Time is my lover; my companion.
She has revealed to me the sacred secrets of the world.
Captivated by her beauty and insight I have become fascinated by her existence.
I came to realize long ago, in the eons of my metamorphosis that she is the only one I can trust…

I take solace in this.
One cannot be led astray with love and time.
The blossoms and lilies are blooming amongst the tightly packed soil of the terrene.
I am efflorescing as well… Time has revealed this to me.

My heart is a celestial body amongst celestial bodies, illuminating the darkness and chaos ravaging the Earth.
I am a luminescent ruby shining red hot with passion; I have a fervor that shall not be diminished by the vitriol of a single malefactor.
I am united in spirit and soul with The One whom has redeemed me from sin and death.
My light is my hope; I have power when I am shining as brightly as the Sun.

Epiphanies are ever present in this vicissitude of my life.
I prayerfully await more growth beckoning me from just over the horizon.
The Sun has beseeched me to sanctify His name through melodious song.
I become less and less of a vestige as each sunset approaches.

My spirit is my cocoon.
I shall pray for more efflorescence as the Great Day approaches.
My soul is flowering forth with ebullience and a deep tranquility that no one can take away from me.
I shall rest my faith in my cognizance of the might I possess.

Today is my rebirth and the Phoenix has bestowed upon me its benediction.
To have newfound life breathed into your nostrils; words cannot express the jubilation, the ecstasy that has arisen in my soul as a result of this.
I have been fortified and from this day forth, I shall no longer relinquish my right to joy and prosperity.
May the Lord of Blissful Joy awaken in you also, the cognizance of the might you possess.

-Amen-

By, Iridescently Efflorescent

Why should I surrender to fear? /
Oh, is this frailty I sense in me? /
As I'm budding I envision the aethers /
Embracing me, rapturously, /
I spiral upwards /
Efflorescing, bursting into bloom. /

Why do we tremble at change, /
Yet embrace continuity? /
When do we stop pining & /
Herald equanimity, harmoniously? /
Yin & Yang; of lore I once sang, /
Now triumphalistically I declare His name. /

Freedom reigns /
Truth prevails, /
Justice weighs /
Spirit sustains /
A diaphanous azure flame: /
—I shall ne' er be the same. /

(—Se' lah)

Captivating, conspicuously charming
A fragrance so enthralling
Bewitching the senses
Enticing the unfocused soul

Hypnotizing, hardly hypnagogic
Such unparalleled grace
A peculiar dancer
Coaxing the mind to perplexity

Anodyne, aberrant anesthesia
Resembling an ethereal angel
A touch appealing to tame flames
Surreptitiously gathering fuel

Sacrosanct, superficially sacred
Donned with deceptive modesty
An ambiguous spark
Threatening to begin a wildfire

Efflorescing, escaping encumbrance
Soon, a firm grasp on freedom
The freedom so prematurely served
Too early to be maximized

Incantations, whisper incantations
Silence the demented demons
An unconventional ritual
To fortify the continence
Ebbing continence
Another attempt made
Stall the impending debauchery
Enunciation is needed -
Esurience is never innate, but provoked

From two fiery souls, a being was yielded
With their ambitious love, it must be guided
Whose young soul, at birth, pranced at the brink of death
God heard his wish, granting the infant another breath

As the time went on and went by
The same star was the brightest in his sky
Riches do not kiss her feet
But his arms, more comfortable than the finest sheets

He was her protector, her shield, her warrior
She was his princess; To no one, she was inferior
On his shoulders, she stood on top of the world
All was perfect 'til the petals unfurled

She fell off from a bicycle and bruised her knees
He treated her wounds but ignored her pleas
The once loving embraces felt like a cage
Under his gaze, she was a prey on center stage

Goodnight kisses were no longer pure
His warm embrace, no longer secure
What used to be affectionate, now shaky and warm
Eyes that shone with love, now projects harm

Harm to the corporal being, to the efflorescing soul
To sleep at ease, she cannot be cajoled
At days, perturbed; at nights, in fear
She trembles and frets, her fright is sheer

Hands that swept hair away from her face
Left imprints on her skin one can never erase
Lips that pressed kisses on her forehead
Became the source of her every day dread

A princess' skin felt like filthy rugs
Her responses to concern were countless shrugs
Now every time she sees her warrior
Relief vanishes, she is filled with terror

She remained silent, hoped for a change
All done in vain, the protector is deranged
Indulged himself, appeasing carnal hunger
Drowning her in nightmares that will forever linger

No more time for beautiful dreams
For she's awakened by lascivious schemes
The following morning, his lips are stretched to a smile
Forgetting the night, the flower that was defiled

With much courage, the straight road became curved
She took the wheel and hastily swerved
The voice has been found and it finally speaks
A stoppage on his abhorred streak

Knees on the ground, he recites a contrition
The usual alibis, but his own rendition
For so many years, she lived in misery
Mere apologies cannot suffice for clemency

From this point, she can never get far
Why dress her with fabrics of adulterated scars?
I was your princess, your brightest star, remember?
Why did you forget, my dear father?

Depth without Labels

The world is changing, ever so vividly described in my subconscious but it's encoding cannot be retrieved; an alternate state that cannot be retrieved; a side of me that cannot be retrieved.

The skies above are blending in with my mind and I am uplifted into the heavens and past the atmosphere, stratosphere, troposphere, mesosphere.... Conscious-sphere.

Layers of my mind, layers of my mind....

Time has stopped in my mind as I await an answer in my heart....Data cannot be retrieved; emotion void and null, noxious pain in my heart -A blood-stained memory is it's root.

Encompassing consolidated eons in my own era, I await a Golden Age where my mind has eliminated threats that are non-existent and yet present in a ghostly form; vestiges.

Blind to the heart of a matter, that strength is derived from, that a solution is obtained through emotional fervency symbolized through reckless flecks, careless mistakes, vivid flaws imprinted on an innocent canvas.

Phantasmagoria; pain is red, emotion blue, and yet contradictions are intertwined; these elements are one in the same.

Pyroclastic eruptions upwards, icebergs falling down from the sky, these elements are headed towards a collision and then ecstasy will cease.... But why....?

Elements of darkness course through my veins; I've been infected by the demons of an unforgotten past.

Foraging for bloodshed, they indulge in another's pain; they hunt for an abscess so they can bite their way in.

My soul is an anomaly that ***** everything in; words have been internalized; an omen is set in my heart.

Pushed six feet under with nails in my wrists, I experience a painful memory and I fear that I might die…….

"Why, oh why? Why, oh why?"

"You've wounded me!".... A death; a wish; a hope.... Life.

For a while I am undead as I roam about in pain, I observe all of the living with a glimmer in their eyes.

Feeling unworthy of prayer, I wish for virtue instead and that the sun will be over the horizon to gaze upon it in peace.

In that day undead vessels will be dissolved, then a vessel of sanctity will arise to take that vessel's place....

A star falls from the heavens and shines iridescent lights; "How will I survive in a world that is so full of hate!?"

Thoughts within me are changing, instead of data I finally feel; a deity lurks within me and artificiality is no more.

Evaluations can be scourging, but my skin is growing back; no longer is it evil, but divinity that courses through my veins.

Butterflies are embracing a warm and airy heart; my shackles have been broken and my love is here instead.

Blessings will ravage those demons then their identities will be revealed; no longer will their hunts be fruitful and they will have to replot their course.

What is my future? Eventualities will never cease; time will be everlasting and passion will be it's core.

My soul is efflorescing, and in time it will be revealed, that The Crag will be my Shelter and it's rivers will be my Shield.

                            To The Demons of An Unforgotten Past,

                                     *By Sanders M. Foulke III

Smoke scintillated by ***** lights
Scent of cheap beer and cigarettes
Arms and legs and heads and butts
                mashed
      mangled
            mingling

In a space ejecting bravado
responding to the auricular bludgeons
plucking veins and boiling blood
arms and legs flailing like spiders
hammered by raindrops

Calloused voices scream through feedback
eking out of anguished amplifiers
while jungle drums synchronize hearts
to their frantic pulse

New friends old friends celebration
in sweaty embraces chanting screaming
stumbling outside the gates of eternity
sidewalk where we gathered round the sordid soapbox
and cast beleaguering gargantuan buildings
and endless cataclysmal streets
into abeyance

to prance along these old sidewalk cracks
stumbling along cigarette butts and beer cans
efflorescing under amative neon lights whose bombinate glow
tingles our skin and dazzles our eyeballs
rolling back into our skulls in the wake of ecstasy
billowing over our ambulant bodies

Friday nights
     Saturday nights
              Sunday nights
skipping school on a week day
braving city night life to find us in the nooks
they forgot to sweep out
where trash collects and pretends
to be unwavering and implacable
for a moment

Til it's back on the streets we spill out upon like puke
like the beer sticking to checkerboard floors
and we float home on the feedback high singing in our ears to sleep
dreaming of these ecstasies as something perennial
in punk lover's dreams

Pure when we're filthy.

I

Happiness—that light
light, that full breath, that
essence in essence

is beyond me

Within—possible—it is me,
is always,
what I could be forever
and so

is beyond me

Only to be lived
when I am past, when life
has truly gone

beyond me

II

Is what is full, is whole—
all of all
conceivabilities, which absorb
all and take in all
like a first breath, breathing
everything—the wild message in
feeling and being and vitality
of animals and plants and millions
of multiplying, tremulous cells,
as in husks and surfaces and
shimmeringly naked landscapes
efflorescing,

coming all
to culminating breathlessness,

and skin of new life,
sublimely sheathed in
lighted glass, in the mist of
a beatific cry shedding
in pure air, in pure light,
firm like the rock
of distant morning mountains,

to the glistening above
of a night pond touched only under,
to the rush and song of a river echoing
blood and centuries and the stillness
of change

to the taste of fruit upon a starved
tongue, to the despair

of solitude—
and the wrenching bliss of solitude—

to the hot red of a wound
and the womb,

of shame, and longing, and lips and again,
the despair—

of again—of despairing—of again
despairing at the misery of
the truly doomed, at the existence
of despair and misery and truthless doom
within existence, at the possibility of
unbearableness, and losing breath
finally again

III

I cannot, will not, and never will
bear this wondrous inconceivability—
True if true happiness
is not mine to be borne

It is

beyond me so in me

that somewhere I am

beyond

I am lost in the motion picture waterfall,
Years cascading to explode over a sea of rocks.
Interlaced at the hands,
Tall you stand like
Jupiter
And

Silent like sand



I dare not speak of it –
This corpal hold that has germinated
Efflorescing into entropy
I am bumping into walls of myself –

The moonlight shone over us
Like a rip tide storm
And we, calmly violently
Thrashed about
And I am beginning to forget
The shockwave of your touch

My void is always searching
Especially now.
I writhe
To implore a soul like yours.

And the ache of the train struggling away
Twenty four moons ago