The Spectral Lovers

Spectral lovers entwined above the bed,

In the feeble rays of morning,

When the darkness slowly fled.

*

Shapeless palms of airy beauty

Met before the darkly dawn…

Set before the dying beauty

Of the night in brightly morn…

And the whispers of there features,

And their eyes bereaved, benight;

Lore to learn without a teacher,

Love that fled before the light…

And the glossy eye of conscience,

Closing like a feeble film

Over hopes of grassy meadows,

Drowning dead in fluid stream.

Perfume, sweet, of withered flowers

Issue from the lover’s glances,

And falls dead in morning hours

Like the faded, dreamhood chances.

So forsake the ghostly romance,

And resign to nightly reverie.

Place a lock and bare the door,

For the dream shall happen…Nevermore.

*

Spectral lovers dancing to a placid theme,

Parting ways in newly sunshine,

While I wake from darkly dream.

A. W. Street

Shapelessly, the ground arched its heavy dust into the Grey hues of an ominous sky. No song of any bird could pierce the heavy set silence.A stillness loomed over the leafless trees, the broken down houses of the town, the war like rubble on its streets, the glassless windows, grassless lawns. Our story starts here, in the desolate place of Heaven in its ruin, a pale shadow of its former glory, a starless silhouette of an unshaped thing. For on its windswept streets, barren in their simple defeat, life found root, a timid mumble, an indistinct whisper of life, took form out of a mouth so dry and wordless that even nature be perverted.

The street bared the name Alexandra Withershins, a most unpleasant corner of the world. The sullen houses stood gray and silent like the burdened statues of dead poets, their roofs flung to one side or the other. The trees were bent and twisted in peculiar angles and bizarre shapes, black monsters sticking their claws into the milky fog, for this town was a harbor once, but not anymore, for you see, since the fish started running away and the horses dying life ground to a halt.

Through the heavy mist a lighthouse would protrude, like a decayed dagger, a place of sorrow watching over an ocean of the same essence. It was to be the set piece of the guiding light of seamen … now a rusted ghost without any light or power. Its tortured shape would loom over the falling houses of Alexandra Withershins Street.

On its corner the most unimaginable thing did sprout from the lifeless soil…A timid little white flower. And by pure chance it came to rise at the feet of a young girl, her palms at her mouth as she noticed the miracle. Her name was Alice L. , And she lived there for as fare as she could recall. Alice was a girl of no common rate, witty and clever as a girl her age could ever be.

“I shall call you milkmaid.”Said she plucking the flower and placing it behind her ear.

Then with unbridled joy she ran up the quiet street and up to a house, which had a menacing looking tree growing out of its front walls.

“Curious thing you are, little milkmaid.”She said gently stroking the petals that were taking refuge into her hair that bore the smell of cherries.

“ I do wonder where did you find the courage to grow where all others would perish…But rest assured, Andy shall provide a suitable answer.”

She pushed the door and made her way through the maze of branches that filled the house. The smell of wetness was present and the lukewarm feel of decay played its tentacles over the walls and furniture. Alice with ease and care made her way into the kitchen where the pungent smell of mold met her delicate nostrils. It was as poor and as war-like as the rest of that town. Empty coverts, a rickety table with some horrid jars, some unwashed glasses and a plate soiled and chipped. From a dim corner came a hard breathing. And as she stepped foreword the shape of a man in a wheelchair came through the bluish gloom.
“There you are, Andy! You really startled me…”
The man in the wheelchair came forth and the pale light filtered through the dirt on the windows revealed a mockery of human nature…Andy was an old man with the face of a young child, only misshapen and wrinkled beyond comparison. His countenance deformed and twisted, with a crooked mouth, half opened, glossing from the saliva dripping from it. He was unfinished and half-born!
“Alice, what a delight…Care for some raspberry jam? Said he in a strange parental voice, although with a groan from his throat.”
“No, thank you…But nice of you, anyway.”
“Oh then probably you would like some cream tarts…I know you always enjoyed cream tarts…they must be here somewhere” he said looking with a dull eye over the empty coverts.
“Actually that is not the reason why I came her for…I wanted you to take a look at something…”And she took the little milkmaid from her cherry scented hair.
“Ah, I see you found a friend…How this small gift came to be I do not know…if that’s what your question be, young Alice.Our little Heaven hasn’t sprouted life in almost half a century…when the last horse was born.”
“You’re lying!”
“Indeed I am, young miss…”said the half-born in a dim smile.”It is alive for you and your joy, dear child.
“Considering I was expecting an answer like that, I shall believe you”Said Alice putting the flower back behind her ear.
“Oh…I almost forgot, have you seen those two?”
“If you mean do I know what mischief are they up to, I do not know.”
“Ah, boys will be boys…but if you do see them, tell them not to be late for dinner.”
“If I bump into them…”
“Ah, you should be more open minded Alice, besides Arthur had a shine for you since tender childhood.”
“Arthur had a liability from tender childhood,”said Alice more to herself.
“Right, I will do that Andy, do take care…”And she swept off leaving the gentle monster to his own thoughts.

The Grey hues of the sky extended their arms down on her footsteps .She was facing a courtyard in total abandonment .The wall that went around it was broken down and its brick insides were visible, like dried blood. Feral, dead, vegetation crowded the place, like a maze of small fingers grasping each other .A stone basin was in the middle of this all, water filling it to the brim.
Abusing your little brother again Arthur?”Said Alice in her usual sweet voice.
Two boys were at the foot of this basin, one kneeled over the other.”Charming Alice! A pleasure to see you…as…always…”said Arthur stressing his last words, like in some great effort.
“What are you doing there, Arthur?”
The young man stepped away from his brother in a calm fashion, grinning at Alice as he did.
Our young girls eyes were met with a most grizzly sight: About two dozen hefty bolts of iron were lodged in the boys body. He was bleeding and had a gruesome expression on his face. His eyes staring into nothingness, head lopsided…
“Do you enjoy modern art, sweet girl? Said Arthur pointing to his ‘creation’.
“Always had a fancy for the French painters…”sighed Alice
“I call it ‘The Innocence of a Doubtful Heart."

“I never had much love for modern art…”

Tetra

"Come what may" said once the thief,
In adoration of the mercy of God.
And lifted the work of moonless night,
Fled along the cobbled street on
Which the oil lamps faded
His steps.

I fear not God!For we are
Are not of the same stuff.
And like in Aristotle's thought
No "third man" can ever join us
- As he said to Plato, and we
All believed -

No man is the equal of another
And we are fooled to believe
That all sorts of rules are made
To drive us from ourselves.
We are sewn to each other,
And anon.

The words of the priest prophet
And teacher are hollow vessels
No experience can be translated.
We are animals of no rationality,
And our language is that of
Action.

The Basilisk

Sobbing slithers sinking slowly
Shifting shapes of silhouettes,
Subtle shapes, secure and lonely
Slit the air and its regrets.

Spoken language, syllables...
From a tongue forked in two slivers,
Silver sparks from the sharp fangs
Call some stranger here of thither.

Tether, line, spinning soundly,
Spiral wrapping someone's senses.
Like the voice of ill intent...
Phantom spoken from the fences.

Sadness, sorrow and the rest,
Play their music in his speech.
Silken stringed, this puppeteer
Draws his puppets in his reach.

Skin like scales, scarlet gleaming
Spew the smell of scented smoke.
Coiling coils around the body,
Closing life with simple stroke.

Swearing sentence like an oath,
Sacred place, enclosed...outspread.
Tempting guests in undergrowth,
Speaking stories...to the dead.

London Rain

London Rain

The sullen streets they mourn the noon
That's caught behind the Heaven's gloom.
And wept the cobbles are, from bearing
All those tears the clouds are wearing.

And all the trees are wet and Grey,
Lifeless watchers of the day,
They spy the sadness of the alleys,
Remnant of the hills and valleys.

And if a hope, might, weary rise
From this thought of sad demise,
Just an echo shall remain
Stifled in the London Rain.

Ode To November

The cobbled streets shine in the tragic lamplight.They extend in corridors and endless pathways, leading into perdition.No trace of solace could be found on the grey walls that can bearly hold their own, fleeting, grace.Empty and spaceless the street unfolds, November. The damp sidewalk gapes into fine cracks, that seem to stream up and beyond unclear limits.The sound of running water, the trickle of some unseen stream, the dead waters of the street.Falling, crooked rooftops loom over the bent buildings, grey dusk and the storming crows, November.Trees that reach out in a hundred arms with a thousand fingers, grasping the fog that milks over the city, unholy watchers of the evening twisting their bodies into demented shapes against the fading hues of mock colour.Tiny shards of glassy rain cut our troubled faces, and the wind licks and salts our heavenly lacerations.The loneliness of the streetlamps pride into abandonment, November.No prayers for November...

"(...) Along the reaches of the street held in a lunar synthesis, whispers lunar incantations dissolve the floors of memory and all its clear relations its divisions and precisions.Every streetlamp that I pass beats like a fatalistic drum, and through the spaces of the dark midnight shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium."( T. S. Eliot - Rhapsody on a Windy Night )

November's cold chain constricts my wake, and sings me its lullaby.Once heavy eyes close up their lashes the specters of insomnia take form out of the shapeless grey window frames, November.Black smoke from old chimneys, black ravens and grey skies, November my firing squad.

The Derelict

Dear reader,
I should make this an opening post, one in which I welcome you in a kind of warm hospitality, to better suit your mood; and to state that I am here to please your eye with some flight of fancy.This is not the case, though...Here in this little wretched corner, that I affectionately dubbed "The Cat and Fiddle" you will not find solace, and I do not intend to write in a form of mock poesy* to amuse you.But still there is hope for your satisfaction with the "unique"...I am sure that among my downward spirals of thought you shall find an odd fascination with the very things that make my heart resonate in a myriad of tones, that are crafted in such an architecture it will either leave you enchanted or in little awe.So, with these trifles out of the way we may begin to further follow...

It was past five o'clock...I was the only one in a party of eight that still complained about the fact that i did not have my tea ( and that was of meager importance, because I was the only one to keep to such a custom ).We were on the outskirts of this lovely city of ours, in a middle of a grassy field.A great mass of clouds were towering their frames to stifle the dusky sky.And in this tightening of nonexistent tendons the feeble red glare of the sun managed to find it's way through rough openings.We were dragging our feet through the fine mud that was just beneath the tall grass...There was a lot of cursing, even from the ladies in our lot.The wind didn't help our state, but only amplified our inert anxieties.On its gentle Eastern breeze it brought the stench of decay.Waste and animal death...for you see, we were near a great rubbish pit ( one of the largest of our city, I believe ).
Here ought to be the part where I reveal the purpose of our being there, why such a large party? and other information leading towards some paroxistical chain of events.But that is all of too little bother...For right in front of me, stifling my eyes, erecting itself over my sight was the shape of a derelict abbey.Its form was all that was left of it...great "murs" of geometrical beauty heaved themselves up into the air.A delicate balancing act of weather worn arcades and columns, and the spectacle of the sheer mass of bricks was enough to stamp the feel of tininess unto anyone who dared to openly view this as such.
It was empty...only its walls remained. Large holes punctured them, once stain glass adorned their insides, now only voided sockets and lidless windows staring inside and out of wilderness.A great, cracked dome broke itself over our heads.The shattered beauty of skilled masons now the perch of crows and ravens.Dozens upon dozens lined the jagged teeth of red brick which made out from the base of the dome.Malevolent, black, staring us down with an evil eye, croaking seldom, startled upon our intrusion into their solitary den. Flapping ill wings, harvesters of decay the birds that are the crow and raven, the watchers of the derelict.
Three large gateless entrances made light in the western wall...The sun was tumbling down in a yellow glow.It was not cheerful, not even melancholic, but diseased.The sky was putting out its daytime light in sickness, a pestilence of the clouds, of the whole clime, which blew on us with a wind of plague, a stench of unbirth.

This was all played out in front of me last summer, and my dearest reader due note that even in the most abandoned corners you might stumble upon, chance and happening are subjects to be ruled out.As I found out later on, this brought on great joy to me, a gift maybe...for I do believe in the stuff that memories are gained and lost upon, in such stuff that, even if impenetrable, is still mirrored back in fancy, and fancy turned, by nothing less than subtle alchemy, into living flesh.

Yours A. Aron