Poetry on the Brain

Here are some poems that have been expelled from my tumultuous mind. This is an excellent tool for clearing the mind and getting in touch with my feelings. 

To The Goddess of the Night

When I close my eyes, the visions they see

So focused on you, lie misdirected

But I long for sleep, in dreams you’re with me

Your visage is in my eyes reflected.

Oh Nyx, whose movements turn the pitch black bright

Grant me audience to your lunar show

Remove the clouds with your radiant light

So I may bask in the warmth of your glow

I feel so blessed and unafraid 

By musing on you in the sunlight day

When in the moonlit nights your flawless shade

Shines through sleep and in dreaming eyes you stay

Allow me passage to your midnight shores

To enjoy dreams that never awaken

And to allow a kiss from lips azure

proves truly a poor heart has been taken.

To The Mortal Confused

Pry open your eyes and tell me what’s seen

Ever confused and yes, misdirected

And I’ll speak of love and what may have been

To prove your vision is indeed infected.

I am shadow and turn the days to night

Born in darkness and blessed with this glow

I breathe nightmares to eyes clenched so tight

That their tears polish the path of your show

Fear me, naturally your thoughts betrayed

They grow inside you, in me they decay

Ill fated lover, you've failed your crusade

Blinded, this beckon has forced me away

Only one passage brings you to my shores

And from that dream you will never awaken

An eternity in my arms you’ll endure

And through these lips, your life will be taken.

Tomorrow Hides Itself In Yesterdays Shadow

Is this my fate to be masked in darkness?

To dawdle through days like a restless shade?

To sunder my defense and be heartless?

Or grovel before you cold and afraid?

I recall the clamor of crow faced birds

that tempted me with tales of fancy dreams

It is not the earth that claimed me, but words

and dizzied my perceptions with their schemes

Faulty projections, untidy ideals

a churning restless drive to be wanted

burned away, unearths what was concealed

and leaves my memories to be haunted

So I project, my heart on tomorrow

where the green of spring gives itself to air

and yesterdays cast a saddened shadow

onto what was once so alive and fair.

Allow me to atone, to redeem light

to bask in the glow of a present true

and leave the melancholy to the night

so my heart can find its way to you.

Ode To Spring

Ode to Spring by Stochastic

Ode To Spring

Oh! To desire the springtime vision!

A phoenix birthed from ash and melting snow

Conceived in death, crafted with precision

Send us your moss green tendrils from below.

For it is your smell that exhales life into me

And melts the walls of this crystalline cell

It is your sounds that arise from eternity

And drown me in magic only you can dispel.

As your greys shift into the emerald boughs

That pull me closer to the dream realized,

Dryads and nymphs cite mysteries prose

Of men and gods who walk beneath kindred skies.

And I think back, to your majesty reborn!

A love so new, it could only be tasted.

Where a touch could not only be felt, but worn

Feeling each moment could forever be wasted.

Now, as the cold lulls me with a spectral hand

Granting the peace only death will allow

I wish for spring to rise from this wilted land

While my heart waits in winter now.

by Kristopher Bernard

Winter is Coming...

The Prince of January (Origin of Life pt. 14) by Salem:1976   

      Alas! My memories cry. What once was the glorious medley of songbirds has now degenerated into the cacophony of carrion crows. The sky is changing, an azure blanket accented with voluptuous white clouds morphing into a stark grey field that has no beginning or end. The trees have finished their beautiful death throes, the thankless duty of providing the world with shade has ended with a illustrious gasp of color and exposition, until all that is left are the skeletons clattering in the whistling winds of winters breath.
      This is the world I was born into, and it's approach is as frightening as the moment I inhaled my first breath. You see, I am a January baby. Born when winter is at its highest. The time in the northeast when the celebration of life is lulled into submission, a time when the heart hibernates a dreamless sleep that holds on to a single hope that it will all be over soon. Excuse my dread, but I have endured too many of these exhausting cycles to be conditioned for what is to come.
      Winter is approaching my family as well. I packed my father up last week, drove him around to get his affairs in order, loaded the truck and hugged him goodbye. He moved to Miami. A perfect locale to spend the winter of your days, a place of eternal summer. My mother joins him at winters end. My ancestral home, the house where we settled and I was raised, is being sold and thus the summer of my own life, a place of warmth and security, is ending.
       I am at a crossroads, many aspects of my once patterned life are in flux. A transitory state that i feel will be exciting but at the same time terrifying. I am not a fan of change, I enjoy routine. I suppose that is hardwired into me, yet deep within me I have this desire to seek exciting new things. I liken it to when I was a child and I would visit the creek in the summertime. I would stand on the cliff edge, terrified to jump, but when I would, I would realize the joy of the moment and never have the fear to jump again until the following year. I fret at the precipice. Now I fret at the edge of finding a new place to live and being alone.
       As I ponder the oncoming winter, I can sit back and appreciate her in all her stark beauty. For winter is the planter of hope. She gives the gift of appreciation, of a notion that change is good, that right around the corner a new life will rise from the decay and allow the future to start anew. Maybe this winter will be different and a little taste of being alone will grant me a new appreciation of the oncoming life ahead.

Le streaming du jour #564 : Salem : 1976 - ’Backroom Oneiromancy EP’ | Indie Rock Mag

Le streaming du jour #564 : Salem : 1976 - ’Backroom Oneiromancy EP’ | Indie Rock Mag



A positive review from a French Publication!

Salem:1976 released 10/16/2012

Greetings! One of my music projects has been released in Greece, on a wonderful label called Etched Traumas. Please check it out.

http://etchedtraumas.bandcamp.com/album/backroom-oneiromancy

Goodbye Mary Jane

         So tonight I broke up with my girlfriend, Mary Jane. Mary Jane was a wolf in sheep's clothing, a ruse. She lured me in with glimpses of artistic spontaneity and epiphanies of self-empowerment,  but left me in an anxious heap. An ever oscillating tide of anxious waves and apathetic self-loathing.

         I remember the first day we met, I was fifteen years old, and my friends and I smoked a joint in his mothers garage. I can't remember a time when I laughed so hard or felt a true spiritual camaraderie with friends. It was like a doorway in my brain opened. Behind it were the depths and complexities of music, exposing themselves to my ears for the first time. Subtle nuances seemed to jump in the forefront and I now notice my love for music became intertwined with her for twenty years.

       Did I love her or not? I'm not sure. It started out that way. Although, I have no doubts it eroded into a dependence, a coexistence that I fear may have lulled time through my fingers. It sucks because at one time I did love her, and I romanticize my relationship with her, thinking it will help me get past a wall in songwriting or make a movie more entertaining. See? That's the trick. She gets you into thinking you need  her.

       After twenty years of prolonged dependence it saddens me to see the roller coaster end in a dark place. We used to go on walks through nature, musing at the intricacies of a patch of moss or the grandeur of a sprawling sky. Now, she burrows into my emotions, stirring them up into an anxious cloud of turbidity that makes me doubt my actions and chips away at my self esteem. 

         Tonight I say goodbye Mary Jane. You have done me right, but now you gone done me wrong. To quote Mahatma Gandhi "Spiritual relationship is far more precious than physical. Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul." You were a tool and now you have become a crutch. I most likely will miss you, but can guarantee my emotions will not. I will not frown on my friends who use you because I can still see the good in you. You just don't work for me anymore.

The Amniotic Sea

And from the pain of an empty womb
a dream was fashioned into an empty tomb
Wrought with isolation, it hits me in the heart
and decays my body into a crown of stars.

Times rivers thirsty from remembering
Is it true? Or do I keep forgetting?
Bleed forth your frothy foam
If I close my eyes, I will not die alone.

These misty airs that corrupt my breath
they bore a hole until there is nothing left
Swallow me into your dreams
and carry me home to the amniotic sea.

Backward.

Floating, where my dreams last footsteps fell
Never to be realized, I embrace this hell
We proceed and lose ourselves in time
as I swim from your dreams into mine.