"Damnatio ad Bestias II"

Reluctant dragons

Pulled out the teeth

That gnashed in their mouth.

 

There's polish on the mirror that

Says you've got no alias

The hero, eternal:

 

Joshua J Tripoli

 

We, emptied gowns

Filled skin with diamonds

Guided guileless

The Lion and the Child.

"A Time for Tears"

The wonder of the fevered dream is as great as the trespass against it; the forceful step of the uninvited. Lo, the meandering song transcends the violent glory! Through bliss and the valley of its passing, I came to know you well; the moment, the moment, the moment… up with every down. Here we remain, in the eye of silence; the mercy of sorrow, the joy within pain, the lens through which all things pass, still and untouched, Alive!

"You've Never Known Another"

***

You’ve never known another. You’ve never known another.

***

A beautiful day. Cool breeze, warm sunlight. New life. Why do you cry? You’ve done everything in your power to deserve this. Thankful, determined, empathetic, kind. You’ve done everything to deserve this. Grateful melancholy, constricted freedom, tempered bliss.

What sword is dulled by flesh?

A dream of waking. The corner of some dark room in a house I do not know. My consciousness incorporeal, unbound, lazily searching. Panic. The room swelled, pregnant with fear, a myriad birth of terror. Strange plants and fruit. Mirordered spiders deep and wide.

There I recalled: disembodiment, impenetrability, safety. My consciousness remembered the body, abandoned in the corner of some dark room in a house I do not know, sleeping softly, unaware, and unharmed. The fear that burst into being revealed the façade:

 

“I am not the body;” a passing delusion, an impossibility.

 

My consciousness rejoined (unlimited to) the body and cast the exact opposite of a shadow in every direction. An aura untouched, projected the sphere. Eternal, my core, transcendence. At the limits of my emanance, a slow fade, graduated into darkness: the spiders, the webs, and the fear...

 

Here in (remembrance) the darkness,

the fear had never really existed.

Here in the darkness, here and there,

are little spheres of light (never so far apart)

and spiders weaving webs.

Simply living. Natural, beautiful, and perfect.

It was not real. It was God.

***

"It Stirs"/"Bearless"

It stirs, stillness moved to empty tears;

Grief nor joy a painted color, but

That which can’t be uttered

A dream beyond this life

An infant heav’n returns to womb, to witness

The births and deaths of countless dreams

Each blessed and cursed with separate breaths

Counting each confounding beat

Until each beat has sounded.

 

Fundamentals

The artist walks a tightrope. A game of balance: expression and the inconceivable. The manifest and temporal, the medium and means. Against these fundamentals, the artist plays the weight of counterbalance. The precious “Other,” the mountain that levitates beyond duality, beyond existence; he draws upon himself with an awareness that cuts like a sword.

The line reflects the perception of mind in the witness. Form is granted, color bequeathed, light and shadow arrayed in awe.  Just as a building, monumental in scale, occupies a perception of great expanse and time, not an iota of space or time is obstructed in its view.  The infinity of space, the lack of time; here, within, the artist rests.

The artist is less an “artist” and more like art itself. This understanding is where we are all headed. Nothing is lost, nothing is gained. Once you’ve seen him; simultaneously horrifying and the greatest thing that’s ever happened. The bird keeps singing… “Here and there, I rest and watch. Here and there, I rest and watch.”