the dark side of light

[Soulstice]

My eyes watch these streets with steely persistance
But I only catch rays of light in ethereal figments
These spirited glimpses commonly steer clear of the dreary existence
That usually appears in my vision -
... instead it's a city dressed in a devilish guise
As terror's designs make haste in infecting my mind
Sent with a seminal drive - Destiny's hell-bent on containing my hopes
My defenses have dried - the darkness is draining the moat
Now I'm a knight having trouble escaping the throat
Of this endless maw that represents the city's collective flaws...
- the invading scope of this borough's extending claws
&& my face is rendered in gauze - the city could've treated me better
Want to retreat to the nether - but I keep progressing along
With either hellions or others who just pretend there's a God
Watch rats fester in the entrails of the dead and the gone
To the tune of the wail's of the mentally wrong - doom & despair
Paint the ventricle walls of this city, this inhuman affair
I'm acutely aware of the men dressed in suits, replete with lies
Pleasure coups, thieving minds - complete with fleets of cheating wives
All beneath this evil sky - that's scarred by the ominous obelisks
Filled with autonomous opulence - they stud the broken horizon
A victim of shoddy reconnaissance - a jagged mouth that engulfs the sun
& night results in guns as whispers of hope erode to silence

So...
I take defiant tokes
It's time to choke these silent sorrows
as the rising smoke climbs my nostrils
Aiding in surviving hostile
environments such as this violent grotto

and I feel happily alive, a reality derived from chemical substance
A magical dive into rapturous light that yields a literal numbness
I laugh with delight as my spirit becomes this - functioning bird
Soaring above the toxic fumes where nothing's disturbed
High above the noxious plumes of the destruction observed
from this lofted view - above the lost, confused denizens..
.. this is true medicine - I'm reaching a new mezzanine
Stars bathe my face as heaven's edifice beckons me
To accept the dream while rejecting reality - but just as soon
As I'm about to touch the moon - my perception starts blackening
It's saddening as I crash down through the cumulus clouds
Losing my high as I cruise through the sky - accruing the doubt
That I'm about to lose what I've found - comfort & faith
Are now trapped with me in the city where nothing escapes
Stuck in this place - behind the ugly wall's where the gate's rusting
Near these dirty buildings lined with vermin, villians, and case studies
A civilian with his face bloodied - men that live just to make money
This maze nothing escapes, a trait of this crumbling civilization
This place these men gutted and kissed with abrasions
Remember simpler days when... earth glistened with primordial ooze
Now men sit on the corner, strummin' dischord's for the blue's
In a world that's confused, I seek a newer, better escape
I treasure a gate that would let me leave this terrible place...

So I sip the bottle -God's gift to sorrow
By a different gospel - I seek to twist the cosmos
to change this victim's destiny - Saved by this simple bauble
Filled with liquid revery

Now my altered eyes help clear this haunted mind
My conscience blind to the psychotic kind in this vile vista
Filled with neurotic dimes and cops assigned to beat ya
This violent creature - a machination thats entraps the vagrants
A contraption that manufactures hatred - shadowed in glum
From the crack shacks and the basements to the dark towers above
The power of love has soured and is only found in the rum
That washes over my jowels and tounge - it's tricking my mind
To ignore the caustic breeze that always tickles my spine
And rips at my hide - it eclipses the conglomerate fortresses
Spewing smog and toxic fog that are locked in my orifices
The art of exorbitance - practiced by the greedy, living in mansions
Watch dirty acts of the needy as they giggle in tandem
But I'm drinking this planet into a perfect state of existence
Blind as I walk down the street with elated indifference
No more slave to the system - no more ragefing conniptions
I can take this place with amazing persistance - until illumination time
The sun greets the sky and my bruised and aching mind
I hate this time - awake in the gutter by the sounds of gats
The sobering panorama of snakes, hunters, hounds, and rats

between the strident coughs....
and the hanging over...
and the violent thoughts
.
"Yo.. Tie me off!"
.
when will this game be over?

[UnbornBuddha]

This was wonderful my friend. It was not too opaque, which I noticed is a thematic dimensional facet you tend to wander to. The rhymes were fascinating, yet what truly captivated my gaze was the language. The language was complex, or better yet had a richness to it. A richness that satisfied my own temperamental adoration for a well mechanized spread. A refection that displays the unlimited capacity that this art can take. I myself lower my head when I see great work. Partly in congratulations to the effort you have applied to achieve it, but also because it exhibits my own capacity to continue growing. After all, when it comes to the mental and bodily side of life there is decay when stagnation happens.
It is like the adage of the ancients "flowing water never decays". What more of an exemplary statement can be said for a group of individuals whose art exemplifies this need to continue flowing.
And that you did well. The topic was a bit twisted, which was intended. I mean you basically tried to capture or bring forth the inherent darkness within light, Yin Yang theory the dualistic law of the universe. In which both forces are not really opposing because they accentuate each other, transform into the other, depend on each other, consume each other. Now you did not fully explored all the elemental connotations that this philosophically and practically means.

Rather, you decided to tell a descriptive composition of a metropolis. A rather grotesque one due to the plundering you did off its grim contents, and its effect on individual lives. Perhaps due to the emotional component the metropolis was meant to be an allegory for the confined walls of one's own heart, one's own inner terrain. I mean you did mention the "ventricle of the walls" in your first verse.

Anyways, my favorite stanza was he second one. I also thought the little intermediary lines between the verses were kind off misplaced, and not as riveting.

Anyways, hope to see you continue your evolutionary unfolding.

Thank you, and take care.