Shot with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS; f/2.8; 1/200; ISO-100; 24mm. 4/6/2018 12:21 PM.
Thanks.
Airtafae Almaedin
Metal rose
Dethorned
Hammered and welded
Glossed and stained
Perfumed
Oil dipped
Alive
Stem beating
With its spirit
So dulcet
Willing, when asked,
To be tangible
Perfume
Of metal rose
Perfuse diffuse
Quiet incense
Heavy in the hand
Calm spirits
Stainless stem
Anodized petals
Created with care
Rose oil stained
Letting its spirit
Become infinitely real
Fabricated Rose
Shot with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS; f/29; 1/200; ISO-400; 44mm. 9/14/2017 8:19 PM.
Sentiments. Dark synth. It’s all the same.
Dart Flower
This was a project taken up about some point in the latter half of my senior year of high school. If I remember correctly, I originally set out to make it for a peer in that class whom I admired, though I never ended up giving it to her. I have a difficult complex when it comes to things I’ve made with any bit of meaning. I end up unable to part with it once it creates that much sentiment in me. I should be able to recognize that as an artist, it’s horrible to make things to give to people and not give them. Who knows? That girl I made this flower for never got it, so until then it doesn’t meant anything, and maybe she would have appreciated. The meaning is in permanent stasis.
With a little more detail here, you can see that the stamen is all wrapped up with steel wire. The red petals are made from red rosin core wire, and the black ones are made from tough crafting wire of some kind. This was supposed to be a follow up to the Wire Rose project, and actually this Dart Flower was a mesh of three metal flowers I had made to accompany the original. So there were three flowers I made. One was copper and red, one was black steel, and another one was a mix. I tore the copper and black ones apart, and added them to the mixed one. The Dart Flower is a product of three of its predecessors.
Wire Rose Close-up
Shot with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS; f/5.6; 1/100; ISO-400; 55mm.
Wire Rose
Thin mechanical wire and copper wire, with an 8 gauge black wire center. After the Dishonored Mask Build I felt pretty struck by the idea of mechanical flowers because I think I saw one of my peers making one during class one day. This is autumn of 2014, and I had intended it as a gift for my then significant other. I took a lot of care to put some details into making the thorns seen along its stem, and to add the two palm tree looking sprouts off the side of it. Probably the most difficult part was knowing when to stop, but I stopped at the perfect time. It’s not uncomfortable to hold, it fits nicely into one’s hand, and it can be potted like a real rose! If I were going to expand on this design, I think a cool idea would be to leave it in a vase to rust the wire towards the bottom, mimicking how you’d normally keep a rose alive by having it in water, right? It’d be neat to do in the future.
Rosy White Alcove
Rosy White Alcove
Sitting street level on an ottoman
Inside a bay window
Looking out of
Rose stained glass,
We’re looking at the people
On the sidewalks
In between the walls
Of our tea mugs.
We’re looking out of
Cold bay window panes
With droplets
Of cloud fodder
Playing on its surface.
You’ve got your legs up
Wearing skinny jeans
And I’m rubbing your
Feet through fuzzy socks.
I can hear
A quiet TV in the background
Playing a festive movie
We’re facing away from.
An unlit fireplace
Is below a redwood cabinet
Filled with more DVDs.
Between the cars street level
Splashing gutters with water
And rain sliding down
The smooth bay window,
We see and talk about
Rosy people walking street level,
Innocently
Mesmerized.
Sullied Rose
Sullied Rose
I stood before a man who desired
To examine the thorns of my rose
So I let him
Impaling them into his eyes
How dare he desire
How dare he question me
A shadow
A god
I am almighty, and he is a peasant
He deserved his wish
To see my rose
What a fool he is
I burned him down
Like villages before
He was less than an ant
On the underside of my boot
Parents told children
The whispered myths of me
As I walk the frontier
And take all the light I can
My rose is hungry
It must be sated
The darkness of thorns
Will reign unabated
Every knave and plebeian
Will feel the burn of my rose
As it devours those I mark
And poisons all my foes
Now I kneel over the man
As his screaming fades
His light draining swiftly
Blood seeping outwards
What a sight it is
Looking at a man, no longer
He is weak and deserves his fate
Soon those like him will bow to me
Then his mouth emits nothing
Face locked in silent agony
The sight no longer disgusts me
It’s the burn of a flower’s feast
For now I take and sap light
Wherever I can find it
The rose perpetually hungers
And I must feed its sullied thorns
More will fall
More will die
More to slaughter
And kingdoms to leech
I present it proudly and impale
The foundries of light soundly
As I raze the Earth’s denizens
For the sake of my wicked essences
Aesthetica
Aesthetica
It’s cold
Prickly from blunted spikes
Like wrapping tendrils
That snake and twist around an arm
It vibrates
Gently making friction
It’s warm in a hand
And is worth many mythologies
To who should hold
The legendary gold
Which they cannot touch
Lest they gain insight
So disciplined
And strong
The mortal coils
Shuffle and shift
Augurs of reality
Anchoring the nightlife
Heartbeat skyscrapers
Pumping, streetborne
The fission of skin and coil
Cooling with mist and fog
Clouds undercast the stars
In grand, laughing bazaars
Cults chant incantations
Speakers listen to ghosts
The blunted spikes
Sharpen, dull, and coil
Thorns of a flower
Rooted in ashes
Bulb glowing bright
Petals stained scintillate
Reflecting the streetlights
The cold, slender lightwaves
Droplets of thorndew
Refracting the neon sounds
Splintering barbs
Fragmenting shards
Tear into the coiling mass
With flowering light and cold sounds
Scales of the moths’ back
Freezing as the wings flap
Beating air into submission
Pollination the attrition
Nectar the petal’s petrichor
Droplets of the thorn ambrosia
Falling, streeborne, to the ground
Refracting light where moths are found
The air has a hold
On the lungs breathing mold
In amber thorns’ spores
And bright, phlorescent ore
Ticktock inquisitions
Frozen for exhibition
Infinite crags of glass
Endless deflections’ absolution
The wings flap, and lights crack
Augurs split and mend the schism
They drink from amber thorns
And fly undercast streetborne
The First Phrase
The First Phrase
When we heard that our invaders
Gathered many, on the horizon
We sent our fabled light brigade
Out to combat the pitch black swell
Among our warriors was a voyager
A figure of legend in those borderlands
Wielding a bright burning rose
Brandishing light against unjust foes
Towns and villages knew his name
Many people were keen to his deeds
A hero of the frontier, well known
A fearless man, quick on the draw
In the fortnight day, battle ensued
A taxing display of enemy power
Broadcast the message that
Enough weren’t our flowers
The enemy was much too powerful
In number, size, rank and morale
To demise many warriors were fated
Luna descended and reinstated
So there he stood on the rune
The last light will be gone soon
The sun at last is setting
A flower he clutched still smoldering
He witnessed nothing today
No, it will be nothing soon
Nothing in his darkness boon
In the shadow of a too-long day
Pre dawn to midday to sun setting
After the battle had finished ebbing
The line of light fading as he sat
Isolated, in his wrecked bivouac
His regiment shunned Luna
And bodies of Earth’s legions
Those behind were left for dead
Except for him: he succumbed
Yet his spirit lay dead with the others
He had been a hero for a long time
But keeping strength for so long
Had led him down grief’s road
Shadows had a voice, a promise
That became a begging call
On the last day of fleeting hope
He watched the fading sun fall
The darkness hungered
Devouring the light of day
It offered him glories and gifts
And power sorely missed
He buried his light slowly
Casing himself deep in darkness
Relinquishing his heroic light
Seeking power in evil blight
In the dusk, he consented
Releasing his humanity
In return, receiving secrets
Of his most wicked sanctity
He was gone now
Consumed by darkness
But in his flesh, was something new
Yet nothing new
In those first moments
Of nothing new
He looked down
At his lifelong rose
Realizing
That it carried no petals
Only the jagged purpose
Of angry thorns