Poetess Aisha: IRRIDESCENT

Poetess Aisha: IRRIDESCENT

IRRIDESCENT

Messenger of the soul’s throne do you remember? The day the heavens exploded? Do you still see it as clearly as I do? How there was so much light, how tremendously the earth shook, how there was so much noise and yet somehow no sound? You were there with me. You had my hand in yours. Together we watched as the pillars fell from the sky. The idol faces judged us until the end, united in their censure. The stars rained across their marbled cheeks like tears as they crumbled to nothingness. You told me that you were there for me. You said that there was no need to worry. You said there was nothing to fear. There was no need to cry because you were with me. But they were lies. In the palm of my hand the gravity of your desperation quaked against me. Though you stood unrelenting, your mighty eyes fulminating against the enemy, you were as small as I.

Our hearts and souls burst to pieces staining our faces with sooty refuse. They ripped apart into ditches and fissured open into cliffs beneath our feet bleeding out our happiness until we ran dry. The barriers of our spirits so erect, so aged, so wise, so strong began to bend by their will, snapping our rooted trunks. The branches of our life's symphony knelt before them until they surrendered at their feet. They took a step and we felt tired. They squeezed our lungs free of life and filled us with a noxious miasma of despondency. I was destroyed. I desired to fall to my knees under the weight of devastation. My alacritous prayers spilled from my eyes as I watched the heavens open before us. The savage clouds mushroomed into themselves and hemorrhaged unspeakable hues of fiery crimsons, blinding whites, scorching oranges, smoldering blues, and intolerant blacks and grays. The paean of Azrael, Michael, and Sandalphon melted to antagonizing shrieks as destruction enervated their canon. The nebulous distinction of life and the hereafter was no more.

Do you remember? How you pulled me up by your hand and bestowed me with salvation? Your hope was audacious, your faith austere, your resolution axiomatic. Your will haloed through me. You ushered me from my limitations and provoked something within me I had nearly forgotten-the need to endure. I broke free from my shackles of doubt and followed your lead. I surrendered myself to you. I sacrificed my very being blindly unto you without reserve. We bounded over great lengths. We cleared distances we never dreamed of traversing. But no matter our speed our escape seemed futile. They would obliterate everything until we stood for nothing. Their callous tentacles stretched over our heads. The sound of gears rattled and cranked into a discordant harmony that grated across our teeth. Their demoralizing, alloy-plated boots plummeted deep into our foundations. In their wake they soiled us with their gluttonous, perfidious truth.

With eyes astute as an owl's gaze and hunger voracious as a vulture's appetite their barrels coiled within their bellies. And regurgitated their theories hot as hell's fury into the skies. Hearing our feeble steps they snaked their necks around themselves. Their rotary joints hummed with ease as they contorted their heads into unspeakable positions. They rose up like cobras, flattening their necks and flashing their hoods of sporadic light. Beams of cobalt blue zigzagged over our bodies scanning our forms from tip to toe.

Something erupted in our chests, something that sparked at our fingertips and pulsated through us into one. I believe they felt it before we did. I believe they understood what we had become before we existed. The nascent creed burned our flesh. You pushed me from their line of fire as their horns hissed vehemently. Their barrels cocked as they readied to aim their irascible invective. You didn't waver. Your strength, an insurmountable Everest, poured through your flesh and made you stone. Unlike them you didn't stand to rebuke. You held out your arms to exculpate.

It could have been my mind's eye or the barrage of lights at my retina but what I saw I will never forget. Encompassing your corporeal frame a golden light pulsated with the steady rhythm of your beating heart. The genial vibrations that cradled my childish deficiencies, the exact salubrious vibrations that washed over me countless times, ruptured the empty space about us. Like the regal wings of Horus it spread. Its calidity dried away the trepidations that cascaded down my cheeks. Your words, hymns of old, spilled from your lips. In the name of forgiveness you spoke and with the touch of your hand upon their frigid shell the weight of your magnanimity washed over them. Their apparatuses rusted. Their joints locked. Their spindles broke. From underneath, their power fell away and they collided back to their rightful rung.

Hollow cries blared from the trumpeted mouths of their brethren. The seed of retribution blossomed in our wake. From all around they slithered their retractable necks and blanketed us in their unnatural lights. I precipitated myself to your side. As if I could stymie any harm that would befall unto you, I cast myself upon you, encircling you with my body. Their truculent barrels fired. Our ears rang from the dissonant roar. All at once your amber brilliance domed over us. From a single touch my skin began to prickle. I was engulfed in a tidal wave of searing glory. The flame beneath my skin blazed through my pores. Like a catalyst we combusted, synthesizing into one. Your golden light burst into a vague mist and our world eroded to white.

A rancid smog of carbon blistered inside my lungs. Black powder, acrid and thick, secreted down my throat. My mouth ran dry like desert sand. I opened my eyes born anew. Beneath my hand I felt your vitality rise and fall. Amid the dust you lay. The effete lament of the stars exhumed you from your cavernous slumber. From your chest I rose. We stood to our feet with an infant's grace. We were alone. My ears felt as if they would burst from the profound silence that lingered over us. In the distance our enemies belted savagely, too far to sully us.

Do you remember? How the moon shone like the sun? Illuminating our virginal haven in a tempest of blues and grays, its proximity loomed before us. As if it would splinter the earth itself it claimed the horizon. Powerless against Phoebe's cries Atlas reached out to cradle her. Tremendous tremors convulsed all around. Tumbling, stumbling, colliding about, we did our best to keep our ground. Mother Earth broke apart unable to endure our suffering. Father Sky thundered for her agony. When the pain could no longer be cried for, when the world had no more tears to shed, it all ceased to harrowing tranquility. Before our eyes the universe spelled our fate. The scales had been tipped. Lines had been crossed. Our axis was askew, dipping low into dark abyss.

Mountains became hills. Valleys became deserts. Streams ran to rivers, thick with the garnet oils of us all. "Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?" I cried. There was no hope. There was no faith. To go on while forsaken... such madness in reverie.

You were the first to venture out into their world. You were the first to peer into their canted skies. Perhaps you saw something I did not. Perhaps you heard when I wished not to hear. Your clothes lethargic and worn hung on your shoulders set strong. "Because he loves me, I will rescue him." Your voice came rhythmic. Your voice came unyielding. "I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name." Your words washed over me. They whispered to my irresolution. "He will call on me, and I will answer him." My heart rattled in its cage, turning violently. "I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him." Though my eyes burned the tears did not come. "With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation." With your final word you turned to me. Your eyes held love like they always had. Your movement was grace in the most forbearing of ways. In a single motion you freed me from my intrinsic condemnation. To your side I stood basking in your conviction. I took your hand there and then. Your fingers knotted with mine... you were with me. Do you remember?

Grandpa's story:the tree and the hour glass

• • The Tree and the Hour Glass grand pa's story.
    'It’s amazing what one notices when one finds out their time for noticing is coming to an end. Like you have spent your entire life walking around with your eyes shaded by a translucent curtain, and then one day they are reopened like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. I wonder if we ever truly see things, even as a child. Like a new born seeing its mother’s breast for the first time. No, I don’t think we ever really care to see anything for what it truly is until our eyes are awakened by the foresight of never seeing any thing again. I think a man born without sight sees more with one simple touch of the hand then we do our entire lives. Sure we see things every day, some beautiful, some horrible. Yes I suppose we see a lot, but do you ever stop to realize what you’re seeing? To let it sink in to our over developed alien brains? I think not. We are to busy rushing to our early graves to stop and “listen” to what we are actually seeing. Oh, you must think ol’ gramps is off his rocker, or I’m hitting the glaucoma medicine to hard. But it’s none of that. Words are just hard to choreograph together when you get to be my age. By the time the words in my mind reach their destination at the end of this pen, it’s too late to realize that half of them got on the wrong train. Hell, when you get to be my age most words can’t even find the train station.
    I guess I’m one of the lucky ones though. Still got my wits about me, and most of my hair, and my eye sight is still fair. Ah yes, my eye sight. That’s what this babbling old fool was talking about before I got off track. Lucky because unlike most, I’ve been given the gift of “true” sight again; sure it comes with a cost, a cost we all must pay in the end. But knowing my time is near; my payment comes with a gift.
    Like I said, my time here is short and I’ve got all my affairs in order. Having no children of my own, and my wife long dead from the same disease that is taking me, I have sold this old Victorian style house (that I’ve called home for my entire life) to a nice young couple from Nairobi. All my finances I have signed over to a charity that helps fund the reforestation of rain forest. I hope to redeem myself for this action; maybe old St. Peter will save me a seat.
    I suppose I should get to the point of my story before my time is up. The old Maple tree in the back yard that my father planted, some hundred odd years ago, twenty years before I came screaming in to this world. The Maple is long past its prime (just as I am) and the nice young couple wants me to get it cut down before they move, in fear of it landing on the house, from a big wind .I wonder which..
    After all the papers were signed and the lawyers paid, I came home to rest on my old wooden rocking chair out back. To try and enjoy one of the last beautiful days in September, This is when I noticed this tree for the first time. Well sure you are probably saying I’ve must have noticed that tree before, living here my entire life. Yes it’s true, obviously I knew of this tree but on this beautiful September afternoon I truly saw it for the first time.
    That day I melted into my rocking chair, overwhelmingly mesmerized by its true beauty and magnificence. The hours past as I “listened” with my eyes to its ancient tails: The tree engulfed my every thought and filled my mind with endless questions and endless words with ever ending answers. I wondered why these things had never occurred to me before; sitting here in the back of my house like I’ve done thousands of times before. I realized that my eyes were truly open. It was like every thing had its own special glow, its own beautiful life force. I swear (like an innocent man swears on the bible) that for a split second all the mysteries of the Universe were split wide open just for me! Then I blinked and they were gone faster than they came.
    I sat in my rocker (like I’m sitting in now) staring up at this depressing, deformed demon trying to free it’s self from Hades, reaching up trying to grasp the heavens with its gnarled knuckles, attached to countless deformed fingers. Forever grasping for the unattainable, yet never giving up its inner fortitude. I pondered if this monstrous gift to creativity felt pain, like when it lost one of its limbs in a wind storm. Or the time when I was a child and it got struck by an oblique bolt of electricity from the same heavens that it tumultuously grasps for. I wondered if the tree had a memory of its own. If it remembered me and my rope swing that I use to oscillate from as a child, if it remembered the birds that returned every spring from their winter migration to nest in its friendly arms. Did it get lonely when they left? Standing alone like a naked soldier at attention, did it want to go with them, to free its self from its permanent hell? I felt sad for such a thing, to have to die every fall, only to erupt back to life in the spring; each new blossom like a million middle fingers saying “up yours!” to old man winter. I remembered hearing one time that trees are the souls of the damned, destined to live their lives trapped in the earth. I found this couldn’t be truer.
    I wept the day the tree came to my door. I remember seeing the maple in all its ancient glory for the last time. I was reminded of the way a father looks on his daughter’s wedding day. The way he tries to hide the look of contempt in his eyes. Mostly though it reminded me of the few short moments right after he gives his little girl away, but before he takes his seat; those are sad moments often missed by the unintuitive. It seemed to me drastically arbitrary for such an ancient stubborn creature to come crashing down to the very same earth it had been trying to free its self from for more than ten decades. Over a hundred years to climb and less than an hour to fall.
    So that’s my tale as I’ve seen it and I couldn’t have finished at a better time. The last few drops of sand are falling in my hour glass. Making me to weak to write and barely finish a thought. So now I ask you, the one with all that sand still left in the top half of your hour glass. Have you ever seen a tree? '

A flutter

...me touching you...
secret little pleasures behind-your-eyes -
as you stare through a window
my fingertips so lightly flow as and where they will
seeking any and all
of you... the back of your neck
cheeks and jaw lines... the fine lines of lips' edge.

...and so nicely-gently-knowingly down and lightly -
longingly across the gentle rise as with each breath 
...now shaking yet taken, barely held - released...
and onward to softly, intently circle the slightest bumps
raising and begging and raising still more
- trailing the growing heat and tingles
till rising the hills of harmony
those not-so-little peaks peaking
and all the while YOU are just so melting
pudding wanting more and more
the flowing feeling of fingers' tips freely
roaming the places of your growing need...

Your eyes aren't empty but they aren't there,
and your breath can't begin to catch
the heartbeats running and running
and the sheer FEEL as your back arches
so willingly - willfully thrusting more and more
OF you to the reach - begging for all the more
and still more of tips grasping and tightening
turning, turning the yearning and twisting... twists
tightening into HEAT and NEED and more...still more.

...and the shivers of want - need each touch, each grasp,
and then...god they flow further, further - 'cross and down
each lil hair gasps and cries - muscles quake and beg
and the heat - the HEAT ... and you HOLD your breath
you KNOW...K N O W what's happening next and and and
so forcefully exhale AS your hips just rise awaiting... awaiting -
THAT knowing touch...THAT touch right THERE
GOD its just right there - centered. 

Pressing tight - impossibly tight - to a rising YOU and then 
so flowing the length, the silken slick very center 
of all that is you at THIS moment, THIS instant,
and so impossibly entering within... so full and 
so wantonly, purposefully, will-fully... taking
and expanding - flowing - ever in and in stil touching

...your
heart
where they always   and will ever be...
the part of me
in you
that made us - we.

STAMP & STUMP.(a discourse by Richie & Aisha

Like chirps of a lost bird to a quiet forest,
My only companion in this life is death,
No flowers only thorns, no oceans only deserts,
Stranded deranged, life is an oasis shield by the dark night,
A holy blur; a black coat unfurled,
A steely shimmer draining away my vitality,
A sphere of incredulity, I am a finalist, 
With finality I bleed into this canvas: earth,
Put herein by a cosmic creationist,
I am encapsulated to a disturbing serenity,
I am with the wind; I, with the elements.

I am fused with the elements of nature,
In surrender, I brook the torments of vibration,
A minute actor; my will is risible to deities,
In ether, manipulating the strings of predestination,
In life; I am a puppet, dancing to the law of Karma,
In death; I am a cosmic passenger, a prisoner,
In life and death, I am a sorry nonentity,
Duped by conscience to fake self worth,
And exist within the confines of unwritten laws,
I am a slave to the universe, and just like wind,
I scuttle from North to South at the tap of a wand.

Soiled and impure, dust unto dust I shall become,
Elemental carbon, no different from skunks,
Burnished with the blood of the true martyrs,
The forsaken dead, flayed to the bone, 
Are cogs in the godless wheel of nonexistence,
My death is a dream set in a stage,
A stage set in a theatre, all grand and proper,
Tapestries of honor, streaks of treacherous agony,
Screeching echoes of necrosis reverberate against my bones, 
And crush my material being into airy fantasies,
Wherefore must I yield to mediocrity?

I am wild and unrestrained; I seek to be wise,
But on these footpaths of wisdom, walks grief, 
I tire to unfurl the scrolls of madness and folly,
But with much knowledge comes sorrow,
So I wash away my tears with blood,
Feel the prick of thorns on my bare soles,
Glory in misery and oil my hair with wood glue,
Thence elements, deities and beings mighty and low!
Withhold not my joy, nor deny me the pleasures,
These laws knit into a fine fabric of eternal control,
And the tiny sieves betwixt, my only freedom!