Axes

Warm Winters

Its about that time again

when the winter coats

And my winters coat

goes on

I step out in the early morning
at the peak of dawn
The sting of the cold frost
comforting me

I trudge forward
crunching the frozen grass underfoot
Gripping my ax
Yonder into the sleeping forest

I inspect the fallen trees
looking for that special one
The one I know best
the one I will carry home

I find it right there
where its always been
And place my boot on it
and arch my back

I swing and I sing to it
the lullaby echoing through the trees
Melting the frost
and waking the deer

I collect the logs in one hand
and pace my way back home
to put them in the garage

I open the door to the familiar
Warmth that stings my face
And sitting at the table waiting for me
is a warm cup of cocoa
Still smoking

Botany

Oil

 

The winds are changing

And coldness is settling in

Winters bite is coming

But the rest remains the same

 

What is one day

to years of malcontent

A lifetime goes up in smoke

For even time will never rend

 

Sometimes I burn like oil

And the fire cant be stopped

Oh, how magnificent is

This feeling I've once forgot

 

But I wish to bloom like a flower

One in a prairie wind

 

Where streaks of wheat

and blessed sea

are carried though thick trees

and prairies kin

 

Where coldness stops

at the reflection in her eye

And warmth carries

Where two hearts collide

 

But I choose to burn like oil

And why I will never know

Burning forever

Under the coldness of snow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Austin Peralta

Endless Planets

The summer night breezes in from the cold front on the sea.
Whipping the air, flowing under fauna and flora, past her floral dress and into your face. You look up into the pitch black sky and everything starts to shudder and tremble. You look at her there, standing on the beach under palm trees, not sure whats wrong. Her full, moonlit eyes reflect against the black ocean and they stare at you; it is unwithstandable.

And then in a whim its all forgotten
. Caught in the tumult of a foreign land, uncoordinated timing and a precarious mania you throw yourself into a swirling world of drugs and fantasy. Of dirty faces blurring past you, horses and bikes making traffic. Where money is not only everything but is distinguishable and affable only to the terrible endeavor needed to acquire it. You can buy happiness here. Make friends easily. Find a pretty girl for a day or two.

But then you feed yourself lies and the consequences of your inactions.

 Like some unattestable god you must become one of them to gain their strength and still preserve yourself. A wretched monster usurping those lesser than you of their only petty craft. But the ghoulish feeling leaves you and then light returns to your retinas. The girl that just passed by looks at you.

Jazz music wafts through the curt alleys that divide the city. Like a delicious honey it sticks on to you, giving you energy and you perk up your ears like a dog who just heard a loud noise. It seems to follow you everywhere you walk, click clack the back of your shoes tick and tack. You walk into a small bar with the smooth jazz at your back.

The place is small and comfy, the bar sits at the back of the confines and the floor is littered with plastic chairs and tables. Palm trees circle the bar and oak wood columns allowed for romantic shadows to blend in with the red lit room. An hour or two of easy drinking pass by, and slowly people drip into the bar. Couples old and young come for the calming ambiance. Groups of young girls come and as you watch them walk into the bar, you notice one of them.

Her hair flowed like the sensual waves of the pacific ocean, light as a dove her hair rose to the strings of the wind and fell to its short breath. Her soft and tanned skin divinely sculpted by some forgotten artisan., Who seemed to carve her out of a dark wood and etched in her beautiful lines that defined her cheeks, nip nose, concise lips and brown billowing eyes that contained a reverent innocence.

You hear her laugh and a gust of nostalgia hits you.
 The sound reminds you of something in your childhood that you'd forgotten. Something that was lost to the cruelty of the world. Her words are soft spoken and delicate. Like the lives of her native ancestors whom grace her with such beauty and natural elegance. Time seems to grave you with her presence and all your sinful thoughts and fantasies disappear. For once, you only wish to talk to her. Only wish, to know her.

Her dress followed her body, articulating a young shapely figure. Naturally, she was inclined to the dark spaces of the room as if she was too accustomed to the driveling eyes that convicted her. Your courage was forgotten then. Walking to her you did not act on lust or pride or courage or thought. But a natural inclination like her to the darkness.

There she stood, behind the oak wood pillar with a drink in hand looking into the stretches of the night. Wondering about something you would never know. You were on the other side of the pillar, slowly approaching with the warm summer breeze abreast.

You reach the pillar
She turns towards you
And in between both of us
was only darkness.

KishiBashi

Lighght

I have this idea to always begin from the beginning. It is unintuitive to start from the middle or the end , or even near the beginning. Because you cant forget where it all started from, nor who was there when it did. 

Sometimes I have awful thoughts about what I'll become in 10 years. How I will act, where ill be working, what I'll be doing in light of change. Of how everyone else will be when theyre 10 years older. How I will see them and how they will see me. Will I have a child? Will women still be being paid less to the dollar? What will I have said and done to change anything?

Not much. 

I am one point on a grid , a grain of sand in an ocean, a singular leaf blowing in the wind.

And then I look outwards, to my peers. And how they were edgy clothes, and pierce their tongues and get the most regretful tattoos. And how they holler and yelp! Like a bunch of boastful dogs screeching out something that doesnt make sense, nor matters for the most part. 

Maybe thats the problem. I dont give their bullshit the credibility that this time, the right here and now, deserves. Maybe they are saying something that is warranted. After all, someone has always been saying something stupid. Maybe Rosa Parks protest for a equal seating was seen as stupid. 

Maybe the Native Americans pleas for their right to their own religion and way of life was seen as stupid. Maybe I need to read more about history, and find truer examples of what I mean. 

And just possibly, those hipsters who are drunkenly yelling out about some stupid form of discrimination against feminists, or the patriarchal government that is oh so oppressive to them, is our current voice, or at least a part of it. Maybe it is stupid. 

But when isnt what I say stupid or useless, or out of bounds or not credible or extreme, to those whom wish to keep us quiet?

When is it right to speak out, or to stay shut?

And here I was, doing to them what they so often did to me. Silently, killing them. Disowning their thoughts. Clandestinely disapproving their right to speak, and executing their opportunity, the one and only they will ever have in their lifetimes to speak out and be relevant.

And now. I can only, wish only ever, to see the sun pass me by in blistering colors, searing my face in the utmost truth that exerts out of such a beautiful, legendary artifact of our world. How I only wish to see the world more beautiful. I think back to when I was younger, 7 to 15. When lights were brighter, and words held more weight, when the skies warm blue clouds swept down to me, and caressed my body. When the newness of the world inspired me, when contraptions where fascinating and unknown. Where even the cruelty of the world still required some interest of me.

It'll never be that way again. But maybe it can be better. Maybe I can muster up the courage one day, while im still young and hispanic and short and shy and eager and smart and masculine and disruptive and questionable, and walk outside and be myself. Speaking loudly, outwardly to the world, and allow them to enter my life. Oh I believe I will do it, maybe not tomorrow, but maybe next week when I go out to New York. Or to Paterson, or Rutherford, or Mercer, wherever I go, Ill have another chance to make it happen.

Swallowed

 

Lunarterial

Darkness never secedes.

Under the cowl of the moons ominous light he conjured forth his deepest known terrors. Those that were summoned from the treachery of the night, bore no compassion nor sympathy. One of them speaks to me now, the one with the blackest of eyes. The putrid air of his breath sticking to my neck. Like a serpent his words slither into mind, poisoning my thoughts, conjuring serpentine emotions.

Even in broad daylight, is his power ever potent. Like a sniff of lingering marijuana, blowing from out his nostrils; snuffing out anything that defies his law. He comes to me in a haze. From out the shadows of a smoky room to speak to me. Never a deadly demeanor, nor ever are his actions obscene. They are simply malevolent. By nature. 

His actions ignore the pleas of self reflection and logical continuity. His movements create sputtering waves, blocking out worthless feelings and emotions. Ones that emit out from every petty human. They are givers, they are takers, mistaken, untruthful fools. Weak minded and with no purpose. Crush their will he tells me.

Like a cold tenebrous wind I blot them out from under the wintery midnight sky.

But come to me now if you wish to speak with the devil. For I hold venom on my tongue. Anger burns in my hand. Hold on to me, for I hold deceit in my heart. 

Unmask the veil that you hide behind. And unlock the truth that binds on to you. Like a parasite created by society.

Take action in the cruelest manner. Create ideas. 

Rise forth from a legacy forged in blood.

Take from this cup of wine and drink to your fulfillment. Let the thirst for darkness be unquenchable. Have those that peer upon you with willing eyes, scorched out of their sockets. For they do not know what you truly are. Nor of the iron that flows through your veins. Of the blasphemy upheld within the highest forms of government. Nor of other things....

A tinkering in the machinations of ones own mind is a sport. Feel the power surge up into your temples, let it emanate from out your hands, your body a vessel of true power. Your spirit, a whispering banshee of distorted malefic proportions. Let hunger overtake you. The hunger for something unknown, feed yourself into the void and lurk within the walls of Dante's Inferno. Become what you once would never become. 

And forge out of it a legacy of blood.

Let your presence be a thunderous boom. And your actions dictate the outcome of your petty life. For that is what it is when nothing is done. It is pathetic. You become a worthless animal. Captivated by unfulfillment and false fears. Give in to your thirst. Quench your fears and sate your yearning for something profoundly sinister. Let the blood spill on the floor. Let your fears overtake you and consume you, and release you. Caress the permanent darkness, live within its aura...

For this is of what a Legacy of Blood is carved from.

The night is dark... shadows caress me between the twisted trees that surround me. I look down at my trembling hands and I see blooding dripping down my arm, collecting at my feet. And all I can hope now is to leave this treacherous place. Even now I can hear their screams; echoing out of the darkness that consumes me. Their wretched whispers cackle out of the finishing of my one footstep, into the next. And I can feel them now. Crawling behind me, feeding on my unquenchable fears. But I look back and all I see are trees and darkness. 

Only the moon offers me light of passage. Finally I see the opening. Nothing but frozen land lies before me, I enter the clearing and look back at the woods. Hoping to never see the place again. And in the corner of my eye I see her hiding behind a tree, looking at me. Her illuminated visage scorching its unforgettable phantom figurine into my memory.

AFX

Syro

Waves will crash upon themselves. They are crafted from the same substance and it fills the oceans with a similar eerie sound. A similarity between each human being, crashing within each others boundaries. Like elusive bugs buzzing around each other, wondering and gasping and gawking.... gawking. 

Oh! 

How different we so are. Thoughts bouncing up and down within the confines of these walls. Smashing within the picture frames and tables-chairs, I sit squarely between her, over here and there. How could she read me? Did she? My shadows are vaporous but she knows where my enlightened being flies. 

Across nations and statutes, frisky like a frenzied lurker. Deserter. I move in the deserted lands where no one dares to look. Searching for some type of mirage, one that I know surely exists within my mind. Oh how I hope to make it come true. Like some mirage it is, in a dry arid land of customs and trivialities. Manners, how they encroach on me! When all I wish is to move likes waves, crashing into her over there. Hoping for something between us to coalesce, but how the stress eats away at her very curt dress ...

And in defense, I never dispense tense words that lend to an airy sense of immense drenching stress. Hence why I look here and there, for where I find knowledge I bare only to hold you there.

And you there, thine heir of some golden goddess whose hair flows like a rivers unkept self. Flowing out yonder, into the trees of translucence, how your words move in cadence with the fracturing edges of water crackling at your commence...

How I wish to know you more. But there are things in this world that I know. For I must conceal them, congeal! Reveal! For I am holding on to them now! Like important things that must be hidden from public.

Truths that I have come across that bear no true meaning. Or do they? A man of age holds on to these truths with assertion and confidence that he has earned them from the world. As if he learned them from the harshest of events. But is anything truly static? If not death that comes upon is like a divine light... so bright... and cold as winters night. I do not believe it. For the warmth that the sun brings to us , is my arbiter. 

And you still sit there, looking here and there once more. Oh how I should implore to you, with your decorative galore how you're eyes must be sore, mine never at your pretty lips moving once more.

And how they look at me, waiting to see my next improvised movement, living as if I had never done so before! As if humans were something new, a creed whom I just now knew.

Everybody is new. Maybe its curiosity that strangles me, in its tenebrous tentacles. Knowing that I do not know. But that even though, I know something about you, that you dont. How I feel like this for everyone sadly, nothing is extraordinary in the realization that we all live in the same fashion.

With extremities being part of the dilemma, but extremities are fun! 

Its like tangling with a certain death.

Who, are you. I ask with eyes open only to you. I see you in this class room of fewer than few, but when I look at you I ask you, whom are you now? Crowned with your knowledge at hand, how shall you handle chaos? Chaos of manners. Words of apprehension. Fingers fidgety to understand everything, consuming it all like a void within the middle of class. I am bound by my own egotistical crass, I fall face first into the bludgeoning thunder made by others.

And how laughter alone will suffice. How that very action, will suffice. But it could now or never   ever be harder to capture. In this slipping moment, drooling of sifting emotions and words of quick paced devotion, will I see you once more with my own feelings as they are? 

I want this, I want that. I want to see you, and you there, also you, and you too. We all would like so, maybe, in time, slowly and slowly it could occur. But we could all share it at once, like an enveloping hive of sharing information that is forgotten, no I will not forget it.

And even when it is forgotten will I not forget it. For a face like yours, is hard to forget.

Prurient

Death Consortium

These days were known for their coldness.

The sky emitted nothing. In fact, clouds that once floated aimlessly about the planet were now products of industrial parks. These new man made clouds were made of smoldering ash and dust, which coated the nearest coast in a perpetual state or irrevocable darkness and malignance.

These industrial complexes were the root and leaf of mankind. With the elimination of 99% of natural resources a new genius had emerged with a design that had left our technological golden age in its predetermined grave. After all, the market of cellular devices and touchscreen monitors had reached its peak in innovation. No more quicker could messages be received nor information derived. Every persons voice had been heard and every yell had been recorded down in humanities archive. Our entire species had usurped itself of its one and only precious thing. Its voice.

Far too long had words been spoken. For generations too many, had ignorance and deceit been duplicated. Perpetuated into a putrid display of a collective human degeneration. Your definition of discovery? Was merely hypocrisy. Their choices for peace? Were simply code for destruction. Your fight for a better life? a joke. A mockery of human potential. For it was all drunk away. The youth? Pissed into the wind for a day of precluded popularity.

And it was in this age, the age of Extinction that he came.

They say that MorvaCorp was created before his feet.

Upon his thought had it been instituted as its own private corporation. The steel foundations, pushed into firm earth where no human had walked  before. The colossal parks of metallic bridges and mirrored complexes, created on a whim. The designs for its complex AI software, unbridled and unmatched by the worlds current state of technology. He had managed to intertwine blood and steel. To create material out of space and time.

They say he was born in the depths of Morva's fiery cauldron.

Out of the heat, had his heart escaped scrutiny, under the prejudice of human error, had his limbs been forgotten. His body macerated and delegated only by the minds eye, which had centered beneath Morva's heavy ooze of liquid fire.

A hand emerged out of the exhaust. From the roars of the unsleeping machines, the screams of the dying workers, from the sound of smashing of steel and hammer had his voice been heard. And his glorious energy! Felt across this nation of futile hate mongers. He came out of the death of humanity, pure and eliminated of its petty flaws.

Like a god of light and bone he arose from the ashes, and went on forth in the world searching for nothing and offering his precious design as a testament of true human ambition. And rarely did he speak. For words were meaningless, and at most, intrepid points on a plot.

"For what is ambition in a world where ambition has been met? "

"Set in stone like a flaccid idea. Only I wait for its death."

"Second is life, only to death. And death, second only to me."

"For I am creator."

"I am design."

"Resonating like a re surging sound from oust our space and time. I am not defined."

"For I am design."