Redshift

Featured art by Franziskus Pfleghart

Listen to Redshift by Richard Charles Stevens

Listen to Run, Sally, Run! by Carpenter Brut

Rose red bed in stunning bloom
Shed from sun and wed to moon
Streaming through the bled lagoon
Serene these crimson waters

As I venture through the embers of a long remembered dream
My heart trembles and the tremors set a retrospective scene
Comprehensive recollections of affectionate degree
Irrespective of the woes long since befallen me
And those whose sole directive was to stalling me
Implausibly serene as I incautiously proceed
Dismembered from the skin that dies each time I fall asleep

Rose red bed in stunning bloom
Shed from sun and wed to moon
Streaming through the bled lagoon
Serene these crimson waters

My wide eyes prize the stylized theme of wild imagination
A twilight scene where finite beams have wider aspirations
No guidelines to deny a mind
Disinclined to whitewashed lies
Even if the truth confides of mild exaggeration

Every last stride taken reawakens vacant stare
Of a lifetime of sedation pertinaciously declared
Liver birds both seen and heard when neither here nor there
Basilisks the catalysts of maverick affairs
Centaurs give consent to more extortionate proportion
While unicorns iconic forms are tonic chords to share

Every nook and cranny makes uncanny proposition
Offering a hook or crook to tally contradiction
Fact retracts attack on fiction
Slapping tax on imposition
Cutting back on supposition
Acrobatic acquisition
Breaking down partitions while the schism loses rhythm
In division of a prism long immune to abolition

…

Malnutrition bid adieu when food for thought refused permission
Superstition depositioned as tradition split decision
Cherry picking very willing barely missing thoughts
Heavy digging trenches sinking steady ticking quartz
Penny pinching tethers ended
Severed of remorse
Evermore divorced
Of fraught contortion
Free akin to leaves relieved from underneath the eaves of grief
Teats caressed
Abreast of suckled husk undressed by skin of teeth

Rose red river charms
Its balm disarms the bind of vicious barb
Mangling my stricken heart
Dismantling the inner bark
Founded at initial spark
Accounting for tuition charge
I found it at the river barge
Serene these crimson waters

Having weathered the typhoon
Through the never in endeavour opportune
Ties are severed to the peril strewn before me
To the betterment of providential story
As Bard, I am disbarred from the garden of regard
Thus, I come here to the river
To deliberate severity of scars
Find prosperity in blemished coat of arms

As I venture through the embers of a long remembered dream
My heart trembles and the tremors set a more reflective scene
Comprehensive recollections of affectionate degree
For within this waking dream I am unquestionably seen