Specter in the house
flies through glass windows,
globes round and crystal
mystified by the light
and shroud.
It throws rocks in
ignominious desolation,
it trades the soul for desire,
it profits pleasure and lust,
it drives the question of our
sin, strips away the barriers
of consciousness, relies on
the powers of self-doubt
to scar a path to its
ultimate destination.

The peddles first lose color,
pale then blacken. Its skin
begins to sag, wrinkle and
decay. The lifespan is locked
in a fortress of ice, clouded
vision and clear deception.
It comes to roost at the
eleventh hour, when its
appetite cannot be stopped,
and dead, black peddles are
left it its wake to mock
the heart of the lover
inside. Putrid kiss,
the toxic life, unkempt,
cast voyeurs into desperation,
cast masters into slaves,
turn the priests into pansies
and the preachers into demons.

The thinning veil of energetic
deception, the chaos supposedly
causing design, disintegrates
behind a wall of smoke,
and there are no scenes of
our ancestors, and there is no
gate to cross. The perceptions
of humanity ring like a bell
and reverberate in a jar
that locks them down,
a lamp for Pandora,
a cell for the soul.

It returns
and it never
goes away.

—

—

“Black Orpheus: Peddling the Father of Lies” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.