The Noble Exhumed -- Nightmares Pile Like Bodies

Here's a new poem.

Loveless

My mother should have said, life is like a box of lies. Can you taste the poison confection, underneath all that powdered camoflage? The scythe is incognito. I thought that thin shadow was licorice lace. Holding a key, I came upon the screeching frames of gates. I still persist to rumble, fumble the lock. So returns the melting clock. The waxy face watching, mocking my futility. My malfortune. My thoughts, my core. Everything I've already felt before. Wracked by the hand that subtracts from my ribs a single piece of company. I'm throwing it all away. Void light, void everything I ever tried to trust in. I force intermittent, lifeless suicides. Redundancies. I didn't abandon hope. Hope abandoned me.

Guys, here's a new song. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.


The Devil and Mary's Magnum

Verse 1: (Screaming)
The elusive eye of Faith
Like a white star
Trails
A poignant wraith
Like a hail of hot lead
Hammering the lid
Of a battered coffin
Tell me, please
Can you feel that sick breath
Like a disease
Fall to your knees
And invoke a prayer
Oh mighty sooth-sayer
In the heart of my
Dimming, darkened lair

Bridge:
It's so supernatural
The way she moves
Preternatural,
So succinct and so smooth
It's a forgotten line
In a legacy of instinctual
Feeling
(Feeling fine)
Feeling
(Feeling sub-divine)

Chorus:
The Devil
Made Mary do it
She's not a killer
She's not a killer
She's not a KILLER

(repeat bridge)

Verse 2: (Screaming)
I caressed those sores
My damaged pores
In distress, I regressed
Into a deepening depression
Now here's the lesson
Find where you stand
In hands
Larger than your own
By choice or by war
Lay a claim

(repeat chorus)

Hook: It took my eyes
My sight vanished
Was banished
To a sea of clockwork
Where nothing adds up
And the skies are black
Forgive me
I didn't hear you correctly
Did you pose that directly
In hopes I would
surrender all chance
to happenstance?

Verse 3: (Screaming)
Forceless crime
Robs the beggar's last penny
By his own hand
He won't ever get to see
Disneyland
How tragic
How tragic...


(Repeat Bridge and Chorus)

Well, Huntress and The Devil and Mary's Magnum are two songs most likely to be on the debut album of We Don't Belong, (official name now, no longer Plague of Life) which is the band that some friends of mine are forming, with my position most likely leaning towards being the DJ. I won't be putting any more lyrics out for public display, but maybe if you check me out on AIM or something I can hook you up.

For those who really find something they like about my poetry, however, there's nothing to worry about. I'll still be posting them here.

This Map Can't Be Right

Slap my cheeks until they glow inferno. My words, my truth is the charge. My sentence lasts. Stay calm. I could pick your mind apart. Please, seize her. Ticking like a bomb that won't go off. Banishment, abandonment. Insufferable, threatening lipsticked monster. I hate... Manipulation belongs to higher hands than a suffocating fraud. Spoil the pneumatic whip, spare the lightning rod. So-called Benefactor that approaches my sanctity in hopes of distortion: Beat me until fright melts my world, feign a belittling extortion. Bring insult to my injury, call me a "man." Guess they were right. I am from nothing, immaculate. Saturate so many a tale, manufacture a motherless machine. Can't do it, can you? Our products bleed out colours for the masses. Bleach and bury. All sales are final. Enter closing time. My black orchestra, conductive with water, spark, or speakerbox, has no stories to tell me. No laughs to be heard, no hands to be held.

Forgotten Parachute

Every time I feel it around me, I am alone. I divinated, threw the oracle bones. Skeptics who worship theoretics call me a heretic. I wish I were amnesiac; forget the accusations and my sacrificed wool. Let he who has sinned first be victimized. Here, take your fruit back, toss a selfish prayer back and forth in sheer boredom. Annointed with boiling oil, I watched the cripple nudge a sacrificial cup. It ran over. Bombard these prison walls. Seething reasons like horns from leprous sores. Forgiveness is a verb. Take it to your hands, and weave wonders. Her voice is like dead thunder. Escape by deafened wing of bleeding ears. Have no fear, my love. The gates epiphanize freedom.

*scowls*

Noone replying? SHAME ON YOU CURSED WRETCHED BUG DEPOSITORIES! *scowl 2*

Your new song is good. It flows very nicely, better than you're other one you wrote before. Oh, ad forgotten parachute is a very, very nice poem. The last sentence is kinda like a contradiction. I like it.

(well actually...it depends what way your looking at it from...I'm done.)

Strained to Educate


It seemed that everytime I blinked I saw your face. A memory of the "when" and "then" that still makes my heart race. I prefer the black roses, don't you? Don't you see the beauty in when they shrivel? Crumble in my fist?

So many moments I wished I'd missed. The sky rains pity, tears from the Gods, but I've blocked it out. The roses die in response to the drought. This school is abandoned, free of the devout. Knowledge long discarded. The boards are dusted, the chalk charts the shapes of hearts, finished but never started.

The crescendo of your escape was a felt goodbye, an apology that cracks the walls and makes caustic the steadiness of my sighs. It's all welling up. The ceilings creak and call to fall, fall to make my grave.

If souls can be saved, so be it. But I would rather fade. My will is for you, in that foreign land. My splintered fingers reach for your long lost hand.

Delicate. Winged. Singing voice. Enraptured, I walked out; you had grown wings, and my skin was burning. The sun learned and killed me in its cunning. The imperfect lie, and perfect tears fall from exquisite eyes.

It could never be.

Absolutely phenominal. This poem conveys many strewn emotions and vivid images that make me just...see it and feel it.

Very good job. Keep up the good work.

Somber Streetlight Sonata

Opulence. It screams out my name, and yet, it withholds all of my dreams and laughs at my tears with each night’s departure; over the screeching tracks and passing flights of all the angels who never loved. They say they want to lock me up.

There is but a single name for the discarnate wretch that haunts all of us, and it is Irony. It forced a hole in me, and now, it’s a vanishing pool of rushing misery. Beachside hospital. The waves still crash over those that drown eternally. If only they could breathe, cough up fatal weight that was so gladly swallowed.

Dead thunder’s triumphant and utter return into exile. Do you see what I see? I’m afraid. I almost want to consume your illness again. Because, that’s what you want, right? To fix only the flaws I can’t see? For every value you hold, I want a new name. I’m not the one who needs prayer. It’s not fair. It’s lonelier out here.

Unwavering


Consecration and contemplation, in poignant desolation. I sang hymns for you, yet you remained the intangible maiden. It's all right now. You knew that wasn’t me.

By my dark stars, I can only surmise you counted the lies. The number, myself, I do not know. The tempests came in three, upon seven, but one got lost along the way.

The cries of the wilderness overwhelmed and lowered the skyward eyes. All alone, the heathens die. Creatures of the cloth and born no more forlorn than you or I. Found in Truth, ensnared in the sweltering heat of mortal lies.

I will stand, as a guardian of the damned. The lands may scream in distaste, but I see past the graven images of grace. The Witness stands on high.

My will remains undestroyed, buried deep, like a knife through the cancerous heart of a worldwide ploy.

Don't Belong

Verse1: (Screaming)
Harsh voices commanding providence
Venomous creeds still withstanding..."sick of this"
I wanted no experience of...
This bland world's cheap handlings
The old one's son's turbulent landing
I feel the flames
I feel the branding
It's not my number
It's not my number
It's not...mine

Bridge: (Softcore)
American lullaby
Cry for freedom
National vampire
The world cries back
Bleeding black
For you
No matter
We'll measure the grave
Staked heart
Sixth floor
Fresh start
Steep descent
Going down


Chorus: (Hardcore)
We are not judged
Fanning your bleak desire
We are the afterfire
We...
DON'T BELONG
To your myth
DON'T BELONG
To your fear
DON'T BELONG
TO YOUR ****ING
SICK MINISTRATIONS
PROFANE DEMONSTRATIONS
YOUR WAAAAAAAR


Hook: (Softcore)
If we are to burn for ever after, the damned will dance for ever more. IGNITE. Like wax figures,
Melt and move. Melt and move. Untouchable, Unto death, Unto rest, Unto my own resurrection,
My exploding trajection within the dawn of the end of days. We'll end it all here.

Verse 2: (Whispered softly)
A visage torn
Flesh worn
Skeletal fragments
Shattered
Lost remains
You're all too sane
It's you I blame
I hope nothingness
Is as merciful
As I
You're infected
Dead where you stand
Or where you lie
Living corpses
Fodder to feed the flames
There is no hope
FOR YOU...

(Repeat Bridge and Chorus)

Footloose

We stand above those who bow to a master’s call
The forbidden double act to sever ties with the hearts of all
A double-edged sword to duel with the earnestly unlearned
We draw a line to divide
A truth hidden in the by-and-by
If one day our touch could conspire
To dash their hopes with fire
And give method to dance upon the cadavers of their dreams
We that sleep forever
Without shadows to cast but to create
I would call forth a new song
Of disastrous glory
To mourn, and shortly after scorn
Those who chose to conform
And die in their wishes
Just like I was once left to
Just like you, love
Let’s crash

Caste Puer Aeternus

By Matt Barnett

For your sky I pledge the hollow depth;
The ridge of slumber, and the soul bereft
Of the passion unraveled to all nonsense.
For every word, the white made black upon the lotus,
And these treacherous eyes mark a fond wish of
How they would see, all sight abandoned at the whim.
World-weary never again.
A child in warfare makes peace with beasts aplenty,
Making strife with no effort against waves of this apathy.
With every rising crest, his hand parts;
From the ribboning tides of fortune and fate,
If there be time, it has no weight.

Caste Puer Aeternus: I thought this had some excellent imagery in it, most notably the water images of "waves of apathy," "every rising crest," and "the ribboning tides". I love water imagery, for some reason, so those just stood out to me. I was also fond of the line "World-weary never again." The poem had a good flow to it, as well.

Footloose: The first thing I noticed about this poem while reading it was the structure. The lines progressively get shorter and shorter until the final one, "Let's crash." It gives the poem a sense of momentum propelling readers to the end. And, as always, you use very abstract language to convey your thoughts.

Two To One, Revisited

There was a widespread plain. Was it two, or three shapes shaded in grass? There’s the extra of the set, staged on the horizon. Shaped out of glass, and ripped from the cradle of this-of-kisses before his time had come.

Ghost-boy mourns and said, what happened before this? Did I exist? Beneath the tree, he can see shapes below. He knows these two, these first sights; he had always known them.

An obscure boy, as horned as ancient Pan, and a bright girl, flowered like a Nymph and just as pretty. They were as if they were flying.

The Ghost-boy had a realization. He said, these are faces of my mother and father.

Light’s lure had called him. Shadow had acted upon his desire, as a mimic does. They bore him in pain, a union of...What? Why? He hated Shadow, for doing what he did. He called unto that field with a voice of serpent-skin, I wish you death, Shadow. I wish you were like me.

And for Light, he was so mixed in himself he could not understand it. How could his pleasure betray him, cause him pain? The Nymph betrayed no ill-will; it was the fickle nature of hers that had caused this abortion. But his desire, his Shadow, had brought the suicide of giving this-of-kisses a try. Even so, the flowered Light remained stainless to his eyes. That was, until he finally began to hate so powerfully, his skin was blacker than any Shadow. Ghost-boy became a Devil.

One day, while he watched his enemies, Nature sent a fruit to fall from the tree where he sat. It struck the Devil on the head, and he growled at the tree, what a foolish thing you are! Can’t you see I have nothing? Can’t you see I have enough troubles?

He had a realization. He said, this fruit was ripe, and so, if I had been aware, I would not had suffered this. And then he turned his eye to Shadow, who had stolen the eyes of the Light. Surely, he was as wicked as Devil. But if so, then didn’t they share a bond? Surely, they were both of each other.

Devil spoke to the horned boy in the distance, although he didn’t hear him. He said, Shadow, you are now my brother. From birth you reflected my craving; we are not different.

Next, he looked at the flowered Nymph, with all her radiance. Things just happen, Devil knew from his lesson with the tree. Pleasures become pain, but have they truly transformed? Or was it the Devil who had changed?

Surely, Devil said, Shadow is never separate from Light. They were then, one and the same. Light, the temptation, had given in to Shadow's temptation. And so, Light had been Shadow's Shadow as well as he had been hers. His desire, his own Shadow, had brought the suicide of giving this-of-kisses a try.

He said to that radiant girl, Light, you are also forgiven. You and I are the same.

And so, that Devil realized that his hatred itself was suicide, for he was only harming himself. At last, he freed himself from his chains of malice. He tasted of the fruit that had scorned him, and found it sweet. How was he any different? He had been, in some form, both Shadow and Light. And so, they were neither; all was connected.

He felt he was truly flying.

When he finally arrived to play along, however, he saw sorrow in a falling torrent. The two were in a divide, and the air smelled freshly of shattered glass and newborn pain. There was a prayer, then, from the now-white Devil, that everyone would kneel beneath the Tree.


Dedicated To Every Lonely Soul

Wow, ^^ I love this, Shade. It's truly a masterpiece.

I'll speak while I'm here, even if in speaking I plumb nothing.

Wow.

"Two To One, Revisited", Shade, is a story to truly ponder.

I comprehended the events at points, got lost at junctures, and will need to read this several times over without the obstruction of vacation and bad internet connections to truly understand it. Happily, I'm in the possession of a printer, and can say (regarding the story - do forgive me for leaping from one subject to another) that I adore your prose style - it is legendary. The story is a myth, reads as might a folktale; I love the dialogue, how the lack of quotation marks renders it natural - I can hear the characters speaking. The use of names - Nymph and Ghost-by and then comes the Devil - enhance the mythical feel of "Two to One", and I like how you employ ideas not commonly assosiated - a voice of serpent-skin, for example.

But this is a poor review and I'm out of time; I'll return as soon as I'm able to give a better comment. Until then, excellent stuff, Shade.

Selah

Depletion

I was running on an empty tank. Pulled roadside, lighting a scene lined in loose yellow tape. There were some sons and daughters on the prowl, teeth BIBLE-BLACK and their lips a-howl. Thought I was lost but found the stick-shift, tried to reverse but they were coming real SWIFTLY. Underhandedly, I wondered if I could take them SOUTHBOUND. Flickering in and out of vision, they diffused into modern ART. An urban corpse wreathing me, the spectral violence ensnaring shapes in the DARK. No need to understand, they said, just take my HAND. A regime of bought-and-sold soldiers forced me inside. They tried to cross me over, action without THOUGHT. Earlier on this bleeding, brooding day, you'd lain with me, in the RAIN. I had said, I think God is losing his touch. You moved away. In this stream of action and reaction, how does preternatural come into play? With questions to force open black holes in the supermassive, I LAUGHED until the sun came up. How would the world come to FIRE? Bring it on.

This is a remnant of my seething ashes.

Yet To Burn



Where are you, my heartless rose?
I've lessons I have not yet learned,
Living in the worlds and words I've yet to burn.
Night and Day, tell me, where is she?
In my dreams, the voices shout back, where isn't she?

Are you my core or just another illusion?
Shimmering, you've taken someone else,
The semblance of another fusion.

Where would you hide, if you couldn't stand still, like a clock in chaos?

In the theater or flasks of blue,
The sunless eyes or the visitor, too?
Even in your company I can't find you.
Can you find yourself?

I couldn't even linger to try;
The length seemed less than how the time flew by.

Your cutting kisses left me, living on in my own blood.
If I had taken more control, maybe the monster reflecting in your eyes wouldn't be me.
I'm ashamed. Who I was then is dying, and I wish...

I don't know what I wish, and if the passage of light lasts unto the hereafter, I pray this river never runs dry.


Author's Note: This is a poem based on a remembrance of mine. It doesn't necessarily reflect my feelings at this point, nor does it endorse them. I'm saying this because sometimes, it's difficult for me to tell. This one's for you, Sammy, as it was arranged. Heh.

Hmm...well, you wanted a full critique, so let's see here...

Where are you, my heartless rose?
I've lessons I've not yet learned,

When I got to that second line, I wanted to read it as, "I've lessons I have not learned," or "I've lessons I have not yet learned," rather than the way you have it there. It might just be an aesthetic thing for me, but having the same contraction in the same line separated by only one word is a little bothersome to me.

Living in the worlds and words I've yet to burn.

I do like the similar sounds you have here in "worlds" and "words." Very nice.

To these passages of light in the hereafter, the river flows onward.

To me, this line seemed completely irrelevant, almost like it was thrown in there to make an attempt at something really deep and philosophical. Then again, this could be some vital part to the story that I don't know about, so if it is, just ignore me on this point. ^^;;

Night and Day, tell me, where is she?
In my dreams, the voices shout back, where isn't she?

I think it might be cool if you put the "where isn't she?" in quotes, or even in italics, since you just got through saying that there are voices shouting those words back at you. It would draw more attention to them that way.

Are you my core or just another illusion?
Shimmering, You've taken someone else,
The semblance of another fusion.

Did you intend for that "You've" to be capitalized? Because you don't capitalize "you" or "your" anywhere else in the poem.

Also...I'm a little confused as to your meaning in that second line. The way you've got it punctuated right now, it seems like you're saying, "While you are shimmering, you have taken someone else." Or... "When you took someone else, you were shimmering." Something like that. I wasn't sure if that "shimmering" was supposed to be connected to the line above. Something like... "Are you my core or just another illusion, shimmering?" If that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you, ask me over IM, and I'll try to explain further. ^^;;

Where would you hide, if you couldn't stand still, like a clock in chaos?

In the theater or flasks of blue,
The sunless eyes or the visitor, too?
Even in your company I can't find you.
Can you find yourself?

Okay...this section, along with the section above, seemed kind of...out of place, overall. The whole beginning of the poem, you're talking to yourself about yourself. But then, suddenly, you switch over to addressing the "you." Now, I'm not saying I think you should just totally cut this section out, but maybe, instead of saying "you" and "your," you could replace those with "her" and "hers" or something. Just to keep the poem consistent. But again, that's kind of an aesthetic thing with me. If you don't want to do that, it's your poem.

I couldn't even linger to try;
The length seemed less than even how the time flew by.

Hmm...the second line seems muddled to me, but...I'm not really sure how to tell you to fix it... Maybe...it's that "even" that's bothering me. Perhaps something more like... "Even the length seemed less than how the time flew by."

Your cutting kisses left me, living on in my own blood.
If I had taken more control, maybe the monster reflecting in your eyes wouldn't be me.
I'm ashamed. Who I was then is dying, and I wish...

I don't know what I wish.

I do like the way you ended it, on a note of indecision and uncertainty. However...I think that maybe...it would be even better if you just left it off at "and I wish..." and took out that last line entirely. Could give it a more dramatic effect, maybe.

And...there you have it. ^_^ Hope that was helpful in some ways.