THE JOYLESS PARSON
written by Stephen Jarrett

The joyless parson wallows in his inadequate shrine: a slanted, yellow dungeon
a face zambonied into submission, disfigured by rapid snow and penetrating sunlight
with tender, gray eyes, an uninhabited moon, harassed by flurries of wind
which whirl and flash their gums, reveal their genie biceps
to proclaim victory over a senseless, vacant enemy.

The head which hangs below his form, is a mouth stuffed full of frisbees, rendered mute.
The contaminated air which enters his nostrils, escapes through the stem of his neck,
so his cells are breathless, sustained unwillingly by a contemptuous life-giver
who remains forever unwanted.

In the light of twisted stars, he walks on conjoined arms, to the auction of souls
where devotees in the regalia of mites, circulate their treason to new generations
perform the pantomime, branding initiates with energetic impressions
engravings of sorrow, the fresh man's shadow: the mark of the butchers guild
absorbing essence into the pillars of a marshland palace, forever unanimated.

In denial of their black-box scrying, he plunges into visions of calm pastures
where porches are caressed by growing, limitless grass, which flirt with, then shatter gaugeless heating meters
He tumbles headlong into the jagged shadows of tropical trees, to fluidly tremble in the sand,
discover deep, unending sleep and fantastic lies well worth repeating.

It is all one, sustained, resonant scream, masked in gestures of condemning kindness
The seeds he's nurtured behave as boastful adulterers, waterless gullies which cackle during night's inhalation
The centered brahman with a heart of madness, his ecstasy earned, but undelivered
lingering in the heavy, hypnotic moonlight, a bewildered fragment of substance
a frail, diseased swan, deprived of grace, which saunters through traumatized flowers
whose pedals endure the drizzling of napalm and the smoke which billows from the furnace of futility.

A cloth clutched across his face, repulsed by obscene horrors dressed in blandness and neutrality
the brush of a coarse drape against an open wound, which will seal itself in wilted skin
and plummet into a mine of violent isolation, where the oracles are swallowed, broken teeth
and shivering organs harmed by the frankness of rage
jarred and transformed into rigid, immovable stone.

The sage brush in the pit of his throat, guards against the output of hope
and he maniacally dances in a river of depraved, life-denying conclusions
whose tributaries spread deprivation and the mangled shadows of his flailing, barbarous limbs
flickers of weak, damp electricity in a condemned building
whose tenant brandishes bouquets of unnatural deadness and rests in slabs of seconds

Cross-eyed from dementia, veins either frigidly inactive or pulsating uncontrollably,
he quivers in each complicated moment
as spiders graze upon his shoulder, extract his blood in the truth of daylight
and he yields to annihilation's crawl

On clear nights he dissipates into thousands of salmon-colored specs
and plasters his body to a remote stone wall, to hear the faint sounds of a pipe organ
which with each pressed pedal, resuscitates his tired lungs with vibrant air
crumbling the prisons of cacophonous thought, pausing the clamor of exhausted shoes
flooding his garden of embitterment

But when the sensation has diminished, he feels unworthy of pleasure
a dragon whose heart has bursted
from guarding alone a cache of treasure
which no one values and no one visits.

"The ram, by nature, is a wild and courageous animal, lonely in lonely places, whereas when tamed and made to lie down in green pastures, nothing is left but the docile, cowardly, gregarious and succulent beast."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Omens appear above me, threading the borders of reality and boundless chaos
the stirring evidence of our dialogue, a cross-dimensional collage
pasted by stable, determined hands, which expand and creak like aging floors
intent on sharing the pains of growth.

A hawk glides away from a flock of pursuing geese
who pester her, first as precaution and then for the lust of coordinated murder
I see her muscles expand as beaks excavate her feathers, submerge in her veins
and puncture her proud, outstretched body, until she contorts and falls from the sky
a broken umbrella spewed from the churning gears of a freightship
coerced into a stagnant ocean, a waveless oblivion, void of course.

I await the same ending, a powerful sprint from the red-eyed ritualists:
patrons of the rotting gate, blessed architects of delumination
who lasso the sun so piously worshiped, to quarantine light in wretched temples
knowledge disemboweled, its noble core discarded for immediate fruit

Ignorance is an expired sedative
an indiscriminate gallop into the clamp of predators
who cheer the fools that embellish their cages
while whistling in naked retrograde.

In her fumbling descent, I saw your pleading eyes:
the extinction of my imperfect idol.

I stood there bruised, a shattered mandolin in the desolation of the rubble
And I burrowed outwardly, a sullen elephant, unconvinced of this outlandish liberation
And it came for me: the healing cloud, at an agonizing and casual pace
Its face in a permanent stupor, pulseless and maniacal
I grated my slabs of essence onto the surface of the earth and it made no progress in my direction
It stared pale and mute as I violently, inwardly rattled, like a bloated cantaloupe in the exposed sun,
a cluster of coarse feathers separated from the wing, powerless.
I felt the desecration of primordial chaos: the furious, scalping, wailing wind that reduced me, nearly to bone.
Then the rain, that soaked my clothes into uselessness, idolized shelter
and sent the spider-flicker of fingers onto my exhausted eyelids, soothing everything.

But when the sensation has diminished, I feel unworthy of pleasure
a dragon whose heart has bursted
from guarding alone a cache of treasure
which no one values and no one visits.