A Physics of Vipers

"Smiling faces sometimes pretend to be your friend.    
Smiling faces show no traces of the evil that lurks within.    
Smiling faces, Smiling Faces, Sometimes they don't tell the truth.    
Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies and I got proof.    
The truth is in the eye 'cause the eyes don't lie, amen.    
Remember, a smile is just a frown turned upside down my friend.    
So, hear me when I'm saying    
Smiling faces, Smiling Faces, Sometimes they don't tell the truth.    
Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies and I got proof.    
Beware. Beware of the handshake that hides the snake,    
I'm tellin' you beware of the pat on the back it just might hold you back.    
Jealousy, (Jealousy) misery, (misery) envy (envy).    
I tell you you can't see behind    
Smiling faces, Smiling Faces, Sometimes they don't tell the truth.    
Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies and I got proof.    
Your enemy won't do you no harm, 'cause you'll know where he's comin' from;    
don't let the handshake and the smile fool ya.    
Take my advice I'm only tryin' to school ya.    
Smiling faces, Smiling Faces, Sometimes they don't tell the truth."    
Songwriters: Barrett Strong / Norman Whitfield / Norman J. Whitfield    
Smiling Faces Sometimes lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC    
   
..    
   
These fangs, the heat inside. My wings are broken, tied to shoulders. I am falling. Cool eyes peer down nose. One pair moistens. It’s cold, without. Come inside my love.    
   
There was something I was always waiting for. Nothing precise. Nothing I could name. Tenderness without form. Togetherness without a webwork of connection. A clear path to fulfillment, not murky stepping stones. There was never time to wait. Time ate the stones below my feet, less swiftly than me.    
   
Once upon a time there was a kingdom in the cloud, a castle in the corner. A castle without floors or ceilings, just walls. There were many roads to the same place of meetings.    
   
All sorts of travelers would meet throughout this castle. Some would share their woes, some would preen their feathers, some would hone their politics and some would sow seeds of praise returned by heaping saccharin praise upon others.    
   
The vipers nest at the bowels of the castle had a proud stink. Indeed, they took pride in this odour, eager to draw eyes to their barbs.    
   
The Cowardly Lion smugly accuses the Tin Man of having no courage. The Tin Man raises chin, hand and tells the Lion he has no heart.    
   
Cleverly, the vipers found strength in numbers. They contrived alternate names for wicked devices. They claimed artifice was wisdom, judgment was awareness and arrogance was enlightenment. They warmed phantom hands upon a foxfire, carefully tended.    
   
There were few lights to see one another by. Only voices that crawled down the walls, leaving trails for eyes to follow. Where voices quieted, those trails remained, glowing in the darkness of the cloud castle.    
   
With only these trails to judge, baleful eyes traced lines from start to finish, then back again. Eyes that were curious, eyes that were envious and hateful. Sometimes, these were the same. Oft times, transitioning from one to another.    
   
Where faces are masked, unmasked faces are glaring nudity. Where names are hidden, the power of true names is blaring, deafening.    
   
Where the dishonest and cruel call themselves wise, the honest and wise are unwelcomed. How could they not be, in such low company?    
   
Where the blind call the sighted blind, there is unbroachable irony, for how can they know what they cannot see?    
   
There is sneering derision and silence. There is rot sarcasm and pride that wafts on fetid breath. Walls of silence between the walls of voices.    
   
The castle had no floors or ceilings, many walls, no floors, but many stalls and booths where vipers collude, slithering about one another in sniggers of hateful laughter, each in silent agreement that none should truly name the green eyed monster. Not to themselves. Not to one another.    
   
Many silent accords are reached and the webwork weave of hate goety cushions their subtle steps, in the castle of walls, booths and corners.    
   
My mother was telling me about people in the heart ward at the hospital. The trembling hands. The bed sores glowering from those unable to stand for so long. The vacant gazes, searching gazes. A pale, shriveled man with tubes in his nose wept and wept.    
   
All of this self-exploration, attempting to find and define one's self, comparisons and contrasts to the other vipers in the castle garden. Collision, collusion, change always turning the room just as we acclimate to its contours.    
   
All the while, the clockwork sentient is winding down. The wheels grind, whine and seize. There is protracted pain or a quick crack. Then all this posturing is over.    
   
Foolish vipers think they define everything they see. Hateful vipers can think and hiss what they please. The cloud castle is neither here, nor there. Just a place in between.    
   
I am a pyramid    
Buffeted    
By    
Dust    
Grief    
Wind    
And    
Tides    
Of coercion    
Hello silence    
   
Bleeding into the vacuum    
Betwixt the light    
Of your eyes    
Alone    
Within the intangible embrace    
Of spirit    
I have been    
Here    
Feeling it    
Ignite    
I am ancient    
   
I walk through the foxfire. I break goety with true heart. I will mount the stars to become light.    
   
My words lend wings to my soul. Go ahead and peer down nose. Gaze fixedly, now raise your eyes. Witness me rise to the heavens.    
   
See me soar. Watch me rise.    
   
A Physics of Vipers    
By    
Daniel Christensen    
Writing as    
The Fire Elemental

Copyright © 2017 by Daniel Christensen. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.