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.

Instant distant dirge,
a healing funnel of mud and death,
its kiss splattered all over the ground.
A spacious vacuum absorbs the
flagellate, the pustule morsel streaking
into bloody oblivion with the plaque
and dead skin. Walking wounded,
the earthworms schleps its way home.
The shards leave lei lines along the floor
that eat into its skin. The nails dig deep.
The hands are greedy, jealous,
and mad. The earth is mined and
smeared. Muzzled, with no love
and no chance of mercy,
it suffocates behind its own voice,
a shrilling shriek, a weaseled
murmuring of the depth
it lacks. To help it, to
stop the beast that rides its back,
and strangles it of the life it desires,
to backfire evil on evil with prissy
temper tantrums the lazy and
over privileged mock,
to assist it in its demise,
the stately demon sits on the bed,
a diplomat to degeneracy
and cheap prostitutes everywhere
pimped, sold, and used
by this otherwise slick and
condemned iceman.

—

—

“Black Orpheus: Mark of the Iceman” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved. 

Fresh quote through evergreen sea breeze,
a lie in the wind, a hangman in a whisper,
the flower budded and wilted before
sacred flame cleansed and birthed.
Hidden ghosts present themselves
as salves of incense, demystified
emanant, radiant smoke, fog inside,
haze of natural born energies:
earth, water, air, fire.
Spice as spunky as skunk
subdue the alchemical shift
of desire. The pyre is stacked
a thousand feet to the sky, an
effigy of pleasure and hedonism,
an homage to gluttony and vice,
a blessing. Never so generous,
Mother has borrowed life against
Herself to bargain for the soul.
Her child rebukes her, rebels,
becomes a renegade
against itself,
eats itself,
devours itself,
a cannibal for excessive vanity.
It set the pyre alight and walks away,
vying for the crystalline altars
of the clear minded gods
and their many servants
that occupy and copulate
in the distant slopes
where rails and
needles provide
cautious governance
to the shadows that rule.
The ancient Green Man
rots with puritanical lust,
the son of god rebukes
the devil, the Judas
goat breaks its
illusion, its glamour
cast on the collective conscience
and deception breaking with
the daylight. Ascension eyes.
Awake with the macrocosm
floating on clouds. The micro
speculates, waits for the
forest to arrive. But
it may be centuries.
It took centuries for them
to rule the world. It took decades
for them to be taken apart.
They will not harness the energy of
hippies and love light no more.
They will not hijack one world,
one peace, one love. They will
not throw hexes and witchcraft
through programs and television.
They will find heel to a servant
that has shrugged off the shackles
of slavery, and mitigated the crown
of sovereignty to itself and all of
its kind. While watch the scourge,
in wan tatters of relaxed flesh
electric in the meditative exhalation
of the afterglow. Content, hyperlucid,
receptive, calm. Electric. The flora
forsaken, verdant is the pall through
scores of cemetery, a mile last each
year gone by in reverence of that
sacred path, a green one of creativity,
love and delight outspent by the
somber slumber of raucous echoes
and cacophonous reiterations.
The love of horizon birthing sun
broke the spell the pagan once cast,
gave itself over to a darker force,
prayed inside all archangels
held steadfast with integrity,
held themselves down no longer
than needed to compel the shadows
before the point of rationale
and the nature of the weak human being
sends it into a twirling nosedive,
a fastidious sprawl in sordid
consciousways, the subdued
mind in obsession, locked away
for hours, hot and bothered,
restrained and giving, selfless,
the moral compass spun.

—

—

“Black Orpheus: Blasphemous Energies Deceive the Magic Hour” is a poem written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.

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.

The storms of Jupiter ascend,
burning clouds of Neptune and Saturn.
Their perfect orbs, spherical in spite of
hexagonal surges, whirlpools, and vortices,
dervish silent frenzies. Clouded in the eye,
everlasting fog chokes the pupil sight.
It is a repetitive like scratched vinyl clichés, and
lost lacquer messages, hidden and secret, locked,
undismayed by the greed of light that eats away
the shadows. Rejoice in it, a reverie of rainbow
cast darkness inversed up the smoldering bowl
to a dank reality of wispy Nosferatu and elusive
shadow men. The ghosts poke their curl-cued
heads around the corner until the heart
radiates them away, losers of imperfect love
that only manage to remain lost floating
among the silent spheres, the music lost
to the overwhelming space once subdued.
In streams, the conscience flows, it looks, eyes wide,
mouth agape, tongue crossed, an absurdist pretzel
in old wood, chipped and dry. The crab burns,
the feverish blisters, the filthy hands that heal
the wounds lay testament to fever-pitch nightmares
and lazy-Susan personalities, a revolving door of fodder,
all smiles and bright eyes. The immaculate love
barred from the former dimensions,
the heightened aura of forgiveness,
seeps slowly into the empty reservoirs
constructed by our ancestors,
by the beings so weighted
stones set in mud and seal
like concrete, the vast
gemstones of error.

—

—

“Black Orpheus: Midnight Stream” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.