Still the banquet halls of heathens bustle with reckless shadows… serpents flicking their tongues across the hot nape of night, reveling in a jungle of treasures never meant to feel the sweat of a mortal’s palms.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from So it is Written, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
“If you need to be needed by her, but you also need to not need to need her, then you need to be more realistic.”
- BGP
I am your protector, your provider and your teacher; a newcomer bearing gifts unlike anything you’ve seen before. With a warm, outstretched hand I welcome you to my world, feeding your childlike gaze with my own recipe for awe. My intention is to whisk you away to a safer, more fatherly place, where the subliminal hum of a warm half-melody laps at our feet like the edge of a lagoon… Where I will serenade you with a song more potent and enchanting than any song another man has to offer, and paint you pictures more alluring than any dawn or dusk you’ve ever beheld. Not since the walls of your mother’s womb have you seen a better refuge, for the love that I hold for you surrounds us with every deeper step into my realm.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from Show You, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
1 week ago - 
3
3 Fleet-footed in dreams is a willing fool for the mind’s magic, driving his steed at full potency through lands never shadowed by kings nor queens. He dwells where queer concoctions of weather make for an eerily peaceful ambience, and birds linger even when thunder groans portentously… where autumn seems longer than the autumn we know, and even the summers are sometimes hushed to an enchanting degree. His steed drinks from benignly haunted pools, and sleeps under a corpulent moon that hangs bloated in the sky like a botched pearl. Together they drift from wonder to madness and back again without the weight of watchful eyes, in search of elusive goals that wilt in comparison to the richness of the journey.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from Welcome One, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
1 week ago - 2
2 Even though it would be more grounded to say that true love better suits us in separate forms, I cannot shake the notion that you fit comfortably into a groove on some throbbing patch of my soul. Even if we were not meant to be lovers, should you not be my estranged step-sister peeled from the same mold on a more aesthetic plane? I feel familiar with the nuances of your figure even though we have only held each other in some chimeric fable now banished from time, and I know your kiss as if you planted it moments before I awoke. What a shame that my talents should go unanswered and your beauty be reduced to a single photograph, for so much wasted affection does not convert into clout in a demanding world.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from Sidereal Lover, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
1 week ago - 3
3 Exhausted from wrestling with the serpent’s heavy coils, I allow myself to melt into breathable waters like a crumbling post-winter lake, finally one with the life-giving juices that fatten the roots of an unblemished countryside… where equine forms graze uninterrupted upon plush fields of imperishable green, dotting verdant hills carpeted by strains of untouched wildflower and incensed by disheveled pollens strange to newly embellished senses. Vaguely prismatic skies shimmer with distant sheets of rain, sedating me with ocular pleasures obstructed only by subtle tears of joy… tainted by plumes of ambiguous colors any painter would chase into night-curtained halcyon shades.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from Catharsis, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
Her inspiration is the kind I cannot fully embrace, though I am allowed to dip my pen here and there.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from She is Legend, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
The angel of mercy descends on me, scattering the vultures that covet the last breaths of my corpse… gathering my pieces up into her wings and cradling me to the rhythm of her unconditional heartbeat. With her comes painterly suggestions of a glorious swan-filled heaven, and the comfort of knowing that loved ones are safely sealed in their respective realms makes surrender an easy task. War-heated blood turns to clean summer rain, and the fiery eyes of foes turn into radiant winter stars. My mistake to drink from a river of venom comes to the end of its reign, as the cool touch of grace massages it from my veins and an enchantress’s kiss awakens me to the shores of a world reborn.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from Catharsis, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
The trials of good and evil will come to a head; which prayers will be answered depends on whose master wins the battle. Empires will fall and hells will be vented, releasing the demons that have preceded the moment… And in the aftermath of chaotic disclosure, when the smoke of the ending days clears at last, there will be the mercy seekers… crawling towards their final sanctuary, heaven in their dying eyes, and the taste of salvation upon their tongue.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from The Mercy Seekers, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
Luck and chance had brought you to me, but beautiful things come with careful instructions… I’ve strengthened my years but my roots are in cowardice; a weight on my shoulders will not carry for long. I thrive as a lover but strain as a provider, for the gifts I have to offer are intangible and fleeting. I am but a simplistic magician, trained to deceive you as well as myself. My illusions make you smile but they are sand in the wind, mere tricks upon your eyes kept in limited supply… waning in time they’ll soon fail to impress; a dove from my cloak will not shelter our heads.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from Not the One, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
1 week ago - 3
3 Memories nest in the tracks that time leaves, providing refuge for those that find their daily lives acerbic yet need not the reckless wonders of the cold, unfeeling gulfs. These are the ones who choose to stay behind as time rages on like a blind and fearless juggernaut, making their home the inner spheres where intimate sights and sounds hold sway. Here clouds crawl at a lethargic pace, shielding the cosmic secrets from such timid and untried eyes; allowing only the perfect shade of light to fall on sinless shingled roofs and thickly scented lawns, where streets nearly emptied by a world preoccupied with sleep hum with a strange cicada lullaby.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from Worlds Remembered, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
I shan’t forget that horrendous yawning sound; the chorus of a billion ailing ghosts caught in slow-churning vortex, which in truth became the wail of cosmic winds circling up through unmanageable depths… Nor will I forget the infinite darkness that stole from my soul as I gazed into it hopelessly and without deviation. The afterlife speaks bitterly of such dour caverns that our spirits, even without their timid shells, approach with wary dwarfishness. God forbid I should transcend that crater’s edge and tumble down the chute of the damned, doomed to fare the true meaning of oblivion… I might never again feel the blessing of solid ground, but rather bathe in accursed inertia until I rot in the very state of falling.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from The Hole, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
Truly your daughter is a force of beauty, and I would be a fool to refuse her hand as it reaches to be ringed… but that fool I must claim to be, for the beauty I call my own is a kind native to the land that waits for me so many backward miles over the sea. There my maiden stands with a pail of water weighting each hand, in a tattered dress that speaks subtly of rural demands and smells of autumn chimneys stifled with boiling broth. Her eyes are as brown as dampened timber, her hair as black as crumbled coals; the raspy sough of her buxom voice as commonplace as the call of a crow. Thistles and burs cling to her flowing locks, barbed wire scratches glisten on her calves… all telling tales of her disdain for boundaries that struggle to keep trespassers at bay. For her, they are mere hurdles on the path to twilight prairies bronzed by a deepening sun.
Needless to say, Mr. Aberdeen, I am spoken for should the matter arise. No vixen of the new world could outshine my rustic queen, or keep me long from the homeland that knew our lives combined. I yearn to find her waiting there, perhaps daydreaming in the arms of an oak, or peering coyly from the edge of an old barn door… our fireside tales will then resume, when this wayside errand releases me back to her arms.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from Needless to Say, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
Morning mists part to reveal a red ocean boiling with the hues of the dawn, waves rolling with lips of redolent foam. The slanted shadows of Stonehenge, long and gaunt, lean to the sway of the sun, while wet jungles belch steam like factories in the haze. Enchanted fauna fashioned from forest myth, the proliferated children of various fits of sorcery, creep through unwritten avenues that know nothing of the death of magic. Castles and ruins tinged with moss stand like cairns unmarred by any epitaph, and tombs strange to the light of day rest heavy with jewels and relics in the clutches of frigid cadavers.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from Out There, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
Japanese gardens boast the plumage of wild birds and roseate trees, where the flowers smell of sweetened water and their petals perpetually fall upon rain-painted cobble. Apes lounge about the ornamental steps and decorative pools, picking at seeds and splashing at Koi while their fiery manes glisten in the Eastern sun. Steaming oceans collide with cliffs and fling their spray into prisms about the air, a symphony of seabird screams accenting the drone of sifting waves. Strange, deep-dwelling beasts that feed on the carcasses of whales scour the depths in the presence of living lanterns that foster their own lunar glow.
© 2012 Brandon Gene Petit
- from On His Watch, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno , Nov. 2010
