Wednesday, June 6, 2007

The Green Man


The Green Man
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.
There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields -
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!

-Emily Dickinson

Stand, moving only with the breeze.
Green, soft feathers brush the skin, and whisper...
This is the smell of her hair.

A snap, a footfall, a muffled voice making desperate promises, while the heartbeat in your chest does the same.

Let it wash away.

Let it slide from you like smoke through a wire screen.

Let it settle and slip until you are clean again.

And the thirsty earth...

She drinks.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Sister Night


Sister Night
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.
Black as the centre of an eye, the centre, a blackness
that sucks at light. I love your vigilance

Night, first mother of songs, give me the voice to sing of you
in those fingers lies the bridle of the four winds.

Crying out, offering words of homage to you, I am
only a shell where the ocean is still sounding.

But I have looked too long into human eyes.
Reduce me now to ashes Night, like a black sun.


-Marina Tsetayeva

Saw-toothed and sharp-tongued slider-through-the-dusk.
Hips rocking, calves stretching, muscles bunching, she sways.
Sweat, like blood, pools in the small of her back, shaking free of her
almost-addiction...or...trying.

What blood pumps through that hammering chamber?

And when she walks, at night, is that sleep in her eyes, or a more pungent fatigue?

The quick flash of the daggers in her eyes never goes unnoticed, however unremarked they may be.

She'll talk.

Or she won't.

Either way, she'll tell you something...

Monday, June 4, 2007

Whispers


Whispers
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
-Oscar Wilde

Red mist across your eyes like a veil. Thunder in your ears.
She has brought you to this place with a slip of the tongue, and
a stench to be reviled.
In your own home! In this most sacred of places!

Struggle to remember the ardent whisperings, the soft caress, the whisper of flesh.

The smell! It hits you like a rock, blinding pain, stars in the eyes, the slow, awful twisting of it in your very gut.

Touch her! Feel the throat in your hands, so open, so trusting so...filled with lies, with betrayal, with the memory of her shuddering ecstacy at the hands of cold monsters!

Shake, scream for focus. Struggle against the urge to let rivers of blood slake your unholy thirst for vengeance. Fill up your fists with the soft ruin of her shaking, shrieking, bloody and beaten...bloody...and...
helpless...and...whimpering...and...crushed...by...your...hands.
Bloody. And soft. And crawling toward you, hand outstretched.

You remember the gentle breeze on the back of your neck now, the flashing pearl of her smile. The way your spine shifts when she walks. The way your head fills with flashes of blue lightning at the very smell of her...the very smell of her...surrendering to you...giving away that pumping red, richness...to you?

No. She has...she has...them...on her. In her. Around her.

And the soft sigh of her voice, the desperate needy cry of her stumbling, fumbling toward that soft, clamping brilliant feast of her own fulfillment...driving you towards your own in slow, twisting anticipation...so much...

Agony.

And she lies there before you, (sits there whispering), broken and bloody, (laughing in her way), covered with the mark of your mercurial affections, (leaning toward you for a desperate touch), and she reaches for you, (lips parted for that most tender of unspoken messages), and you...

Twist, creaking. In a lonely, midnight wind. Alone.


Bastard.

Entanglements


Entanglements
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.
Take you in my belly
Sure as night is black
Take you for religion
Like the skin across my back
When I'm buried in your thighs girl
I could understand
You gotta tell me just for once child
You ain't got no other plan
You ain't got no other plan
You gotta tell me just for once sister
You ain't got no other man

-Chris Whitley "Kick the Stones"


All things should be so ... blood simple.
Requiring little thought, only twisting anticipation.
Needing nothing but oxygen.
Wanting merely the soft gliding friction of a fingertip or tongue.
And the taste of exhausted, weary, well-worn sleep.

For the first time in a very, very long time, there is something here worth protecting.
And all of it, every part and parcel, every green, growing, good thing...can be held by holding...her.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Breaking Strain


Breaking Strain
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.
In the name of Hypocrates, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival."
-Edward Everett Hale


The taint on her is evident.
Shuddering muscles.
Slurred speech.
The arrogant grace of her eyes, muddied by a crawling, creeping fear.
Unsufferable.
Better she be given to the void, than allowed to continue as a shambling, creeping shell of herself.
But if she is strong...
If she is fearless...
If she can only embrace what she finds there in the dark...
She may awake to a different dawn.
Brace your shoulders against the wall as she sobs and pleads and promises every dark delight in your twisted, secret heart.
Close your eyes.
And damn the treachery that slides your hands toward her.

Dark Tangents


Dark Tangents
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.
Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.
-W. Somerset Maugham


Standing there with that aquiline, slavic grace.
There is a haughtiness to the air in her lungs, given lie by the slight tremble at the corner of her eye.
Something familiar, crawling, beckoning behind the faraway rustlings of memory.
Stand there and breathe her in, just like the scores of others whose grace and self-assurance you have devoured and excreted in the red-hot spraying mist of their own missteps.
Hands tighten like claws, mouth twists into an arrogant sneer, and your body tenses to spring...
Except that it doesn't.
It doesn't.
You have been betrayed.
By your own treacherous blood.
By your own swimming head.
You have been ... betrayed.