Crux

‘Twas the crux of it for him, the Charlatan:
Valium to make the atrocities go down easier.
An infection scavenger employing subtle elegance in his ornate theatre of pain,
mixing nouveau alchemy over jewel-crusted Gypsy skulls,
opulent and grinning.
A devil aura in the void, he was, a monster without qualm or flair.
He died on the Sabbath, en utero, and soul flies gathered,
buzzing, ethereal
like mysterious ash, ambient,
all about, suffocating, permeating,
and within the veins and ventricles.

But she...
She was his unquiet obsession, an artwork, a brushstroke existence
forming a diabolic trinity with the Charlatan and me.
Released by a talisman fossil carried on the carapace of a dungeon moth
— Mephisto’s timeless incarnation, a butterfly built with a skeleton key —
she led her unresurrected messiah into jagged heaven,
spitting vitriol and splitting his sensual shroud.
Industrial heavenly voices merged in the crimson shadows of the machine garden,
and Beauty’s ghost dawned, fantastical, with one cry,
with shoebox memories to snapping, shrieking to pierce the lull…

Sebastian…
I recall the vignette: Voltaire menacing Audra;
a recollected affection conjuring bittersweet musings
to the strain of minor chords — eerie, luminous and
enigmatic.

Immersed in swirling poetry, their discord was mesmerizing, frenzied.
Romantic.
And in lush quiet descending, their unstructured improvisation was lost
in a bizarre tragedy, a starkly pathetic horror
born of melancholic passions.
Icons reduced to cryptic fragments, synthetic and creeping
through the lyrical whisper of serenity-gone.

An atmosphere of intrigue descends, dominates, and,
chameleon-like, I relinquish the memory and
dissolve into the cemetery backdrop.
Here, a silken dream glimmers like a beautiful child of love,
poised and yearning.
Smokey danger questions.
Truth simmers in the sparking fragility of new awareness.
Ennui permeates the surrealistic spirit, evoking
a serene sanctuary like a fanciful womb.
It offers a sacrament to the faery realm, yet hidden,
promising transformative release — the visionary myth,
the liquid image charged with ancient delight.
Paralyzed in a unity of times, naked and weightless,
worthless,
static lyrics charged with a dark edge testify
to their ascension, unexpected —
To the mood, veiled and visceral —
To the hushed isolation, surrendered —
To the hypnotic allusion, recalled and claustrophobic —
To the grave, shared in frustrated harmony..