Three
Poems by Faust
DESERT
WAR
Straight cut fine line dissection
Desertion tracked through
Grit and sand lodged deep
Within the confiscated pulls of
Coffin doors,
Rolling slowly in blind-eyed
Solitude of final prayer,
Behind the platitude of masses.
Spoken ego embitterment
Congealing quick on
Tongues of tired saviors
Soon to be ousted
>From their black night term,
Felling simple minds,
One by one,
To the ineptitude and reserve
Of one man's inadequacies.
WITHOUT
WILL
I am perceptibly beside myself,
Without the will to disturb
What is blatantly destructive
With my emotionally skewed
Removed rough dissections,
Two days before my
Flight home.
My soul imparts a secret to me,
That these two wayward
Worn paths will not
Cross again,
Leaving me hollow
As a rotten tree,
Without the will to stand
Upright against the wind.
I want to digest it,
To free it beneath
The echo of footsteps
In this coal miner's
Stair well,
But there is not enough
Daylight left
To purify.
BITTERNESS
There is no poetry in emptiness,
No motion in brevity,
No passion in words, once forgotten;
Be still my heart to think
You do not remember
The city as it burned,
Before the edge of time,
Reflected in our hollow
Headlight eyes as you
Took me to the ground
And fed me poetry,
Shook me senseless,
As reality left your rhyme,
Scraping pollen from my thighs
To make bittersweet honey.
My lines seem to fail me now,
The part of simple saving grace;
Releasing the wildfire into
The ether as it shied away
>From my expectations of burning
agony.
Virtue awkward,
Honesty, harrowing and fragile,
Logic that bends backward upon
A moment stretching onward
Into exhausted sighs,
And strangled good-byes
On a Sunday afternoon.
Remembering you face to face,
Black lamp moonlight
Near the arcing freeway,
Petrified mammoth north bound,
Breaking parchment voices upon
The scuttling whistling
Of heaven leaving me.
My silent last request before I
die:
To see the sun rise with eyes brimming,
A focused anticipation
Of marmalade renewal
In crisp academic air
Leaning against hoods
Of rusted maroon metal;
Oh, how it never comes,
With so much sinful residue
Still residing in this house,
Working its way roundabout
My veins, charring the silver,
Hording the loot, making me move
Backwards over this burning bridge.
Not the first to feel the timbers
moan
And give way
So that another can take my place.
You will not remember
The city as it burned,
Silhouetted behind
My naked form,
Beckoning you to pillage it
Steal its gold foil wonderment,
As you rose from where we lay,
Side-stepping the sting of the
bee,
To take the honey you gathered
With deft deception,
Into town
On market day,
To sell for a dozen ducats less
Than it was worth.
About
the Author
Gabrielle S. Faust
Painter, Writer, Graphic Designer,
Photographer
BACKGROUND:
Gabrielle S. Faust, 27, has spent
the vast majority of her life in
Austin, Texas studying art and
graphic design. Primarily instructed
from an early age by her father,
Luke Faust, she has also studied
at the Dougherty Arts Center and
Laguna Arts School. She obtained
an Associates of Visual Communication
Design from Austin Community College
in 1999. After spending five years
in the advertising and design industry
as a graphic designer and illustrator,
Faust now works freelance while
pursuing her passion for painting
and writing. Her focus in painting
is acrylic, mixed media with a
surrealistic realism as a subject
matter of many of her darker and
more disturbing pieces; in writing
she focuses on poetry and gothic
fiction. For the larger part her
works are reflections of the internal
struggle of humanity against their
raw emotions and the inner turmoil
of society while her abstracts
embody the flux of energy and elements
about us. She primarily exhibits
in Austin and Houston galleries.
However, when she is not painting,
Faust is hard at work on her first
gothic novel entitled "Eternal
Vigilance". This work and
more can be viewed at www.mentalwheaties.com
or www.immortalitysucks.com. Faust
works both on a freelance and commission
basis as requested.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
" Art is not only a visual representation
of the inner workings of the creator,
it is also the manifestation of
the essential truth to which the
waking world often turns a blind
eye. There is no denying art. It
is a form that reaches to embody
the tragedies and exultations of
our lives. It may not always be
perfect in meter or rhyme for it
is raw and unyielding to man's
attempts to control it, to hone
it. It is poetry... This is my
meter... This is my rhyme... This
is my complete lack of both...
And thus, this is my life."
