby,

Like they’re witnessing a God-awful nightmare–

Every hideous one more frightening than the last in their scowling mundane judgements.

 

Everything you see in this glorious wasteland is mine or my undead brother’s ’til the end of time,

Or ’til time ends us.

Keep checking out the window just to make sure…

Like, the jarring sounds of the busy, noisome streets stay with our breathless rhythm.

Drunkenly muttering, I come back from the blackout midway through an incoherent sentence,

Staggering and stumbling through a myriad of dirty sweet seduction.

Between aching locked jaws and grinding teeth stained yellow with nicotine,

My swollen purple tongue lolls out of the side of my drool-frothed mouth.

 

Shit, how long was I gone for?

No one can tell me in this hidden, secret place.

Here no one notices the unbearable world go by and no one thinks to care.

Am I even still alive?

I can’t tell anymore.

 

Your emotionless face is frowning shut and you mumble vague desires,

And somehow, I instinctively comprehend the deadly remedy you hunger for.

Ill-born desires, however, compelling enough to drag us into the unforgiving daylight,

With maniacal grins on our frost-bitten faces,

And throats thick with rapidly-melting venomous icicles.

We’re ready and willing to burn all outside existence yet again and bathe in the smoldering ashes.

 

The deep and winding crystalline labyrinth within us both will doubtlessly await our inevitable return.

A silent cavern oozing manufactured heat.

Eerily silent, yes, but sometimes I hear the shrieking of the voiceless dead echoing in my blazing core.

This measureless pitch-black hall I hurtle down is haunted by today’s broken promise,

And a broken weekend, so bittersweet, of spitting on any pointless regrets.

So, keep those white hot fires lit to numbly singe off years of my meandering life,

Oh, soothing stone-cold darkness of mine.

At least you are and always have been my own–

So faithful and unrelenting.

You know we’re not yet through with our ritual self-sacrifice.

Hail to the enduring winter, for it isn’t coming–

No, it’s here.

 

 

 

Head Factory Part II: Screaming Liquidation

“If I’m still like this when I turn thirty, I should probably kill myself.” -Jason Mewes

 

Hear the relentless marching over every surface of this house…

Built for the condemned.

The little mechanical tormentors are everywhere–

Behind every glowing screen and sightless windowpane,

Biding their ancient time like lurking black beetles,

Slavering over dung.

Unnatural tentacles,

Long, spindly legs,

And wicked venom-dripping stingers,

All wrapped in glimmering cannibal flame,

Like unforgiving demonic arachnid storm clouds.

 

All among us, within us.

 

Through caustic milky pools of choking chemical tears that…

Make us smile for the pain…

Paid for and slain by those who joyously feed on the cold afterbirth,

Of the gang rape of that softer reality I have never seen.

Fast and silent, they lash cruel whips studded with poisoned pieces of broken glass.

They smell the stench of human weakness,

And ruthlessly hunt us down with sadistic glee.

 

Spray the toxic ones down with endlessly vomiting streams,

Of their own rotten inhumanity.

Melt the whole desperate abomination,

So their scorched, gore-splattered bones,

Become the jewelry of this ruined, desolate rock.

 

The indelible ghostly markings of an enduring lifelong curse,

Shall be carved by your own cowardice into your worthless heart,

Sadly doomed to writhe in agony and forever crave and weep.

 

So, as my weary body crumbles to dust beneath me,

And I fall drained and defeated into those uncaring icy arms,

I hopelessly pray that my darling girl–

Dressed in intangible colors of shimmering gold and silver ectoplasm,

And murmuring with quiet laughter of terrifying familiar fantasy–

I pray she won’t seek me,

And risk herself such merciless evil and harm…

 

It’s pathetic how easy it is for one to let the madness in.

 

 

 

 

 

Head Factory Part I: Contagious Liberation/The Lust Harvest

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” -Dr. Johnson

 

“Mother, wherever did he go?”

“Turn away from the door, my youngest,

He was swallowed by the starving night.”

 

It’s Friday the 13th now and the moon is bleeding out,

High up in the eternal mass grave of the abyss.

She’s looking down at the world through the hazy lens of recently awakened eyes.

I’m spun out and drunk on a couch with a lovely low-lit flicker from my past beside me.

As she speaks so softly to me, I can’t help but to imagine making adulterous love with her,

She’s wearing murder-red lipstick and making snow angels in white powder lies.

 

Now, bound in chains of discontent, we all descend into a dungeon,

Carved out of glowing rock and torture.

Our invisible shackles are tightened ’til none of us can breathe.

Inside the reflective walls surrounding us, the “Holy Father’s” unconscious,

In piercing shades of bitter addiction on the slowly sinking bedroom floor.

We’re all doomed to live, all in the sacrilegious name of our frozen queen.

Am i now the final speaker who gazes upon his own demise,

Or am I just a steadily rusting tool of my own invention?

 

Misshapen, vile humanoid creatures were dancing–

Slimy brownish spawn of filth rapidly growing and multiplying–

Across my sunken eyeballs, wide open saucers scanning the room and my company like a thirsty killer.

These horrors came swarming from some dimension of fearsome shadows and blazing unnatural light.

Not likely far beyond or forgotten by this dim and dank inferno.

“Can’t you see the wispy fingers of smoke slithering through every crack and crevice?”

The faceless lady smiling in the photograph seems to revel in my insanity.

 

Finally, I overcame the lifelike people I see who aren’t really there.

Nevertheless, they peered at me from behind trees and around corners.

Burning centipedes feasted on my mind that night.

Climbing up dead silk ropes through my skin,

The unspeakably foul others scamper, leap, and cavort all over the pale room.

They scuttle in and out of my hollowed skull, as you soar away from the noises outside.

Sparks shower forth as you open your tireless mouth to scream.

What’s a day or two lost to monsters like us?

What’s another ugly scar to my blind and drowning soul?

Seal up or destroy the countless insects’ tunnels, nests, and burrows.

Brush off this scurrying midnight plague with broken lovers’ hands.

They won’t find us before we disintegrate in the dark.