Orion Schwalm

Orion Schwalm Nov 2010

A podium stands out against the Heavens
Decorated with the bodies of forgotten martyrs
fire from the sky sears the flesh of those undying,
forever locked in a space where the world's memory does not
reach.

I can see this podium
                                          as fate flashes dimly,
projected onto the screen of my unsewn heart...
strewn across the clouds, covering the hole in the sky where Hell breached long ago, the blood dripping demons into the destinies you venture.

As I stand at the top of the mountain
carved from my predecessors
And scream to the stars
         With a sound that would make gods' lips quiver
                    Busting lungs to ask for my heart back,
To seal up the hole that spawns the darkness in your life so the skyfire burns away your torment...light strikes my face...pierces my bones.
                                                I fall from my podium into your night.

                                                It is storming here.

Orion Schwalm Sep 2010

The Crescent Crescendo

Precious Days
Through the crashing waves
I see the end of
The crescent sky
The sickle moon
Now in death do I lash out to the
Bleeding horizon
In silence watch it fade

In silence I watch it fade
An echo melting in frozen time
In darkness unleash the guillotine
Bring an end to the precious days
In coldness dark silence sublime

I’m fine
Really I’m fine

Oh what I wouldn’t give
To give you all that I have
The king’s kingdom and his crown
And all his castles in the sand
In which during crescent tide I
Drown
By the light of the moon I see your
Blood-stained and wave washed face…….
Your tear-brimming wavering eyes, I can
See my broken body inside of the sorrow within your eyes
With a moment of time, I could
Save you from timeless night
We are deathless in this our vessel of fear
And I am immobilized by the dark beauty
Of our unspoken screams
With a moment of time I could move the moon
To make time flow right

Seaside Song

Orion Schwalm Sep 2010

The Last Winter

The flower wilts and an old man weeps
‘neath a snowy white quilt he lays down to sleep
Cold and alone, but his features are like stone, he is dying so far away from home
His cries he swallows with his freezing tears
As he dies in the snowdrift, the last thing he hears
Is his love calling in his memories from so long ago, this is the last winter he will ever know

But what of the ones that linger back in that place in his memories, waiting for him to no avail for he shall never return. Still they wait at the place he left them scanning the horizon, holding a piece of him, forever, deep within their hearts.

A flower had once deserted its tree
The petals were scattered for the world to see
The tree met the flower at the end of it’s quest sleeping serenely silent, in a white sea of death.
Then, the tree followed suit.

He traveled far from home to prove himself a man
Now in this snow white tempest takes his final stand
And those he left behind will not know how he died but they needed him more than he needed himself. And he needed them more than he needed himself.

Cold and alone, but his features are like stone, he is dying so far away from home

His love’s calling him in his memories from so long ago, this is the last winter he will ever know.

This is a song.

Orion Schwalm Aug 2010

The Janitor

Her face, on it’s own, is just one of thousands past and thousands to come…
But the way she portrays it…leaves a certain residue behind that I am betting she doesn’t want swept up and examined.
That’s where I come in. I’m her janitor/detective. I’d say custodian/investigator but **** political correctness. I'm in charge of gathering the crumbs of the cookies she only half finishes, and I try to determine the consistency of each and every one.
Why?
Because she bakes the best ******* cookies this side of the ******* sun, that’s why…Because she puts so much time and effort into perfecting her recipe and because she spends equally as much keeping it a secret. The mystery adds something to the taste.
But she’s overconfident. She hopes too much that everyone will eat every scrap of her devil’s dozen batches of heaven…that they will leave nothing uneaten in their never-ending feast of enlightenment.

Not I.
No Sir! No cookies for this ******* ******’s little ****** mouth. God knows I don’t deserve the sweetness.
So I’m always starving because in MY world, she’s the only cook, the only waitress, and the only ******* farmer left.

…But I still get to be the janitor. I know volunteer work is self-destructive but- \
But maybe one day she’ll decide…
”Hey, this mindless drone slave…he’s a **** good mindless drone slave,” and then maybe even later she’ll see I have a mind after all, even though it is always set on the same thing every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every month of every-
well I can’t go that far in writing but I can see that far with my own eyes and I’ll tell ya…years, decades, centuries, millennia, infinity…………..ain’t got **** on this mind o’ mine, cuz the concepts are in there, but then again so is she, so why can’t I have what’s inside of me without having to rip myself apart every night looking for the quickest route to it?
Should I snap the neck clean off and go downward through the rest of this mess?
Or should I cut through the waist right in the middle and spread this search party out?
Or should I just go straight through the left side of my chest, into the hornet’s nest, guns a’ blazing?

But there’s no point in getting it all over with now. I’ve got time…all of it.
Cuz I have seen a glimpse of infinity when I looked through the telescope into the lens of a microscope with a slide inserted holding that one special little crumb I found in the folds of my shirt after the night we slept together, and I think I’ve got just enough of a hunch to say confidently that it is her secret ingredient…infinity.
It’s what everyone wants from her…and it’s the only thing I would take from her…and it’s the difference.

It’s what I see in her face.
It’s her eyes.
It’s her
It’s me.

It’s absolutely…
Nothing.

We love it.

First piece I've done like this.

Orion Schwalm Aug 2010

Sasha's Poem

The wren to the falcon and the falcon to the man
Dashed my pain on the rocks of no man’s land
Sighs the sea to the siren, “never leave my grasp”
Sings the siren to the land, “you are much too vast”
Says the sailor to the moon, “we will never be”
Sends the sailor to the sea: the siren singing softly
So the siren saves the sailor from the love of the land
In a struggle at the surface swelling storm
Brings him to the bottom of the sea
Singing eternally.

So the land and the sky, they will never see
Nor the wren and the falcon, will they ever be
Like the moon and the sun are sworn together
Yet will never touch the light and the warmth and the
Love
Of the earth.
The earth will spin, the wren will sing,
The falcon will soar, and the moon will sink.
Hear me write of a gale with a pen that I hate
While I wish so bad that at land you will wait
Having heard my scrawl vibrate within your heart
And seen my fires in the dark
And followed them home.

Hear me write with love from within this gale
As I stand on the brink of the gates of hell
And I know that you think that I hate so well
But I can promise you a world of insanity,
A swirl of calamity, a girl…you are more to me
Than just a passing stranger, or the hope to
Have a family.

So sing for me and sing for us and
Sing for them that are deserved
For your voice and your lyrics,
Your mind and your heart,
Are perfectly imperfect.

Orion Schwalm Jul 2010

Beneath the Flooding Moonlight

The pathways are so luminous
As I tread this softened ground
Trying to put into words the
Enlightenment that I have found

I must journey on my own
As the white wolf hunts the forests alone
To **** his prey and prove to his mate
That he is of worth, to create
He will **** or be killed for a chance of new life

So much time separates us and the stars
We see magnificent death in the form of light
If something can be so beautiful after it’s gone
The living light must have cast a remarkable dawn
A radiance so bright, is vile to mar
Perhaps I should play shepherd to the less permanent stars
Whose light would be forgotten in a ripple of time
The stars that reside right here on this land
Beneath the flooding moonlight
Which isn’t light at all.

Incomplete three verse version.

Orion Schwalm Jul 2010

Creation Spree

These bursts of creativity
Come randomly,
And seemingly
Unnaturally
But when I see
My mind set free
I write endlessly
A creation spree
I guess it could be called
When I go from lying on the floor, sprawled
To shattering these emotional bunker walls