As Without, So Within

  Within my hand is earth, stick, and stone
 
In cold blown wind I stand thick rigid bones
 
Water from my eyes runs down upon my feet
 
And fires that I see make not warming heat
 
The street is processed dense black tar paved
 
All I greet are distressed, in bars, enslaved
 
Crowded by protruding empire of obelisks
 
Confounded & colluding desire shoved risk
 
Both mesmerized just as materially forced
 
To rationalize, fake smile, & stay the course
 
Great wars were lost before wiping sleep from eyes
 
While upon beaten backs, the dreamless did not rise
 
I let loose the earth, stick, and stone from my hand
 
For held within my skin is sun, wind, ocean, and land

- Brandon Fenton 2014

Habritual
 

The magnificent now is felt so deep
 
But from perfectly pitched perch I leap
 
Into swirling whirlpool comforting sleep
 
Beneath the dulled diluted distraction
 
One becomes lulled lame satisfaction
 
And actions bear the wear and tear
 
Of self-sabotaging sneaky snares
 
Cannot escape what once is caught
 
With fleeting flowing of random thought
 
To sense the system’s hushing constraint
 
Halting loosed movement, brush, and paint
 
The image made clear and represented
 
Guilt, shame steered, and unrepentant
 
Without solid soil nor cover but foil
 
Contraption contorted over much toil
 
Where the arrow points
 
Pulls marrow and joints
 
They become unhinged
 
Nerves numb & singed
 
A lone cry for the wild
 
Recall that as a child
 
With smile now bared
 
Without further cares

The way was once known

My, how you’ve grown
 

                                                                                                           -Brandon Fenton 2014

Inebriatorio
 
Loneliness and drunkenness holding hands in the park
 
Shoe shuffling loose debris displaced clatter dogs bark
 
The echo sounds, concentric time rebounds curving in an arc
 
In upon itself, it spins continually missing it's mark
 
Fear becomes a chloroform of sedated breather's self
 
With no confidence in moments tense dismantling of health
 
Root returns from ashes burned to originary grounds
 
The lost unfound leaves only beacon pleading sounds
 
And hearts pound hard within hollow cavern chests
 
To circulate age old debates in name of skillful test
 
High scores merit all of one's deepest approbation 
 
Inflation of importance inherit feeblest affiliation
 
Changing stations but to renew protoplasmic goo   
 
And shoes march on despite long-gone wisdom laughing fools
 
The tools we raise to shape our days are dull and uninspired
 
The cool we praise a madness craze concealed by cackling liars
 
And fires lit to sooth our fits of mania and dismay
 
Illuminate the inchoate shading hidden grey
 
But where is found bravery deep among such toil & folly?
 
The parrots speak only replicates another cracker wanting Polly
 
The hunger mere mechanism, the drive but instinct
 
A subtle snide officer imprisoned within his own precinct 
 
The grandiose delusion unravels from the seems
 
Of rose tinted aspiration from twinkling starlight beam

-Brandon Fenton 2014

Sphere
 
We've all gone mad mom
And know that dad's gone

Worse than bite the hand that feeds
We corrupt life, design suicide seeds

We vivisect you glibly & casually
Lost memory of you & our history

You who only ever gave
We entrap and enslave

Upon your flesh we spread machines
Separate joints, tear you at seams

Strapped you to cosmetic surgeon's table
Failed by false prophetic vision and fable

Even your tear ducts we have tapped
Conscientious reflection lost, lapsed
Swallow down lies of trading & caps

We spill your blood from iron arteries
Causing cancer upon skin and other maladies

Your once great breath we've made to choke
Leaving electronic sunsets occulted by smoke

The life you once radiated reduced to radiation
Insufficiently some respond with solitary meditation

The needles are in your veins
Unneeded are your remains

We leave what's left of your corpse to rot
Concerned solely with the sold & bought

Too few try to rescue you from this utter hell
Too many aren't trying, most already fell

There is no hopeful end to this story
What we've done to you is not fixed with a 'sorry'

It is shameful and sick what we have done
To play Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun

Once more

I sense your approach on a wavelength more subtle than felt by sinuous tissue
 
Like the nearing rumble of some unfathomable engine
 
I approach the spring of motion with a recovered reverence
 
While pantomime automata remain transfixed in self-fulfilling feedback loops
 
Fearful, ignorant, and cowering mollusks awaiting redemption rather than bringing about change
 
Their acquisitions, symptoms of a terrible disease—leading them to feel entitled to vastly more than others
 
And all is hoarded, or squandered, used-up, and wasted in their wake
 
Their bodies the event horizons of a sick spiralling insatiable lack
 
Knowing only to take and not how or what to give in return
 
The darkest of seeds set planted at the centre of the voiceless vortex
 
But you are greater
 
Your pulse echoes through eons
 
A beacon too faint to be noticed
 
You require something of your witnesses
 
An attunement that is at once an atonement
 
Demanding not blind acquiescence but bold organic awareness
 
Your breath supports transformation but not to effect exclusion
 
What is made of your contact is as much a matter of thing touched as the act of touching
 
You are graceful but you bestow not grace
 
For most you appear as ephemeral
 
For the few you are as a mountain
 
Cinders smoulder and are extinguished upon your banks
 
You are continuous and replenishing
 
You stop the spinning and in its place remind us of rising and lowering lungs
 
Stillness and silence empowering roaring resistance
 
May you collapse the funnel function in favour of the rolling waves
 
Reaching out to one shore at a time
 
Suffusing the sands in a luscious admixture
 
Liberating the dead satellites from their tucked configurations
 
Smash the shells that spines may rise in their place
 
To stand and face each other before turning and embarking on the way