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Featured PoetAnthony Bernstein
Primordial flightTwo million membranous wings strong
They swell in singular obsidian flow
From yawning aperture of stony secrets
To surf the crest of the moon-tangled twilight
Across jagged cliffs wild and bowing
Born out of the stygian bowels of creation
The Thirsty House of Abominations
Inside the thirsty house of abominations
a stale air stirs with forgotten torments,
the naked dark breaths life to the ancients,
and something slowly creeps
as immortal hands turn the temporal wheel
to infinity’s edge.Seven gaunt silhouettes with subhuman gaits
dance the dance of ten thousand generations to dust…
In dervish frenzy,
they dance in lunatic ecstasy.
Lost in trances,
they challenge eternity with primordial angst.
In grotesque undulations,
they dance the dance of The Skin-Crawlers.
In silence,
they dance to the daughters of The Red-Bone Woman.Inside the thirsty house of abominations
witness orgies of rent flesh,
as countless moist bodies writhing in orgasm,
tear skin from living bone.
Glimpse a derelict, one-armed traveler,
as he feeds with slavering delight upon entrails
pulled from a faceless corpse riddled with pestilence.
View a crone with unearthly visage,
as she hollers in the throes of labor,
wallowing in a pool of curdled milk.The house throws open before your fears
countless arcane doorways,
enshrouds you with moaning gossamer mist,
cajoles you to its dizzy maze of corridors.
The house conjures a thirsty night,
which promises union eternal.
To Burn the Sun
I awoke with pieces of midnight tangled in my eyes.
I spooked the broken morning nocturnal.
Darkness fell upon our fragile land with malice,
as man's final glory devoured raw the wounded day.I stole the sun from the unwitting sky;
I sought to glimpse the far side
of the emperor’s face.For what else is there to lay thirsty eyes upon,
save this awful beauty that everywhere does spring forth?
Now only charred remains greet these hollow orbs,
merely the ape of what once was a state of grace.Should I wear regret like a coat of many colors?
Weave guilt into a flaming robe of abomination?I ask to lampoon all who stand erect
under the shadow of the primordial gate.Should mankind flee in a lunatic stampede
from mythic visions of dominion?Pursue with juggernaut obsession
triumphant visions of adulation?Is there anyone with evolution enough
to embrace these cracked visions
of sacred sorrow beyond my reach?
Sister CainBetween a fist
And an open palm,
Under a savage hand
And severed limb,
Within a jackhammer din
Of countless vile, shrieking throats -Beneath a leering, frescoed façade
Crowded with lurid, stony visions
Of immortal grace -Below a livid sky
Heaving insane, purple clouds,
Piled to heaven and threatening
A murderous deluge -Before the stars
And the cracked cement
That blights this feral city -And behind the shattered visage
Of a frantic adolescent
Broken into pieces
By a secret fury,
Broken into pieces
Between a fist
And an open palm,
And under a savage hand,
Clot crimson nursery visions
Into final solutions,
Spilling buckets of black laughter
Through sour-cherry lips
Into the ears of a hundred doomed men.
(NOTE: This poem was previously published in The Harrow in May 2007.)
Day: Terminal
It was a strange, angry morning,
with holocaust brewing in frigid, wind-swept air.
It was a savage dawn
that greeted all in that frenzied, tuneless season.
Apathy hung heavy around the neck of civilization.
Ignorance lorded over the quickening days.
Reality itself shrieked in stark horror
at the sight of its own bastard progeny.
Trolling wounded, sewage-laden streets,
blighted platoons of cracked feral youth
mainlined panic and trauma as if it were a drug.
On all sides, immaculate girders rose high to fashion
lunatic towers that loomed, tottered, and leered.
Down their stark, gleaming hallways
swaggered our future’s malign tenants
with fists raised in menace at the stars.
Their reptile wills girdled the globe like a ring of flame,
their jugular logic collared every soul who was not yet ashes.
Our finest minds bled the planet dry
like a barrage of slick, bloated leaches.
Spangles of their shattered technology
littered the chromium horizon, chafed the very lid of heaven.
Beyond the rim of creation foundered our lost ideal;
the world heaved and lurched in rebuke of the new order.
Mountains walked, jungles fell to sand,
the mirthless seas glutted themselves on entire populations.Secure within the granite bowels of a stained-underworld,,
awaited men of fire with their lethal concubines.
Cunning words of liquid magma poured out of every throat,
from their smoking pens flowed brave new histories.
With skill, doctors of oblivion practiced their ghastly art.
Mechanics of time held fast to the bloodthirsty years with leaden hands.
Yet renegade moments gnawed through their idiot fingers,
and devoured raw the hour of man!
(NOTE: This poem was previously published as “Terminal Day" in ATOMJACK 2006.)
Hungry Night
No shadows may fall
on this stygian night.
No silvery orb
to lend luminous favor.
No shimmering horn
by which angels may steer,
Nor fair concubine
to stave off this mad winter.
No chance for forgiveness,
but burning desire.
No wings for the phoenix,
nor starscape to soar to.
No muse to inspire,
no verse to delight.
Nor song to lull sweet
through this soul-hungry night.
© Bernstein, 2007
Anthony G. Bernstein is a writer from Providence, Rhode Island who is an active member of the Science Fiction Poetry Assoc (SFPA). He has contributed his unique brand of darkly vivid poems and tales to many publications, such as Tales of the talisman, Abyss & Apex, Poesy, The Harrow. Watch for his poems in coming issues of Star Line, Helix, Cthulhu Sex Magazine, as well as several other magazines and anthologies.
In addition to writing speculative fiction, poetry, and reviews, Bernstein is also a skilled song writer/musician who has played in several rock bands. You can visit him at his ‘My Space’ site, http://www.myspace.com/tonybernstein, and at his website, www.anthonybernstein.net.