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.

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...

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.

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.

Machinima 2

Click To Play

The second of two machinima pieces. More...if and when RL settles down enough for me to play.

Machinima 1

Click To Play

This is the first of two SL Machinima projects I've done, focusing on Midian City. Both make use of a blend of stills and video. Enjoy.

Epithalamium

Epithalamium
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

- ee cummings

Carry her, bent, bloody and broken.
Life dripping, spent, spattered on the dust of broken roads and buckled dreams.
Splinter your knuckles on the rough, ragged wood.
Let the soft pillow of her ragdoll charm lie in the cold, and dark!

And when the screaming, scarlet dawn drags its ragged, broken fingers over the eastern sky - listen for the sounds of desperate, stifled agony.

And swim in the lonely, forgotten ocean of her flawlessness.

Coil

Coil
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.

Now Rann the Kite brings home the night
That Mang the Bat sets free--
The herds are shut in byre and hut
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh, hear the call!--Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!
-Rudyard Kipling

Shifting, midnight rambling. Frozen whispers chip away, chip away, chip away at the frosty edges of conciousness. Desperate pleadings, the soft grunt, pop and scrape of the switchblade shuffle.
But something new is in the air...
Something...familiar.
Sparks dance along myelin, a twitching, itching ripple up the spine.
Overhead, the stars have collapsed. A searing, flickering void, a low, whining keen that causes a resonance in the skull.
Feel it through the subtle shifting of the crumbling concrete.
It. Is a She.

Broken Bridges

Broken Bridges
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us., with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that our eyes once watered.
- Tom Stoppard

The creak and shift of splintered wood underfoot is sharpened by the soft, persistent sighing of the wind. Every step is a single day, a memory, a lifetime.

Look down and gaze at the reflections of faces flickering in the slow-moving water. Ripples distort, amplify, evoke.
The soft, glottal sloshing of liquid over stone...echoes of the hiss and spatter of another, crimson river.
Taut, prickly hemp threatens to burn flesh with friction. Its phantom heat, the revenant of dim, helpless struggles.
The smell of distant storms, mixes with the memory of cheap whiskey and the dust of the plains. Heated fumblings with handfulls of flesh, and sweat pooling at the base of the spine.
Motes float suspended in the flickering electric light hung high over an ancient quonset hut. The feel of warm steel and grease on the hands, and the distant lowing murmur of cattle in the paddock.
Her mouth covers your own, filling it with graveyard dirt and peppermints. The film of sweat across the back cools straining shoulders, giving lie to the desperate shuddering beneath the skin.
And the music comes like machine-gun religion, tinny and filled with the screaming static of imaginary angels.
There comes a sudden groan, and a splintering crack...

The azure sky blazes above, a distant, uncaring canvas.

Rangers

Rangers
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.

And Nuh did certainly call upon Us, and most excellent answerer of prayer are We.
- The Quran

The constant, arrogant susurration of the human cancer is almost lost, here. An almost-forgotten prayer, answered with the soft sigh of the wind.
The green smell of earth, turned, mingles with the slick feel of dew beneth bootheels.
And the hollow, buzz of a twisted voice mixes with a sly whisper.
Emerald promises, slipping with stealth below a flickering sky.
Steal away, with a chestful of something clean.

Gates

Gates
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
-Kahlil Gibran

A dream turned dark and twisted, shuffling and scraping through the night.
The groan of a rusted hinge, muffled whispering.
And in the distace, the far thunder of forgotten music, drifting like smoke through a wire screen.
Candy-apple nightmares, the stuttering, lonely fear of forgotten children.
And the steady, aching emptiness which comes from realizing you have simply been...

discarded.

The Road to En-Dor

The Road to En-Dor
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.

The road to En-dor is easy to tread
For Mother or yearning Wife.
There, it is sure, we shall meet our Dead
As they were even in life.
Earth has not dreamed of the blessing in store
For desolate hearts on the road to En-dor.
-Rudyard Kipling

The old ones say to be wary of the stranger you meet in a lonely place. They say that oftentimes, what you meet may not be entirely human.

Shake your head. Focus.

Forget you haven't seen your own footprints for the last ten miles.

Lethe

Lethe
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.

All things one has forgotten, scream for help in dreams.
-Elias Canetti

Coppery tang and slippery teeth, drenched in the memory of rended, dripping ruin.

A cool, ancient voice whispers a soothing, wordless murmur.

Let it lead your padded footsteps, guide your spattered skin, sooth the rustling, hot parchment of your ancient heart.

Shrug off the slouch and slaver. Arch the back and roll the eyes toward the stone arches of this most ancient of wombs.

Be born.

Again.

Rage

Rage
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.

Passion and shame torment him,
and rage is mingled with his grief.
-Virgil

Packed tight and stinking of night-sweat, greed, lust and fear.
Concrete canyon, abattoir unrealized.
Petty, self-important, wretched refuse, mocking the soft embrace of the
grave.

Casual cruelty feeds cancerous sneers, malignant, uncaring...unaware.

Hubris cries out, and is answered with a sly, soft rustling in the leaves.

I see you.

Empty Kingdoms

Empty Kingdoms
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.

Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne,
He travels fastest, who travels alone
-Rudyard Kipling

You know how it goes. The feeling at the back of your neck like someone's watching.
Except, this time, it's a feeling inside your head. Altering your course by a few, scant degrees. Barely noticeable. Minute.
Just like continental drift.

This is a place of titans. Filled with memories of fire and smoke and laughter and shouting. The echoed splash of water gives life to memories of sleep and the smell of skin and cooking meat.

Remember that Kipling passage about the cost of debts and dogs.

Wonder.

Bridge of Sighs

Bridge of Sighs
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.

The sun don't shine
The moon don't move the tides
To wash me clean
-Robin Trower

The sibilant whisper of a dying breeze carries the echo of ancient laughter, distant and dying.
Sun-scorched skies flicker orange and red on the far horizon.
And the kiss of stone against well-worn leather is an empty, lonely thing.
Wanderers come here. Most ignorant, but a few...a few must see and feel.
The not-quite-vanilla scent of ambergris...something clean...but something buried.
Feel the dirt beneath your fingernails, the rich smell of loam and peat moss on your hands and knees.
Take one last, long breath...turn your back to the sun, and your face toward the moon, and home.

The House of Hyperion

The House of Hyperion
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall
Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The flickering candle of a dying sun offers strange comfort in this ancient place. Stone, stained with the promise of a lush embrace, arches everywhere. The heavy, still air whispers autumn promises, but delivers a memory of newly-slumbering summer.
Close the eyes and smell it.
The sharp tang of hollow laughter, the cinnamon of whispered secrets.
The first Watching Place.
The faint tingle of trickling, electric silk brushing across a back.
Spin, search, smell the air.
There.
There it is.
A caern...buried.
But alive.

Threshold

Threshold
Originally uploaded by Archer Braun.

Yeah, it's fine
We'll walk down the line
Leave our rain, a cold
Trade for warm sunshine.
-Alice in Chains

The name came in whispers, fading echoes and distant memories of jounreys past. The Plains of Aleion, the wanderer's empty, haunted heaven.

The massive gates hung worn and weathered. Stone glyphs rendered into cyphers by time and the elements.
The gentle scraping of boots on mossy stone is accompanied by the occasional haunting cry of birds in this lush loneliness.

Unfold the old map, onion-skinned and translucent with antiquity. Fingers trace carefully the inked passages, drifting over the old legends, and guiding eyes to the last of the Great Harbors...now a shattered, sunken ruin.

There comes a silence, so gentle and smooth it seems as if the world had always been as empty and pure. Motes sparkle in a wayward shaft of honey-colored light, and the air drifts, languidly.

Then comes a slight shift. A gentle carress as a teasing draft carries the smell of something both ancient and familiar. It is the smell of a promise, waiting to be kept.

Follow.