Baseless, tasteless
the words are sharpened
by the woe, the acknowledgment
of desire and sin together
escaping the moral authority
that casts light over darkened
ravines and bleeds purity
into the insomnia of night,
intended.
—
—
From Verses Espoused with the Brevity of the End Times by Nicholas Duke.
“Hemorrhagic Insomniac” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.
As the sickness slows, dissipates,
the eyes seek clarity in the cloudy
space of mind. Fog on iris, haze
in retina guide like a broken
compass, looping the
never ending circumference
of defeat. Recognition steadily
present, distraction keeps
the conscience at bay,
stifles the voice of reason,
weighs down the energy
that has already plateaued
and walked to the edge of
construction. Here, where
ambition fights for recognition
and chases the promise of
arrested development,
the rush of thoughts
burning brighter
become powerful odes
of reassurance,
poems of self destruction,
cognizant, a spectator
outside itself
as the patterns mapped
blindly seize momentum
in pursuit of a dream
forever false.
—
—
“Black Orpheus: Patterns of Defeat” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.
I
Four children, one mother,
unkempt, worried, frowns and grimaces.
They are bare to the world,
they inhale new air.
They bow their heads prepared for reprimand.
The mother looks away.
They recognize the smile.
The way it connects warmly to the eyes.
They grit their teeth, they breathe.
The mother smiles, too.
An air of gratitude, a
relief from nerve,
a return to normalcy.
II
Stocked up on what’s necessary.
Same as your food being medicine
and vice versa, we scout for vitamin
C.
“You know these people don’t realize
those things don’t work.”
It’s advertised in print and known
anywhere.
We chuckle to each other,
eyes filled with kind recognition
and gratitude. Her husband comes
around and gratefully acknowledges
the percentages are getting higher.
We smile and depart.
III
Six foot and taller with a lot of hair,
he was a stocky and strong man that
approached from afar. At twenty feet
he calls to me. He says its good to see
me and acknowledges my smile.
“These people around here,”
he says, “They don’t know what they’re
doing; they just don’t know what’s going on.”
He’s grinning and speaking through his
wiry black beard. They don’t pay attention,
he says, or they don’t care. Again,
the gratitude. The genuine
intent of well wishes
and thankfulness from a man
I may have never spoken to
had I stayed home that day.
—
—
“The Light of the Maskless” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.
The universe has been talking to me.
Her voice has become incessant.
More so than a de ja vu, a reticent
dream of muted minstrel stretching
warped copper screens and melting
hole sunspots. The ballerina in sepia
pirouettes in triplicate and spins
into oblivion. She is a shadow
person of the soul, a black mirror
lacking the substance and
vulnerability of the real thing.
A crimson mask on my lips,
the god of thunder cracks
lessons I’ve narrated before.
The audience grows sleepy
and impatient for me
to make a decision.
Pale faced and black-eyed,
a perfect jest for the court,
the tragedy a comedy
to the divinely inspired.
Of jade gifts,
satin blue bowed
boxes, and ornate
jars of tempestuous
mystery and
trepidation,
shower gold,
incense and myrrh
upon the crowning glory
of enlightenment and
the acknowledgement
of consciousness,
a two sided coin
of fifty-fifty odds
and a hundred percent
guarantee we get what
we pay for if we’re
brave enough to call
the shot.
Collapsing in on myself,
a consolidation across
the space time continuum,
I become an ouroboros,
devouring my own
flesh until my final form
is found, the strong,
resilient, empowered.
Here and now.
As flow the river of my soul,
the current of the universe
sings to me in swirls
of gravity that resonate
like spheres of music
tacit and sovereign.
They swell inside,
bubble life in their bellies,
glow as guiding stars,
demure and proud;
they re-present themselves
to the world in the slow
wake of recognition
and the contentious ebb
of autonomy.
Before the galactic center
of the galaxy, as a channel
to the core of existence,
the resonance of my personal
truth is known, the fluttering light
a pulse electric, strong and warm
enchanted in scattered prism
heals the fate of man
as promised, but
for the patience of mountains
we brothers and sisters wait
for things never before seen,
for things never before believed;
the unification of man, the diaspora
of miracles, the promise of eternity
crossed the threshold of man
into harmonious rule/
light/creation/wonder.
—
—
“Pisces Eyes” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.
Get your copy of Michael’s collection of poetry collection, The Vanishing Poet from Virgogray Press.
A black light
of solutions mounted
above me and below. The drums
are plummeting with me and into me.
She rides, she screams. She has no place
here but resides and remains. She is a
fixture, a shadow, a pillar. A fraction
of a promise lost and kept. No fluid
in exchange remembers. Not even
molecularly. Not even in reticence
the passive memory of Akashic hymns
promise the fine print to the contract is
more than a footnote. The celestial bells
clamor cacophonous to harmonic, wake
the shaman, and collapse the breath, the
burning kindle at the base of the throat.
The sudden rush of blackness and lust.
—
—
“Black Orpheus: Purple Haze” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.
Unable to breathe.
The wisdom of forefathers
repetitive in the mind,
break. repeat. break.
repeat. There were
no bread crumbs laid
to find the way home,
this as a fact lends comfort
to the reasoning for acceptance.
Because the way home cannot be
remembered it will be ruled as a
consequence non-existent.
It is a newborn forgetting
the previous life it fought for.
The spirit interrupted in the prime
of its existence suffocates.
It cannot breathe.
It is a hand clasped over
mouth and nostrils;
it is a forearm to the throat.
It is lost in the blackness of its own
void. It is uncertain and scared.
It acts out. It is unbalanced
and extreme, its natural
patterns punctuated.
Pinned to the wall for
all to see, the point was
deep and nettled between
recognition and acknowledgment.
The ghost of denial resided.
Sacrificing freedom for ascension
like black on black netherlands
overripe with sewage and swamp
wishes it was nothing if not an
inconvenient stench, like burnt
bodies beneath gray skies,
raining like snowflakes
on rigid ice rivers and solid
ice lakes. It wishes to will
itself into non-existence,
not understanding the
suicide of the soul.
Nevertheless, it has pledged
to honor all its exits, to recognize
the gift given remedied at times by
choices and the streams followed
throughout the venture taken
to remain constant in the conscious mind
that created and rebuked all missions
and report. This world wind of
transformation, this dervish of
Pandora, the blackened light outlined
in gold, replace the dominance of winter
in the soul. It seeks only to breathe
easy once again, to remove the
standing wall around its palace,
to unsheathe its stagnation
and source energy to
every artifact that
every needed to
live.
—
—
“Black Orpheus: Black Choke” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.
Blackened night recesses turn into days.
They become unanimous with solidarity but
lost among themselves, shattered individuals
of the same black mirror. The pangs of truth
and the options reality provides for us is nothing
like the lies that satiate the spirit. They are fallen
among the saviors that came before them and
taught humanity lessons, reignited the notions
of the sacred and profane, banished secrets
from our lips but taught discretionary balance.
Lackluster criticisms, halo ringed hypocrisy,
the tangents of emotion wrinkle on the
brow leave us discombobulated.
The heart beckons. It is a beacon for
ghosts of the wilderness that nest
and root deep into the veins of the
earth, the trees. Dozens of spirits,
memories of humanity swell and
writhe begging for sustenance.
They require blood, and the
galvanizing energy of betrayal.
They require the vessels to examine
their souls, to identify universal
truths, to search for unadulterated
morality, and to whitewash with
blackest sin the inherent and
incarnate verity of source
light.
The hole in the head
implodes, corrupts digits
and organs, and eyesight
and discernment. Leaves
dead bodies unturned in
silent procession from
the center of the galaxy
to the threshold of the
home. The jagged crags
erase the riddles as the
fools line up to worship
the sun. At dawn, on the
beach, burning hearts
in effigy, they spread
their poisons and
condemn the flesh
to tarnish the soul
and recruit the fodder
the father commands them.
And the fools will sacrifice themselves
to save the children and remove the haze
and fog of illusion and deceit. The fools
will rise from sleep, will push off the
lumber of dreams and nightmares,
the shackles and cages of unknown
histories have rot off with the needles
of rust and poison that traverse hidden
galaxies and unfurl the mind.
—
—
“Black Orpheus: Awake in the Abyss” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.
Twelve hours difference
the same time of night.
Sister sun, father moon
obliterate the hours
into prisms colored
white and fog.
The brain sludge,
mind junk ripples
in dazzling haze,
a kaleidoscopic tapestry
inside cavernous deep.
Stalactite ice grows
deathly teeth from
ceiling to floor.
Stalagmite pyramids
to pray upon
before impaling the spirit
with iridescent promises
of carnal delight,
and euphoric afterglow
of coital conquest.
Bruises form, slowing the
blood into cracked sheaths
of blackened tar that tricks
the travelers as they cross
the bridge of ignorance.
A slippery flow solidified
slopes downward, too
fast for gravity to keep,
too welcoming for
the conscience to deny.
A dull pain, muffled abrasion
forms lesions on the skin,
scars the passage to the heart,
shears it like razors and slice
the discord evenly. Eyes lose
harmony, travel separate
and detached. An ocean
crashes inside concrete skull,
a heated, poisonous effervescence
steaming from attention
into dissociation and apathy.
The strings of memory fray,
unravel, unfasten shrinking
the gut, the heart, and head.
No wonder, wander lost
in frozen land. Recall
the long lost foreshadow
of a winter king amid
the ice, and hold the flame
beneath glass chalice,
awaiting again the
clouds of Jupiter
to gather in storm
and perpetuate the surface
in storms vast and everlasting.
The monochrome veils of sworn
enlightenment speed up
virtue’s desecration,
entrap the energetic upheaval
once avowed to light, a bride
to source, a corpse upon
the seat of the soul.
—
—
“Black Orpheus: Crystalline Haze” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.
Time slows, it escapes the
dregs of the human soul.
The tempo, the unforgivable
mask of enmity drags the
promises of our youth to
enslave hope and shackle it
to rhetoric.
It has faceless, baseless,
defaced morals. The truth
wears it like a mask of lies,
and receives the heart of
millions as hundreds of
Judas goats show them the
way, pretending self betrayal
is divine.
To eat the face of a child,
to cause it terror before a
Satanic death. Drip, drip.
Frazzledrip the Soul until
the unconscionable dance
around the altars naked
and behead the promises
of life in forfeit of their
souls.
—
—
“Frazzledrip” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.
There was a ringing at the door,
I didn’t know what to make of it other than
the starlight of sky above shone through the keyhole.
The privileges of the rural, span Milky Way for miles and
didn’t blink twice to dare show its true colors.
Creamy scattered light in distant resonance,
mixed miles, light years before and light years after.
This was the hidden world of the muse,
radiance dance defy the music of the spheres garbled
in heinous emotion ego, we all looked to one another
to decipher, to possibly ascend in schiz-freak screeching
distances. Classic compositions radiate with new life at my
finger tips and the audience applause in secret solitude
and smiles of solidarity.
—
—
“Prelude Hidden Worlds” is an Ekphrastic poem after “Prelude” from Cello Suite No. 1 by J.S. Bach. All rights reserved.
The Root of Many Returns 