Tomorrow

My Mind Is A Nightmare III: To Love A Witch

Back Alley Wizard

Aloof

Inner Turmoil
My Mind is a Nightmare, Part 2

The Mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, [and] a hell of heav'n.
(Paradise Lost, Book 1; John Milton)

I.
The Scholar stands in front of you.

"You dive into the river of Acheron, 
desperately searching for what you've lost
as the hands try to pull you down.
But you don't let them take you.
Instead, you stay suspended mid-buoyancy
in the hazy stillness that surrounds you.

How long can you survive submerged before drowning?''

Your smile fades and you avert your eyes
as the Scholar moves to your right.

II.
The Beast sits before you.
It leans it's snout up to your ear
and whispers.

"The question is flawed.
You are content.
You place yourself into a box.
You wander the necropolis within.
You carve your words into sepulchers.
You name them monuments."

The Beast usurps the Scholar which falls to your left.

III.
The beast leans in once more,
    Now vitriolic
    Now swollen
its arm around your shoulder.

                            "We are the dead.
      Our existences breathe hollow
                         and bare no sweat.
                            We are not echos
                and, thus, we will simply
                               cease to exist."

It grins.

IV.
                          You are afraid of death.
"You are afraid of dying alone."
                         You are afraid of loving
                                     yourself.
                                         "You were not meant to love."
"You are afraid of emotion."
                                           "You are afraid of humanity,
                                                         yours or otherwise."
                      But you are not worthless.
                        You are not truly alone.
              You are simply lost in the cacophony
                  of each letter you let define you,
                 all voicing their opinions at once.

V.
You step forward
allowing the Scholar to castle the Beast.

                 "You are unfinished.'' The Scholar states.
                                     "Defined by ink still welled---"

"As time grows stale," interjects the Beast.

A single bell tolls in the distance,
    while,
    once again
the Beast and the Scholar change sides.

My Mind Is A Nightmare II: Inner Turmoil

Phantasmagoria
My Mind Is A Nightmare Part 1


Let me tell you a story
about a little boy.
He was shrouded in night
and the shadows turned their heads.
He was     one of them.

In the softened sussers,
twilight's song hung languid by his side.
He brought his blanket to his chin
and let the silence pull him in
until his eyes fell closed.

One night the shadows felt his presence
and the flesh they craved
unadorned and unscathed, untouched
and     so full of life.

The sussers rose to screams
as pale static accosted his eyes.
Lids lighter than before; unshuttered
seeking steeples but slave to apparition dread.
His heart broke free
and covers smothered his breath.

The shadows reached out
to creep through the bundle
of fear-soaked boy.
Their long, convulsing fingers
coalesced with his skin, his blood
suffused by their oil.

The shades colluded in his solemn hours
and sunk their aching into his lungs,
austere to his dread with a
salacious antiquity heathering midnight's dress
as they whispered away his mind.

The boy laid still,
conspired by the dark;
a cadaver at his wake;
a vessel left unfilled;
a carapace to this day.

My Mind Is A Nightmare: Phantasmagoria

Note: I was a bit stuffy during this recording and my German is absolutely terrible.

Granny's Attic

The attic is always
where my grandmother held her memories.
We would trod through trenches
of old dresses and yellowed toys
to where we found her memoirs of Germany
written across the worn edges
and hair-line cracks covering porcelain
and wood artifacts from an age
before my time.

I would smooth my hands over
the raised edges of a stein
proudly declaring itself from Berlin
in great arched letters above
a piper cased in faded lacquer
as he played a song for a crowd
of merry men leiderhosed and
smiling.

And I would smile too
as I gripped the pewter handler,
depressed the 
flowered lip,
peered deep into the stone
chasm that lay within, and wander
across the continents to a place
I'd never been but dreamt of
in gooey gumdrop mountains.

She would set a woolen alpine hat
on my head that would slip down
over my eyes and sing to me. . .

Abends, ich lag und schlagen gehn
Meiner Omas Engel schlaft mit mir

Before leading me back down
the wheezing stairwell,
wrapped tight in my blanket. . .

Und halt die Tiere in Schach
Bis kein Ubel bleibt

I remember how we would visit
the neighbor who always seemed to have cookies
as big as my face
and how I would always take two
because I had two hands
and what's a hand without a cookie?

Und gib mir Sufse Traume
(So dass) ich in Frieden sein kann

I remember how we would play
on the swings in the backyard
and she would point out the angel
in the tree and tell me how
it was always watching over me.

Und Deckt mich in Warme
Bis ich morgen wecken

I remember wandering
through the house calling her name
and refusing to listen to words.
Und zeigt mir den Weg
In den Himmel die Tore

I remember when I was finally
old enough to understand. . .

In the evening, I lay and go to sleep.
My granny's angel sleeps with me
And keeps the beasts at bay
until no evil remains;
And gives me sweet dreams
(so that) I may be in peace;
And covers me in warmth
Until I awaken tomorrow
And shows me the way
To Heaven's gates.

Granny's Attic

Catoptromancy
My Mind Is A Nightmare VI


In the cold gilded eye
   he exists in twilight,
   a corpuscular entity,
   lost to the waking.

He stands amidst a desert
   straddling cracked islands,
   questioning the stability
   of something so broken.

From his lament,
   he bears three besotted imps,
   feathered and beaked;
   cawing abreast flesh made ossuary.

   Look, laugh, gawk at the boy
with the raven-courted crown
unaware how close
to the grave he stands.

   Caress his graying cheek,
kiss his rot,
and warm his touch
while sliding a knife across his gut.

   Carefully
remove his abdomen,
swing in his stomach,
and debauch his liver.

   Once sated,
hold his battered hands,
place thimbles on his tips,
but do not teach him to sew.

   Instead,
unspool your thread
into small knotted piles for him
to untangle before he can mend.

The boy will forgive and forget
   until the sun is a ghost;
   a glass memory framed in gold
   reflecting fresh wounds;

Remaining in litany
   flayed and stitched
   flayed and stitched
   flayed, unstitched.

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