j. brooks

One score and nine, the unseen sign.

I lie prostrate before the god of forgotten roads and penetrate the invincible night with my dying light to burn through firmament yet undreamt and know its ends both dark and bright.

One score and nine, a love denied.

I lie prostrate with the goddess of forbidden roads and hew a home from seeds of stone sown in immortal soil and vow them tended until my mountains are grown and royal and mine to climb.

One score and nine, cold fire alight.

I stand upright before the god of foretold roads and weather the stillborn storms of doubt to face down my fate in what feral form it takes for my own is the rabid will of wolves and ice.

One score and nine, one more is mine.

I sleep the violent sleep of murdered men,
Each storm in this my head for a crow’s nest,

I see the far bank of eternal shores,
Please, if we be brothers, fetch me my sword,

I might fight then as the phantom I am,
These bloodless hands knowing purpose again,

I need believe in false life come before,
So, if we be lovers, breathe not a word.

In a bustling, backwoods, backwards town, in an inn, stands a piano untamed by musicians and magicians, with its vulpine wires darting their discordant chords, daring each hammer, a hound, to wring a defiant melody from its strings, only eclipsed on the fullest moons by an unperceived player at the keys, an imagined maiden, her slender fingers a ballet, a silencing song among outlaws, bewitched by whiskey and the celestial sound of our world burning down, each note a frozen fire, a crisp reverberating pyre, like old hope trapped in dead men, memory, unknowing, centuries overdue, hewn from starless nights and wrapped in the will to fight, she weaves her dirge where haunted hustlers drown in drink, rapt by a brush with transcendent reverie, unjust even in majesty, for I alone hear her sing.

In the instant infinity
Between my dreams
As sleep unbreathes
Its night-stitched seams
Into violent awakening

I see a bird with burning wings

Beating my heart murderously
The while it drinks
My stillborn screams
Most savagely
Feathered by fire unrelenting

I see a bird with burning wings

Before my eye’s vitality
Escapes that beak
The vision shrieks
Its haunted screech
Through our fading eternity

I see a bird with burning wings

And when it sings
The whole world dies.

I long to curse this shadowed day,
That sets your sea blue eyes ablaze,
Even though poets do proclaim,
No love be lost, but love delayed,

For when your vital smile returns,
The same wayfaring soul shall burn,
Its heart astride your heart, brave, firm,
Resuming its rhythm, march, term,

Weather you this storming course clear,
Keep us, your loyal deckhands, near,
Your sails shall swell anew with cheer,
Our love be your love, Mary Dear.

I survived my,
Baptism by,
Gunfire,
My favorite nightmare.
I pulled down my dreams,
The fiends,
Pinned back their wings,
Began to eat.

I drink the blood,
Taste dying love,
My tongue,
Afire with passions.
I defy the Fates,
Embrace,
Strike out today,
One score and eight.

It’ll be tomorrow’s noon
The day I beg you to
Just tell me there’s a God
And hold me ‘til I’m gone

And you, you’ll never make it back up to the top
So smash your eyes shut and swim, swim for the bottom

‘Cause yesterday’s a myth
Calendars can’t exist
We’re Princes of Denmark
And the interim’s ours

I’ve got bullets for brains, dead heroes in my head
I’ll shed the ghost of Time, until tomorrow’s dead

I’ll make myself moments, until tomorrow’s dead
Until tomorrow’s dead, until tomorrow’s dead.

Landscape to succeed
A poisonous dream
No light on our sea
Memories, debris

The fire on my heart
The bright burning dark
The cold kiss of night
The bloody storm tide

Hammer, temper, break
Blasting, forging, hate
Creeping, clutching, doubt
Struggle, strangle, out

All my brothers bleed
All my lovers leave
All a part of me
All apart from me

All lay down the fight
I stand up and die.

it’s happening.

the tumblers are all falling into alignment. the current of my independent feature film is gathering itself, preparing to roar out its violent birth on the beach and i am the fucking wave. won’t be long now.

i’m creating my own production company with my brother and two dear friends. their belief in my dream and my ability and my ability to dream makes me strong enough to save the world. i feel ten feet tall. we go live in the beginning of may. beware the jackalope!

i couldn’t be happier with the actress i’ve secured to play the female lead. i’ve drafted some badass film students into the shooting crew. i’m adapting the script to best attack the location limitations and i’m actually happier with the “compromises.”

tomorrow, i’ll finish the edgar allan poe adaptation for a friend’s short film then it’s heavy into the shooting draft of this feature. our full cast table read is on the 25th. principal photography begins in june.

my heart is thundering out two words in infinite succession:

fuck. yes.

first draft of the indie feature is now complete!

for the record, i completely spanked the deadline. it’s now being electronically circulated to my principal actors, but i still have one lead and a bunch of walk-on roles to fill. writing the script was easy, now the real fun begins. i need to lock down locations and a workable shooting schedule and find a taxidermist who will loan me a stuffed cat. why? because i refuse to pay for what should be free…

The captain says to me, says he:
“Oi, Navigator, ship ashore!”
“Aye,” says I, shortly, “so I see.”
“Join you not your mates in uproar?”
“I’ve no need these timbers don’t cede.”
Here clapped I the mast familiar.
“Bollocks! A sailor ‘as his needs.
Think beer an’ betties an’ billiards!”

“Cap’n, I take brine o’er ale,
For its hue and spirit and foam.
As for sport, I hunt me the whale
From atop his unfathomed home.”
“A lady then, to light your hearth?”
“Not were she to pay me, double!
The whore, she parts her legs for warmth,
And takes my coin for my trouble.

“Speak not next, my skipper, of love.
Ne’er did a false star burn so bright!
Your war-like angels from above,
Who oft leave the wounded to die.
Knew a lad, made his lass complete,
Swore an oath he’d never quit her.
Now her lonesome heart bleeds like meat,
Under the butcher’s red cleaver.”

To this my captain soon replied,
“I lost words an’ art to find ‘em.
I’d breathe life to what in you died,
But I’d sooner drown Poseidon.”
I drank me an eyeful of port,
“Cap’n,” says I, “stow your pity!
Hell, I stay more gladly aboard.
Me, I be married to the sea.”

february 25th. sun-up.

if the first draft to my indie project isn’t finished by then, i will be dead. some people set goals for themselves; loosely conceived, casually abandoned. i’ve spent more of my life constructing alternate realities in my head than i have actually participating in the real one. so when i set a deadline, i commit myself to it fully.

“man, i wanna see that movie. wait, dammit, if i don’t get this draft done, i’m gunna die. oh god. i can’t die yet. not yet!” toying with your inner survival mechanism. cute, right? no. it haunts me. every day. but it gets shit done and i guess that’s what matters. never mind that i’ll most likely give myself a stress-related disorder that’ll prematurely part me from this mortal coil in spite of my ambitions.

as such, the sixth draft of Talisman is done, with tons of time to spare. submission deadline for the real screenwriting contests is may 1st. if you’re interested in reading it before then, drop me a line. i’d love to hear what you think. i’ll be tinkering with it amidst these other projects.

speaking of which, i better get to work. after the first draft is done, i’ll be furnishing all my principal actors with paper copies to gather notes and begin the rehearsal process. unless, of course, i don’t finish by the dawn of the 25th and consequently die.

that’d be tragic.

it was my intention to keep a public blog of how much work i did each day. a dry mechanism to keep myself honest when it came to my creative endeavors, if you will. and you will. you have to. this is my website.

but it’d be easier to keep a log of the time i’m NOT spending working on my art. every day is another adventure. it’s gotten to the point where i’m living the sort of life i want to be living for the rest of it and the cameras aren’t even rolling (or noiselessly recording to hard drive).

today i worked on my collaborative epic screenplay, which (despite being in its germinal story-carding form) fueled a spirited tennis match of storytelling ideas that i wish everyone could experience at least once before giving up the ghost. when this sees the screen, i promise, it’ll be unique.

in other news, my independent project is progressing splendidly. i have enough prep work finished to start knocking out a proper first draft. should have something workable by the end of the month at this rate.

also, i’m sneaking in time to work on the sixth (yes, sixth) draft of Talisman. being that the production company who optioned it has been goodly enough to allow my own continued development of the story, i’ve been hounded by its characters. in the quiet moments before bed, they chatter away ceaselessly, begging me to restore the heart to the story that has been inadvertently bleached out by critical influence. the entire process has been necessary, but it’s time to tear the scaffolding away and teach this giant to walk.

i hope to have it dancing by the time all those pesky contest deadlines roll around. as if the Academy didn’t have enough of my money…

art for its sake.

that’s the goal, right? this “solo” feature film project of mine has been upgraded to “independent” status, being that it’s become far more than a one man show. now we’re making it as an unlikely band of local heroes. which i like much better. don’t mistake my meaning. i’m still directing and i’m still the only one penning the screenplay, but in the last week, i’ve held several impromptu meetings with cast members (dear and trusted friends who work for “credit” and/or half-assed, ultimately deflating sexual favors), discussing my ideas for their individual characters.

the result: pure gold. and i’m talking gold before this whole economic snafu. my brother wrote a complete biography for his character that is dark comedic perfection. heather and i were in a crowded room discussing her ideas for some flashback sequences and, without exaggeration, she was crying laughing while i could barely stand. the back of my skull hurt from laughing for so long. i’m not even sure how that works out, anatomically, but it was brilliant. it actually kinda upset the other people in the room who were trying to have their own conversation.

the characters are coming to life before they’re even written. i’ve had more fun on this project already than anything i’ve created previous.

today i picked alan’s brain about film making. it turned into an interactive educational frame-by-frame dvd workshop in lighting design. combine his tricks for setting video saturation and contrast levels to convincingly mimic film with jason the audiophile’s encyclopedic knowledge of sound production and you’ll quickly discover i know the smartest people in the world.

so i’ve got a bad-ass story, the creative talent to help me tell it, the technical geniuses to help me capture it and the will to see it through to the end, no matter what. life isn’t good right now. it’s better than.

i’ve had it in my head to do something people are actually telling me is impossible. it’s a seemingly simple undertaking, in essence. the naysayers are supportive when i initially describe my intentions, but ultimately amused and dismissive by the end of the conversation. good luck, they say, with a chuckle. good luck, indeed.

then there are those who feed off my enthusiasm and offer their support. whether it be an appreciative ear, a promise of collaboration, the contribution of insight or the promise of pledging any resources available, they are willing to stand up and fight alongside me in this foolhardy venture. they recognize determination. they know of my will. they know i’ll break myself or the world before i’m done.

i am going to make a movie.

start to finish, mine. this is not another screenplay to sit unread on my hard drive or the inbox of some queried agent. i can tell a story, sure. few would dispute that. most of those who do meet grisly ends in alleyways or die suspiciously of natural causes in their sleep at far too young an age. but producing? directing? acting? how much could i know? how could i possibly account for all the hurdles and potentially derailing problems that arise in committing a script to screen? call it the indomitable arrogance of youth. i’ll see this done.

i have a year. i need take the story from its rough thumb-nailed outline to final draft, secure recording equipment, find actors, storyboard, shoot, edit and present… all without a budget. all amidst a dozen other projects. and it’ll be beautiful. not only will it be offered up to the world free of charge, i pledge to make the entire process transparent to any who wish to keep tabs via the web. i aim to bite off far more than i can chew this year. either i’ll grow strong and tall or choke and die. but those are the only acceptable options.

i’ve spent recent months tearing into the dash and dismantling my cruise control. now it’s nothing but a sparking, twisted mass of circuitry shrinking in the rearview. my hands are back on the wheel, ten and two, and with a confident stomp on the accelerator, i’m willingly drifting over the dashed yellow line.

Yes. It is possible to fall in love with an evening.

It opens with news of the most heinous variety. The performer you’ve come to see is dead. Were it not for the charming accordion-driven often-interrupted sing-along drinking-song making a jolly riot of the ballroom, you might be inclined toward the falling crest of somber spirits. But the man with the accordion is a fucking professional. He gets you drunk with your own finger.

Then come the haunting strings of the funeral dirge. What’s this? A procession of mourners shuffles across the stage in slow motion. Suddenly everything is magnified as they reach down and pull Amanda Palmer from the ground. The lighting erupts as they lift her form into the air… or are they steadying hands, preventing her from ascending into the rafters? Seated, she peels away the veil, resurrected! Or did the whole room just die, transitioning to the other side?

The ethereal blasting of piano keys forces you from your bodily concern and altogether you are bewitched, somewhere between worlds, Amanda as your guide. Her voice begins its masquerade; at times an intimate whisper, others a cadent battle cry, then an angelic aphrodisiac as it caresses your ears, purring into your bloodstream until it finds your heart and explodes in a vital rhythm, filling you full, too full. Just before you burst, she eases you back into the reality of the dream with her humor and her honesty.

Then her Australian theater troupe transforms lyrics into living art, a painful spoken-word insertion into schoolyard murders, an appropriately lip-synced pantomime dance number decrying a certain interactive musical video game. They invade the crowd, blurring boundaries and inviting you to become a part of them. Then, art takes a breather for the entertaining live auction of band memorabilia and a candid session of Ask Amanda, complete with questions drawn from a hat, before launching headlong back into pianistic peals of thunder and penetrating verse.

The show ensnares an endearing quality reserved previously for romantic escapes. It stays the stars, makes hostage of the moon and promises lovingly never to end. Every note hides in your mind. Each syllable is somehow your own. Alive or dead, Amanda Palmer is the voices in your head.

Even as you stride out into the crisp December air, matte photographs of Amanda (murdered all over the world) tucked under your arm, your body carries the contagious electrical charge of the performance. It’s a feral, beautiful uproar, existing somewhere betwixt awe and understanding.

And yes, somewhere amidst the adventure, you fell in love.

The tour guide slides a complex key into a metal grate in the street, twists, disengages the lock and pulls open two yawning doors to reveal a steep makeshift staircase; a portal into the black belly of Portland. The mystery shrouding these Shanghai Tunnels swirls so thick as to obscure their existence from a great many locals, striding along topside, unaware of the legacy of villainy beneath their feet.

Billed by guides as being ranked among the top ten most haunted locations in North America, this tour holds the candle of interest for paranormal enthusiasts and skeptics alike. One stands in the creeping darkness, beaten back only by flashlight, to be regaled with tragic, historically-accurate accounts of lives sold, lived and lost there beneath the cobblestones. Learn how fiendish men abducted unwitting citizens with trap doors and other devious systems to sell them into slavery at sea that (if did not end in their deaths) deposited them penniless on the other side of the world.

The tour reveals actual artifacts left behind by the doomed souls, departed more than a century previous; a harrowing sight promised to send goose pimples prickling up one’s spine into the hairline. Even the bravest explorers endeavor never to be left behind by the group, lingering too long, alone with the shadows of dark deeds done so many years ago.

The guides prove their story-telling flair alongside a steadfast devotion to legitimate and exhaustively researched fact to produce an engaging, entertaining, educational experience that provides two people with an excuse to stand a step closer together.

Easily among the most memorable attractions in Portland, this tour deserves every visitor’s attention.

The Underground awaits…

after the diligent use of several Windows hotkeys and a couple hours of mind-numbing attention to detail, the bulk of my poetic and short-form writing is now online and available for plagiar- err… viewing by the public!

please take a ganders around and check back often. :)

I’ve enjoyed my slow death here with you,
But by noon it’s my neck for the noose,
Its invitation a cold demand.

But were the sun my man to command,
I’d forever stay his fiery hand,
And steal a day from our butchered muse.

I’d raise us an island from the sea,
There I’d trick you into loving me,
And finally I’d believe in God.

But we lived like kings and died like dogs,
The streets rang red with the rifle’s song,
And our day defied eternity.

Here I hear the warden’s curtain call,
A musket blast echoes down the hall,
Friendly hands seek the key to my cell.

And should this reckless escape end well,
My dead men might find some peace in hell,
Dead for the day dogs don’t die at all.

Sequestered in my sepulcher, I write
In the vital hue of each quill culled fresh
From the seraph’s back, the red ink of spite
Doth surge eagerly from celestial flesh,
Whets the barb of blasphemous appetite.

Eyes never unshuttered to dawning light
Under creased brow, in my silent scream
I scribe the black poetry of the blind,
This flightless arrow bears a vengeful dream
Of the unhealing heart, of ceaseless night.

Virtue and vanity and sacrifice
Offered on the altar of holy art,
Its serrated serenade chimes sublime
Though cannot banish shadows from my heart;
I pluck another feather from my spine.

On and on, on and on and on, I write.

the ocean burned with envy as it watched you look at me like no sailor ever looked at the sea, like seeing glass catch fire in the warm warring light of desire, with murderous clarity the brine conspired to dine on our mortality, capsizing our galleon in its rabid foam and ragged reef of teeth, i could but taste your breath and smell your neck as our feet lifted from the deck, eyes intertwined, ascending to the covetous sky, as stars crossed themselves, charting our demise, growling from infinity, outraged by your beauty, worldly, staggering, its angels made plain in their cheap celestial artistry, our adoration a violent constellation by which our heavenly enemies seemed alien, irrelevant, dim, until the renegade dawn stole through the night and its yawn, a welcome flame to which we became patron saints, golden, radiant, safe to crawl inside each other, lovers, our boundaries blurred, the outside world distant, slurred, our affections understood and unheard.

One score and seven
I, the devil stolen into heaven
I, the angel, the mortal, the heathen
I, the wrath, the forgotten fiery sword
I, the sincerest lover’s whispered word
I, the witching ward
Seven and a score
My self-portrait doubted, distorted, torn
My skeletal easel of lust and scorn
My charming empire of identity
My useless everything stripped to its seed
My dreams set to bleed
Seven scoring me
Deep, deep to my core
Each breath, an oath sworn
In filth turned soil, born
Fertile vows given
Grown, ripened, again
One score and seven.

My bones all beg to break
My soul may soon forsake
The dream I dare to drink
This thought a thorn to think
How weak my will unwound
The gods have gone aground
To here unhorse my head
And drain it dry and dead
Of blood and brains of beasts
To put in place a peace
So finely fit and false
My mighty mind is mauled
But strong I strum the strings
And will re-win my wings.

He journeys to where he has not been
To find that with which we all begin
In a weathered world where truth is dead
And nobody bothers bury it

We deftly deceive the deities
While resolute, our grim pilgrim, he
Confronts the holy the dark the odd
The ghost of a bygone mortal god

His comforts made sacred sacrifice
Erase the shadows from failing night
He drinks deep the ether of our dreams
We, vain violent loving fearing fiends

He will wander even in sojourn
To divine his human borders burnt
A pilgrim then through ruin and smoke
Thus builds him a sheer and simple home–
–among sheer and simple folk.

A moon made from white ice hides
My dead forgotten futures
On a spine hooked like a lure
From a thin line of starlight

My leaving lovers
My guts uncovered
Held high in my hands
While I could still stand

Pain is a lie
Smaller than life
A pretty bit of butchery
A baited heart, a mind’s deceit

Filled all the way with nothing
Each breath a terrible dream
Too close to see
Too far to reach

I die again in slow motion
Alone adrift in my ocean
I dare to drown great Poseidon
In the waters I dam within

A death turned to life if I drink
This grave become birth when I sink
With abandon I abandon
Dread for hope and let the world in.

He closed his eyes. The engine idled. The actors inflected their lines again. He raised his palms to his face, seemingly without purpose. The pictures were picturesque. The lines were love. As he reached for it, it retreated. He was a clumsy hunter. He knew that.

The romances meant to inspire propelled him toward contrary climes. Every cinematic kiss was one he remembered knowing he would not know again. Alone, he began the journey home.

Our connections are tragic, measurable intervals. Ever, we are pried apart by competing distractions of pomp and bombast like suicide bomb blasts; around every corner, behind every eye. His eyes were open, guiding him toward his destination, unconscious contributors to his one drama.

Then, it began. Something unfamiliar. An unnamed emotion. A furrowed brow supported by a clenched jaw. The lines began to blur. The lights streaked and wavered when they should have been concise pinpoints in the night, stars, signals, brakes. They very nearly closed, mashing the entire world into a kaleidoscope of color and ambient forgotten feeling. Then came the wheeze, an intermittent wordless whisper that could have been a quiet laugh, but was not.

Forward still, he was propelled, gliding through the darkness, unsafe. The lights bombarded him, unrelenting. Or perhaps his eyes attacked all creation with their vision. Lenses for a fiery heart so fierce if he were to peel back his flesh for one incendiary instant the entire countryside would swim in fire.

He recognized the road; habit had seen to that. He smothered the unwelcome invaders upon his cheek. There was no number of days since he had last called them familiar. After so strangled and so brief a reunion he wondered if he might never know them again.

Such despairing desolation was not meant to be felt by men. Successes bereft of celebration. Cold nights where one wandering worries the atmosphere may abandon him and the dry lifeless void might suck the life from his lungs. These mighty blows upon the soul are meant for the moments before existence, when the spirit is white hot within the forge that was the birthplace of the world; not the brittle metal that welcomes mortal touch. Man is meant to break himself under the hammering.

But this one did not break. He would but lie scarred upon the anvil, sparking.

Why could she not have a name? But she did have a name.

Oft have I felt the prick of Cupid’s aimed
Flaming arrow of infatuation
And no more do I flinch at his barbed pain
But give him my daily salutation

For there came one January morning
Over a new lost love I sat mourning

I recognized the beat of his white wings
And did fetch my rifle from the mantel
Grinning like a devil when angels sing
Loading more rounds than his frame could handle

The cherub took his aim and I in turn
Squeezed the trigger with my heart as it burned

And took my trophy as proud hunters do
The head severed clean from Cupid’s body
Mounted with love and care and gobs of glue
Smiling, upon the wall of my study.

The young man dashed up the stairs outside a yawning stone temple, its starless silhouette having guided him for miles against the backdrop of night. His legs pumped violently beneath him, an exhausted unconscious rhythm that eluded him if he dared grasp at it. Lightning flashed in the distance. He stumbled when its rumble of thunder pounded down an age behind the light.

Somehow, his hands supported the weight of his falling frame. The stairs were still damp. As his chest heaved, he noted the pools of rainwater gathered in the worn calderas of each step. It had rained and he knew it would rain again. Amidst this distraction, he did not feel the hands pulling him up to his feet. He peered around as if he had just been born. He must have reached the top. A robed priestess spoke to him but he could not hear her over the drumming of his heart. Creases of worry folded themselves into her brow. She appeared to call for some aid, but he brushed by her.

He staggered to one of the soaring columns that supported the open structure around the inner temple. Fearing his instant of respite would ensnare him for an eternity, he pushed off and ran across the polished marble slabs toward a pair of ornate doors. A stern priest, graying at the temples, materialized in his path and caught him by the shoulders. The dangerously cool touch of the young man’s perspiring flesh forced the priest to frown. He stared curiously at the holy man’s moving lips but could make no meaning of them.

“The goddess,” the young man rasped, “I must see her.”

The priest shook his head and firmed his grip on the young man. Refusing to be denied after such an impossible journey, he lunged forward. More arms entangled themselves around his, slowing but not stopping his progression.

Then, with a deep shuddering, the double doors opened like springtime pedals for the caress of the bumblebee. The young man halted as the gravity of the small event demanded the attention of every open eye. The temple’s attendants reluctantly released him, equally beset by awe. Not a soul present believed the wind responsible.

Freshly freed, he strode forward; though after his desperate adventure he found walking a foreign and ungainly task. They watched breathlessly as he slipped inside and pulled the portal closed behind him.

His breast still beat itself into unrelenting oblivion and in the austere quiet of that temple he there feared he would not again know the serenity of a peacefully drawn breath. That was until he beheld the altar of the goddess. By some miracle of architecture, streams of moonlight mingled with starlight poured themselves over the sculpture of perfect female form. The stone figure appeared to him a gem, lit from within, alive like paper before fire.

Mortal women were called beautiful for possessing any of her features even in singularity, but her grace existed beyond mere physicality. As he shuffled raggedly toward the dark and gleaming pool at the statue’s base, the young man mused beyond his fatigue that the true divinity of this goddess was perhaps cheapened in distraction by the lusty curvature of her naked physique.

He leaned doggedly upon the edge of the pool, his composure increasingly evasive. The young man choked upon gulps of air, his face contorting in unflattering fits. Had he the tears, he would have wept.

“Drink.”

His gaze shot up to the goddess. Addled by fatigue, he did not question the first word he had heard in days but rather the notion he sully the sanctified waters of this sacred place.

“Drink, my love,” her voice a whispered song, like one lover singing another asleep after a frightful dream. “Step into my waters and drink.”

He could not but obey. With trembling care he removed his leather sandals, unsure of where the packed dust of the road quit and his own flesh began. Swarms of blisters stung like wasps as he dipped his beaten feet beneath the surface. At this, his eyelids forced themselves shut and two defiant tears streaked the grime of his cheek. The young man pitched forward into the pool, catching himself only by hands and knees, imagining the filth of his journey an aquatic cloud, billowing out unseen in the blackness before him.

“Drink.”

With tortured determination, he lifted a cupped hand to his cracked lips and let the sweet liquid glide over his tongue and swallowed. That first draft granted him the strength to take another and after a short succession, he found he could finally breathe. He sat upon his heels, the rippling water lapping gently at his waist, and reared his head back to address the deity above him.

“Goddess.”

“How may I serve you, my love?” She sang to him with such dangerous divinity as to lend a man the feeling of equivalence with gods.

“I have come to beg from you a terrible boon.”

“Speak out, then.”

“I implore you free me from your love.”

“You, mortal, are mine to love as I please.” He could hear the frown upon her heart.

“Love, I fear, has become my one dreadful affliction,” he dug a thumb into his own arm and held it clumsily aloft, “a circulatory stain within my veins.”

“Why, dear one?”

He cast his eyes down into the darkness and well into the world beyond. “She belongs to another.”

“We cannot belong to each other, only ourselves.”

“Then free me from myself,” he pleaded. “I wish to be parted from this form in which she cannot find love. My fragile heart cannot bear another stroke of so cruel a fate.”

“Your words do your heart grave disservice, my love. For three days it has carried you to me faster than the hunted hare. It endeavors to live, even when you do not.”

“Then free me from my sight, goddess. I pledge to you the remainder of my earthly service if I could be but blind,” he wrung his hands in wounded frustration. “Must the whole world remind me of her?”

“Without your eyes, my love, would you then be free of her?” He sensed the knowing in her voice. “Would you not again recall the fragrance of her hair as you tangled yourselves in the warmth of my embrace? Would not her every taste dance on your tongue as you remembered her feminine sighs upon your ear? Would not the soft weight of her in your arms,” she hesitated.

“Please,” he cried, his arms falling open; his hands disappearing to the wrist in the formlessness of the water. “I can bear no more.”

“Then now you know the dire cost of love, dear one.”

He closed his eyes and breathed long breaths of defeat. “It is too great.”

“Yes, my love. Such is the curse of mortality.”

“You will not release me?” He gazed imploringly upward.

“No. I will not.”

“Then my pilgrimage is for naught. I am forsaken to doomed days.” He spoke as though the world were breaking apart over the vastness of void space.

“Stay such pain in my house, young one. Your fiery heart cannot now see I have many daughters.”

“There is but one I desire.”

“For now,” she repeated, her voice reverberated with calming patience. “I have feared you might chance upon one of my favorites before your impassioned heart whole enough to hold the love they command.”

The young man wavered as he knelt in the pool that now felt warm to his blood; speechless, a portrait of exhaustion.

“Rest now, my love,” she sang to him. “No harm shall befall you in my care.”

He knew neither the strength nor desire to defy her.

“You will not wake to a wintering world, but find in its stead a springtide of hope and vitality. Rest now; I shall sing to you a spell.”

The young man then slipped himself beneath the surface of the mirrored and inviting darkness, disappearing from the sight of any observer; though there were none.

There, at the feet of Aphrodite, he fell asleep and continued to dream.

I must not obsess obsess obsess
I must hide this last lovesick abscess

I need you to strip for me
I need for you to strip me
Strip me of my arrogance
Strip me of my emptiness

I need you now that you’ve gone
Please peel my armor away
Please I need to be naked
Can’t you love me when I’m wrong?

I need to feel you until I can’t feel me.

There was once a fortunate king called Geoffrey. His lands were green and bountiful; his people hard-working and happy. Yet somberly he would sit atop his throne and gaze for hours out the great window of his keep. His bride, a princess from a neighboring land, became concerned by her betrothed and his long, quiet hours in the tower.

“My love,” she said sweetly, “are you not happy?”

“No,” he replied gravely, “I am not happy, my love.”

Out of genuine kindness, she consulted a minstrel and brought him before the king. The minstrel’s joy rattled along the strings of his lute and echoed fiercely through the halls and hearts of the kingdom. With a flourish and a bow, the minstrel knelt before King Geoffrey.

“My king,” he asked earnestly, “are you not pleased?”

“No,” rang the ragged reply, “I am not yet pleased.”

The princess dismissed the minstrel with her heartfelt thanks and brought then a wise man before the king.

“My king,” offered the wise man, “your kingdom is a garden ripe with blossoms of every variety, the greatest flower being your loving bride who wishes naught but your happiness. Are you not content?”

“No,” sighed the king, “I am not content.”

This discouraged the princess. She dismissed the wise man and succumbed to worry. The king, though his days were spent tending an unseen fire, was not blind. He knew at once his unhappiness could not stay in the kingdom.

That very night, after kissing his bride on the forehead and bidding her sleep soundly, King Geoffrey stole away from the high, high walls of his kingdom and into the darkened countryside.

He strode alone until happening across a road at dawn the following day. There, he was at once surrounded by bandits.

The tallest bandit pointed his sword at the king.

“Rich man,” he shouted jovially, “I demand all you have.”

“My friend,” the king replied, “I have only the clothes you see and the heaviness of my heart.”

The bandit regarded the king carefully. “Then I shall have both,” he smirked.

In exchange for his clothes, the bandit gave the king a torn pair of breeches.

“Be no longer troubled,” the bandit offered in parting, “for now no man can take anything from you.”

And thus the king wandered through the wilderness; the sun and moon his only friends. The more he walked, the more his thoughts turned from his own unhappiness and toward days long since dawned and passed.

In the morning, the light on the wildflowers reminded him of the smile that could only belong to his bride. In the evening, as he dozed in a bed of leaves, he remembered fondly how nightly she would warm her frozen feet on his.

Many such days did pass until one came when the king stooped before a pool to drink of its waters. He was surprised to find the reflection was not his own. Whiskers had overgrown the face of this man wavering on the surface before him.

The king wondered, as he touched the glittering stones of the pool, if he would ever again feel the smooth skin of his love. He wondered if he could bear to again see her lips and not know their taste. The king wondered then, terribly, if he was a king at all. For what king spends his days dreaming of a kingdom without claiming it for his own?

With haste and difficulty, Geoffrey made his way back home.

He stopped a woodsman on the road outside the keep.

“Woodsman,” Geoffrey implored, “where are the castle walls?”

“Stranger,” he roughly replied, “ours is a friendly kingdom with no enemies and no need of walls.”

Geoffrey smiled unexpectedly. The castle seemed somehow more like home without the walls he spent years fortifying.

“Woodsman,” Geoffrey requested, “would you do for me a great favor? Go forth to the keep and instruct the princess her king has returned and wants nothing more than to fill her heart with happiness.”

The woodsman leaned grimly upon the handle of his ax. “Stranger,” he consoled, “these lands have not a king and no princess of whom you speak.”

Geoffrey had been struck dumb. The woodsman felt his sudden sorrow.

“My lord,” he offered, “you should know the princess left here long ago on the arm of a minstrel. The wise man said her heart was full of happiness for it contained not only her own and so, finally, her own.”

Geoffrey wept.

“My lord,” the woodsman begged, “why now do you weep? Your bride is happy and you are free to find peace and contentment.”

Geoffrey wiped his eyes dry. “Woodsman,” he said calmly, “I am not your lord and my tears are not entirely of sadness.”

“How then,” the woodsman asked, “might I bring you happiness on this bittersweet day?”

“My friend,” Geoffrey said, “my pleasure must be my own.”

The woodsman smiled and again took up his ax.

Geoffrey then retraced his path a short way upon the road and struck sharply into the wilderness; each step his own and for its own sake, but never without the hope of hearing his bride’s behind him.

My heart beats backward
I cannot breathe this air inside of me

Dead as days I saved
Buried like bones in my skin made from stone

Red light twisted tight
Hungry to hold the blood I bled and sold

I beat my heart back
Into a cage I cannot myself ‘scape.

Let it be here,
Where the bodies of our brothers be the corpses of kings
Sown like seeds beneath our feet.
Let it be here our roots drive deep and drink
Their valor, their might.
Let us here grow to defiant height.
Let our roar crack the sky,
Quake the earth,
Break upon the ear of our enemy.
Let it be here war is born bloody and screaming!
Let it be here!

The young man awoke from his dreaming,
Awoke from a moment of meaning,
The sleeping world, retreating
Before a dull army of reality,
Vastly beyond counting or defeating.
Green eyes gone grey, blind, but still seeing.

This cannibal’s kiss I give to my twin
In the mirror, mirror within her eyes
I may finally forget when I die
Under the weight of what went unspoken

I am the sunken ship in a bottle
In the cockpit of an unmanned mission
I am but one determined skeleton
With my grim gunner’s grip on the throttle

Strangled confessions of forgotten crimes
That same song on heartstrings long out of tune
You could not care to recognize, not you
For whom my dry heart still pumps, keeping time

Hanging angels from her heart un-woken
Ragged wings sink me to an eager ground
This noose denies my reach, for I am bound
To stubborn love, thus unspoken–
broken.

Wind, breath, wand’ring desire,
Feed, burn, passionate Fire.

Whisper, storm, blasting howl,
Blister, flare, devour, scowl.

Rage and fade, choke the flame,
Flicker, falter, pain, pain!

Eaten, defeated, end,
Confine, consume the Wind,

Nurture, nurse, grow, love, give.
Balance, warmth, light, love, live.

You are Wind, I am Fire,
I am Fire, you are Wind,
You are Fire, I am Wind,
I am Wind, you are Fire,
We are Fire, we are Wind,
We are, we are, Fire, Fire!
Wind! Wind! Begin! Again!

Free, free from both form and flesh
The body begins its rest
The soul parted from the earth
The bones return to the dirt
From whence the tree grew her roots
From whence she let fall her fruits
From whence the mother had fed
To nourish her child now dead

Another birth thus fulfilled
As the soul departs this world

Free from every holy book
Free from all judgmental looks
For the world keeps its guesswork
The dead fly beyond its words
Priests and wise men all children
Heavens and hells forsaken
When the soul renews its youth
The soul alone knows its truth.

I watched my blood catch fire as it hit the ground
Like clouds across the setting sun; burning, drowned

It was then the gods came for me
Across rivers of my outpouring
The gods, they were not well
Crying, singing me songs of Hel

Punching through like a puncture wound
In the veil between me and eternity

The howling dead gripped their claws about my throat
A grand design beyond the fancies of my mortal mind
Shadow and terror and an endless reproachful choke
My single strangled prayer that again I could but die

The gods, they did decline
What cruel immortal swine!

There, in timeless doom and silence I wept
The blackest of tears upon my ragged breath

Breath! a rhythmic defiance of death
Death to which I had myself resigned
When I conjured this visage of Hel
And imprisoned myself fast inside

Lost in a world beneath the world
My slender sail of hope unfurled

I let the spirits thrash upon my flesh
And focused my will like a lens

First, just enough to stand up straight
Then, to step with their dark weight
Again, again, each taken in time
Grimly, ghostly, I began to climb.

One score and six standing upon the lips of a stone god
Rumbling my thunder up off the clouds high and down
Down into a stolen storming kiss from a mistress above
Above the departed dreams of dying kings soon drowned
By bloodless streams of doubted certainty screaming loud
Begging again to be found by the strong unflagging heart
As it pounds, pounds its furious art into the aching ground
Toward valor and the stinging strings of the valkyrie’s harp
While she sings her hero’s deeds into centuries unended
By the violent empires of villains and their fevered fires
Burning like the divine disdain of wronged gods offended
At every errant spirit on decline due to a world of liars
Hissing and spinning the undiluted truth of my nature
With hells for heavens replaced with fate’s patient tick
Tick echoing deaf upon ears untempted by vulgar lures
Passed swift with the confidence of one score and six.

When he spoke it was with such hushed intensity that I wondered if I had not finally fallen asleep and his words were an incantation designed to keep me dreaming.

“Let me die tonight,” he said. “My whole life I have been dying to die for something.” The crickets answered him rudely, speaking over one another and never giving pause for polite conversation. He was accustomed to their incessant commentary and thus continued on himself. “It has been in the small moments, always, I have been gripped by it and has consequently stretched them into tiny eternities.” Here he paused just long enough for the fear to well up inside of me that he would stop speaking. “For I loved living so feverishly that I could conjure no greater sacrifice in its honor. Point of fact, as the years crawled along, young as I was, I began to fear I might never arrive upon the opportunity to die in service of a cause.” I imagine he smiled at himself in this bittersweet moment, but the moonlight glowed so dimly I could not make out the features of his face. “For hours I would study the shadows on the ceiling above my bed and wonder if any, even one, of my countrymen felt the same as I on those nights. Of course, the morning would steal away such dreamlike desires. But they always returned and like a poet remembering his verse for the first time, I was grateful for them.” I became suddenly aware that I was not alone in listening to him. Like children we were awed, as if he were an untamed animal wandering too closely by; both beautiful and mean in its magnificence. I knew then why I followed him with such conviction. The gods had unwittingly allowed one of their own to escape. Though I would one day witness the contrary, I did without a divided heart at that time believe no divine power could permit the death of such a man. Perhaps this is why I selfishly followed him so closely through the jaws of catastrophe. I hoped by proximity to gain the privilege of his protection. Again, he spoke. “Let me die tonight that each of you may live.” Without so much as another breath he plucked his rifle from its rest and stood up from where he lay on his belly in the grass.

Our tiny eternity had expired and it was with insatiable hope we carried on behind him through the trees and off toward morning.

“What do you consider the worst of sins?” The young man asked as he peered out the office window into a darkened warehouse below.

The aging man seated at the table behind him scowled. “All transgressions are equal.”

The young man declined to extend the courtesy of looking at his company as he replied. “I disagree.” His eyes were distant, as if imagining the shadowed crates and wirework walkways on a bustling afternoon. “I used to think it was murder. Murder is certainly brutal. But it can be justified.”

“Thou shalt not-”

“Spare me.”

Again, the aging man scowled.

“Killing a man can be done to save an innocent life, prevent further injustice, prevent a war, whatever. It’s not inherently good; I’m not suggesting that, but it can, under certain circumstances, be a final recourse. And it’s finite. The victim is murdered, then ceases his pain. But,” the young man half-turned to face is elder, “I think rape is the worst.”

“Do you?”

“I do.” The young man began pacing the room, never looking the other in the eye. “It is the most intimate physical betrayal. And unlike murder, the sinner always takes pleasure in the act. It is the complete and unrestrained theft of innocence. One with power exerting it over the defenseless for personal gain. And the pain does not end with the act. The victim’s days are haunted by the trauma, for it could happen again at any time. Hence, rapists are the wickedest of men, preying on women and children. Would you not agree?”

“I find this whole topic morbid and without taste.”

“As do I.” The young man repeated those three words in a whisper, almost entirely to himself. “It is what has been bothering me. It is the very reason I asked you here tonight.”

The aging man said nothing.

“I was watching television the other day, just changing channels really, when I happened across a televangelist program.”

The seated man arched an eyebrow.

“I was transfixed,” the young man’s expression changed. “Disgusted.”

For the first time, their eyes met.

“There stood a man, a wealthy man, an icon, professing to hear the voice of God and proclaiming it to the world or rather, his loyal viewers. His juvenile theatrics even included pauses where he pretended to be listening to the Lord’s voice in real-time.”

“Perhaps he was.”

“Bullshit.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“Then God’s an asshole.”

“That is blasphemy.”

“Spare me the clichés, please. No God would whisper any kind of truth to a televangelist. They are the professional wrestlers of religion. But to paint them with that brush is to soften the severity of their reality. This man was not an entertainer. He stood at his pulpit spouting conjecture and half-truth under the guise of divine inspiration. Now this in itself, albeit annoying, is no grand crime. But the man on the television was using this circus act as a weapon against his fellow man. He inflicted it on them with his every breath.”

“I hardly see how preaching qualifies as an attack against humanity.”

“He asked for their money. He fabricated divine justifications. This fat, pink-mouthed man with his fake tan and his jewelry and his tailor-fit suit was preying upon the innocent. Dollars for prayers. Because anyone with the miniscule presence of mind to send this charlatan his money deserves not only pity, but protection. As one would protect a child from predators, sexual and otherwise. Only this scavenger smiled through his teeth at the camera and charmed his fragile viewers into lining his pockets with money that could well have gone to any other cause and have been a far better donation. Any sober individual could see right through his act and yet he was allowed to continue fleecing the fearful of their worldly wealth and feeding himself fat. It was televised rape.”

“That is a rather sensationalist view to adopt of a preacher who uses a popular medium to reach a larger audience and ask donations for his church and his God.”

“I completely agree.”

The seated man furrowed his brow.

“I take no issue with religion. One’s relationship with eternity is an indisputably private and sacred right. And though each of us is born with that potential, we are not all of us equally equipped to protect ourselves from those who would abuse that spirituality for their own gain. But those of us who are so equipped have an obligation to our fellow man.”

The aging man shifted in his chair.

“This televangelist was not a simple man of God. He was not donating the spoils to his church. I investigated his spending habits. Not quite kosher. This parasite was feeding on the faithful, suggesting a direct relationship between how much one donated and his devotion to God. He also spoke of hell and punishment, though he never plainly claimed a price of admission through the pearly gates. A cleverly woven tapestry. Well, not to a trained eye, but obviously passable to those without their own guile. And there you have it; a man of power forcing himself on the defenseless for his own perverse gain, thus violating the most sacred of human tenets.”

The young man leaned in toward the aging man. “That, is worse than murder.” He turned his back and paced away. It was in that moment the aging man first began to test the strength of the duct tape binding his wrists to each arm of the chair. “I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

The unmistakable sound of a short blade being drawn from its sheath trapped the aging man’s breath in his throat. He dared not move.

“Relax, Father.” The young man said with a smirk as he turned back toward the older man with a knife in his hand.

“You’re a madman!”

“Mad? No. I assure you, I am completely self-possessed. Angry perhaps, but I know that’s not what you meant.” The young man advanced slowly on the aging man.

“You dare not kill me!”

The young man smiled calmly. “We already discussed murder to protect the innocent, Father. Regrettable, but sometimes a necessity.”

At this, the aging man shoved his chair backward, scooting himself frantically up against the wall a dozen feet away. “Stop this! I will give you whatever you want!”

The young man said nothing, but slowly closed the distance between them. In a panic, the seated man attempted to shuffle to the side. The young man’s boot found a small piece of chair between his legs and pinned him to the wall. “I am not here to bargain with you, Father.” He slapped the flat of the blade against the aging man’s cheek. “I simply came to share a truth with you.”

The aging man’s eyes moistened with tears. “God, protect me.”

The young man snorted. “There are many ways to kill a man with a knife, Father. You might want to lend me your attention.” The two men locked eyes for an extended moment. “You will cease your ministries. You will stop preying on the weak. You are no longer allowed to get fat by jeopardizing the faith of my fellow man. Continue, and you will die. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

The young man gently drew the blade against the aging man’s cheek and under his jaw. “Tell me you understand.”

“I understand!”

With one startling flourish of movement, the young man jerked the knife away from the aging man’s face and returned the weapon to its sheath. He stepped away, allowing the chair to fall back on all four legs. “Now I can guess what you’re thinking. You will contact the authorities and attempt to seize me so that you might continue upon your defiant little path.”

“No.”

“Well, should you have a change of heart, I thought you should know some things about me. None of the information I provided to lure you here is true. I know where you sleep and how to track you. And most importantly, I am smarter than you. So, please, make good on your word and find some honest work.” The young man plucked his jacket from a nail behind the door, opened it, smiled to his companion and closed it behind him.

As the aging man listened to his footfalls on the metal stairs outside the office, he began to weep.

* * *

After a one month hiatus, that same televangelist resumed his regularly scheduled program. One month after that, the aging man was dead at the foot of the hill near his estate. Had the wreckage of his late model sport utility vehicle not been so badly burned, an investigator might have discovered that the brake line had been cut, by a knife.

The borrowed form thus born
Upon its journey of return
To obliviousness
To a honeyed rest
The personage undone
Spirited beyond sublunary summons
Fleshed instead in parchment
Ink for blood and firmament
Won by binding the self
Within a spine upon a shelf
Cradled like to an infant’s frame
For a fragile tome houses same
The whisper of each bending page
A patient breath of defiant age
The library of wisdom
A living mausoleum
Of artfully departed guides
Consulted one after another, in time.

“Umm,” the first glimmer of panic welled-up in Justyn’s voice as the late-January darkness swallowed the shadowed tree trunks around him, “this flashlight is dying.”

Jeff did not require any more confirmation than the brownish light dwindling back into its portable source like some defeated army. They were still lost. Jeff’s restrained sigh twisted out of his lips in serpentine wisps, or at least, he imagined it did in the uncompromising blackness before him. Then, as if on some sick cinematic cue, the baying of coyotes at the sliver of a silver crescent moon echoed through the evergreens.

“Let’s swap the batteries out of the camera into the flashlight,” Jeff offered sternly, doing his best to ignore the barking of wild canines in the distance. The sound was far enough away not to raise urgent alarm, but still close enough to be heard; which never inspires good cheer, especially when coming from the direction one needs travel.

Two pairs of fingerless gloves began dismantling the flashlight and gutting the camera. As the transplant took place, Jeff wondered if they were not paying for the view of the waterfall they had stolen less than an hour before with this rather sharp change of luck.

The young adventurers had arrived at the park just before dusk, as all the rest of the hikers were packing up their cars and driving away. Under cover of darkness they journeyed gladly into the wilderness and beheld a spectacle of Nature. On this cloudless evening, the moon and its stars shone bright enough to illuminate the two hundred foot stream of falling river and the pale mist that looked on while it drowned itself in a frothing pool at its base. The flashlight (once so full of life) also lighted a sign that firmly indicated the trail leading behind said waterfall was certainly and unmistakably closed. Needless to say, they pressed on.

That minor trespass (or polite declination of warning) yielded staggering results. The waterfall roared at them, swirling its mist in all directions as they picked their way along the rocky and broken trail. Once sufficiently sheltered in a wind-worn caldera behind the curtain of water, they stared up into the night, neither finding use for his faculty of speech.

It was a view they had stolen from Nature and now she was repaying them in kind. The flashlight flared back to life, but with only a fraction of the batteries it required having been replaced. It was quickly snuffed. They were still lost and would need all its strength if they were going to even entertain the hope of sleeping in warm beds that night. Their sojourn off the functioning trail had turned them around at a large convergence of trails.

After stumbling over countless invisible objects and misidentifying several silhouetted landmarks and studying multiple vague and contradicting park-provided stationary maps by cell phone light, the pair rediscovered the path that would lead them back toward their parked automobile (provided they did not unknowingly pitch themselves into a precipice or were not overcome by slathering coyotes).

Despite being forced to navigate by the weak offerings of their back-up near-microscopic flashlight and quick bursts from its larger half-dead counterpart, they found their way to a familiar highway. After talking for a couple miles and diving into the underbrush to avoid a patrol car (it seemed to make sense at the time), Jeff and Justyn at last returned to their vehicle as it waited patiently for their return.

Within moments, they were inside a temperature-controlled environment with power and light to spare. No coyote could penetrate its defenses. It could convey them to any destination at speeds no human legs could duplicate. Warmth, safety and security. Their circumstances were entirely reversed.

Spirits were high, but in fact, their morale never faltered during the entire ordeal. An unflagging sense of adventure propelled them through each trial and hardship. In hindsight, neither would trade a single misbegotten moment away. For, like the waterfall, each had chosen his path and worn it away over years of practice. One must not break stride for misfortune. One must charge forward and cut a broad and confident swath of existence. As did the waterfall; as it does still while this is being written; as it does now while this is being read.

I feel like a live grenade
Overdue by a decade
On display in a fragile cage
Smiling like a polite whore
The one that would have won the war

I could drink dry the ocean
With my hoping affliction
My affection and my infection
To gift the world with my thirst
Instead of goddamned rhyme and verse

An illusion without magic
My reflection never fixed
I know all my worst tricks
I always win while I still lose
Fearing the worst in me is best in you.

If you are all different
Then you are all the same

Independence is idiocy
If you all seek one divinity

Whether to know to see or to be
Following in footsteps of envy

You on the knees of a god
Still need what you have not got

I may be the certainty in your confusion
But I am the doubt in your daydreamt delusion

I only offer an equation
You live to die to find solutions

One must find balance to be human
Even amidst equilibrium

There is no real meaning in meaning
Just a dream within a dream- just sleep

You are all so different
But you are all the same.

I am the wind to drive the dead trees down
I howl over open graves upon the ground

I am stronger than all your might combined
There is not one fucking doubt in my mind

The weak will tremble at my every cruelty
Until they cry my name in terrible fealty

My life will be spent in creation of death
Thusly have I chosen to expend my breath

So that strangers might know my might
And envy me from their pathetic plights

Know I never felt alone or needed love
Or desperately desired word from above

I did not mistake the purpose for being
I am not some distorted child to pity

Without conscience to rob my confidence
My dry eyes will be free from repentance

Until I leave my armies marching in place
To dangle like meat from a rope, blank-faced.

A setting sun shines
Through the cold black abyss
To somehow die warm and bright
In my eyes.

Grandfather! my
Eternal evergreen.

A light so bright-
Had I not already died,
I might.

Grandfather! why
Do you feel so alive?

To be given due,
Were there no afterlife,
No valorous rest designed,
I know one was wrought
For you.

Grandfather! I
Will fill your heart with pride.

Grandfather! I
Strive to stand by your side.

Grandfather! I
Live to earn that great right.

Powerless and unafraid
I stand before the tidal wave

Tearless at your hero’s pyre
I can consume the eager fire

I can read the words atop our tomb
I hear the gods thunder down our doom

“Mortals, now undo yourselves”
“Panic at the doorstep of hell”

“Render null your great reason”
“Witness the death of all seasons”

I brush by those who listen
My heart neither stilled nor quickened

I am not rapt by my end
I know strength none here can command

I am one but not of you
Mortal and invulnerable

I can read the words atop our tomb
I hear the gods thunder down our doom

I will not count down toward their end
But confound them with my every breath.

Beware the newborn light in your eyes
For its shadow follows close behind
As your day dawns in refulgent fire
At your heel still resides darkest night

A shadow, a stripe
A devil without wings
A limit, a line
A monster on his leash

Beware the tide inside your mind
The tug of your blood and its might
For too quick comes the spark of pride
And your will shall ignite in kind

Congratulations are in order
But this trial is not yet over
You are merely midway up the slope
Of razor of rock of ice of snow

Your mountain, your mast
You travel the right road
Your portrait, your past
But you are not yet home

Beg not the truth to die
Cast down the shadow, fight!

Welcome here as you are
I fear you must be warned:

All light throws a shadow
And blackness needs be known

Lest it begin re-growth
Lest it again take hold.

I am still deaf to the symphony of sunsets
Screaming myself hoarse in the silence

Redundant remembering
I will never admit what you did to me
My pride keeps bleeding internally

My truth reduced to a riddle
My anger stripped to a whisper
My art trimmed to a rhyme
My life condensed to a time

My taste trapped on your tongue

Please come back and free me from
This devil between me and the sun

Please come back only to leave
I am finally ready for the key

I hate what you have laid in me
I hate how you have lain in me

You lay
You lie
Sacrosanct
In my

Vacant hell

You are my last locked door
In a hurting hall of empty cells
Where shame was the true whore
For the years I could not tell

Though you have been gone
We remained in here as one

The difference being now
I am ready to let me out.

I’m afraid to watch this sun set
Afraid it won’t come up again
Scared to go find it in the dark
And fail to generate a spark

Like an unanswered call to arms
I see the dead warriors warned
Soldiering now another world
While I, merely I, face the girl

I can never have the whole
Can I give her half this hole?
Love quietly requited
Bleeding but never dying

I seek not to fill full my heart
If knowing the warmth of the hearth
Casts the rest of my days in frost
And dares demand such heavy cost

But her simple smile melts my will
And dispels my best steel-eyed chill
She takes my hand and seals my fate
I’m doomed to love her all my days

I can ever have this whole
If I spare her half the hole
Love quietly requited
Healing but ever dying.

The other angels fly too high
For you to hitch a ride
Abandoned here to die
An expatriate of the sky

Like the last leaves of lonely trees
Split by love and lightning
Black and bare but living
A cloven trunk from sundered seed

How one being grows divided
Breathe air or breathe water
Breathe their ash or breathe fire
What one lower knows of higher

My friend, take some rest
I will keep you safe
My friend, so distressed
I will fight this day

Retire your pride
And close your eyes
Just dream tonight
It is your right

I would sooner see
All my bones picked clean
Than let your heart bleed
One drop it might need

Whatsoever path you do choose
Know now I am with you
For untold futures too
I will hold true, I am with you

You, the bravest angel alive
Seeking a haven here topside
Building a new heaven inside
Our expatriate of the sky.

I have always feared asking
For the things I need
But tonight I am asking
Tonight I have needs

Uncurl your fingers please
From that fucking bottle

Not for ever
For a moment
Only
Please
Just breathe here with me

I request your presence
Every bristling fiber of ego
Every shred of your defiant wit

Put your defense to rest
I dare not ask you make quit or change
I but beg for you as you un-changed

Unfurl your fingers please
From that Holy Bible

Not eternally
For a spell, an hour
Only
Please
Just be here with me

I request your retreat
From the places I cannot follow
Back to mortar and mortals and me

Spare me indignation
I dare not soil your temple clothes
I but beg a naked day un-closed

I am so wearied by the extremes
That leave me an age of ways alone
That leave me always the same; alone

Not always I suppose
For all I know
But
Please
Just be sober, not for you
For me.

Too oft does my flesh find my soul entombed,
When at its core it aches to be exhumed;
Freed from a stagnant grave and its stale fume,
No longer robbed by moonlight of right bloom.

As if to some spell surrendered had I;
To a bewitching breath whispered inside
My sleeping ear, over a dreaming mind,
To where the heart of spirit does reside.

One must shake loose the bonds of dormancy,
Disband the armies of tranquility,
Set a fire behind the eyes, see the seas,
And seize that which is to all mankind free.

The breast is home to hearth, tender marrow
Burns as tinder toward unspent morrows;
For but his own steps a man does follow,
Often haunting his own days with sorrows.

And thus have I broken my vital stride,
Shined my searching light bright enough to blind
This cheated scoundrel with knowing surprise,
For I found the hands ‘round my neck were mine.

Again against ghosts of understanding,
Spectral reflections, merely vapory,
No hostile horde, no hidden enemy,
I had but nigh mistaken me; for me.

One more generation
Born again degraded

Factory feeds on its product
Like some beast eating up its young

And the foreman sings
Strumming the same strings

“Another one off the line
Another one bred and blind
Another sister in kind
Another brother for hire”

Copy of a copy
Won’t you please help me see
How your sterling things
Justify your breathing

Copy of a copy
Tell me all your dead dreams
Mediocre stories
And try to impress me

Choke down that approval you so need
Suck dry the teat of society

Win the envy of idols
Become the child of a child

Be that passing god you slew
Because we all so love you

I know I do.

(day one)

The situation is bleak.

The sun set over this cursed country some hours ago, allowing the night to steal into our camp like an unwelcome dog. The terrain is far more bleak and unforgiving than even our most pessimistic companion, Wiggins, had anticipated.

At the outset, we were met with every difficulty and the manner of “coincidental” misfortune that must have the gods gloating above and/or below (whichever have taken interest in this doomed journey).

Cholmers is dead. He took his own life early on to avoid the shame of starvation and I cannot entirely fault him for his decision. The near one hundred percent humidity here complements the uncompromising terrain. During our last encounter with hostile savages, our medical officer, Fitzsimmons, believes to have uncovered what appears to be vestigial gills on the corpses of our fallen foes. His notes and sketches might prove useful to the medical community if we ever return from this Georgian suicide march.

Rappaport is a soak and has already drained our alcohol rations bone dry. Morale is low.

The men look to me for guidance and leadership but it has been the indomitable spirit of The Baron that has kept us afloat. Without her optimism, I fear more party members may have already succumbed to the dark path Cholmers was so eager to stride down. Gods bless and keep her.

I should be sleeping. Malnutrition and exhaustion have taken their toll on my wits but I cannot seem to find slumber no matter where I seek it. My tent-mate, Chadwick, either has the worst deviated septum I have ever encountered or some hulking beast prowled into his bedroll, devoured him and has fallen asleep in the warmth of his entrails, snoring out some prolonged primitive snout. Whatever the case, I am here, by the sputtering fire, buried in my journal.

Already, the birds have awoken and their incessant chirping will soon rouse the rest of the vermin in these parts. Another day. I have not known ten minutes of consecutive sleep since I left my villa in the crisp timber-trimmed hills of my homeland what feels like years ago, but I know to be a mere handful of hours.

I must keep the dementia at bay.

I must keep my wits about me. For I will need them all if I am to lead the expedition to safe harbor beyond this feral wilderness.

Gods, lend me your strength. Lend me the wisdom to survive just one more day. Let some good come of our suffering.

Thus, I shall here conclude this journal entry, knowing full well that it may likely be my last. Should these words be found an age after my death, scribbled on tattered pages found atop my dusty bones, let it be known that (as with all great historical tragedies) I began this venture with nothing but the most earnest and best of intentions. Gods save us.

(day five)

I awoke to gunshots this morning.

The men killed my horse. Then ate him. Gibbons could not even bear to wait until the beast had been properly cooked. A tragedy on all counts. That steed had borne me into combat. It was stately and brave and obedient, and deserved better. His name was Caesar.

I ink these pages as a captive, of sorts. Shortly after noon today, four men executed mutiny. Wiggins, Rappaport, Johnston and Gerald Beverly, the camp physician. Wiggins led them. Beardsley was slain during the incident. I cannot say I ever truly enjoyed the man’s company, but his loss as expedition cartographer will be deeply felt. Two others were wounded.

Wiggins and his men stripped us of our arms and rations and bound us to one another. They abandoned us nearly an hour ago. That leaves six of us, loyal to the original expedition, left alive. The men are despondent. Some whisper about vengeance. One will not close his eyes or respond to physical touch. Alexander is weeping openly.

I find it partially unsettling that the deeds of this dark day have given me my first true inspiration of the journey. After I finish this entry, I will rouse the spirits of the men. I will give them hope. I will give them courage and a common cause.

I will produce the blade I keep concealed in my boot and begin cutting our bonds.

(day unknown)

I can only pray these words will be legible enough that should I live to read them in the light, they will give an accurate account of these horrific misadventures.

We found Beverly’s body last night just before we broke camp. I recognized the worn handle of Wiggins’ Buck knife before I even identified the spine it divided.

It wasn’t until this morning we found the rest of the mutineers. The circling carrion birds gave away their position a few hundred yards out. We would have given Wiggins a proper burial but there was not more than a sprinkling of fertilizer left of his person.

Thankfully the savages have no desire for our dried oats and much of our food stores were recovered.

Were it not for the events that transpired soon after our macabre discovery, I would not even have the luxury of scribbling in this coverless journal of mine; it was formerly bound in leather (we boiled and consumed our belts and boot leather days ago).

Jarvis fell into a primitive tiger trap and his final frantic commotion roused the attention a local tribe. The leader of this tribe brought us before a shrieking, dancing host of his kinsmen and we were to engage in hand-to-hand combat for our lives.

Perkins was dead less than a minute before his bout began.

I was able to brain my opponent with the decorated femur of some large jungle beast and earn my right to freedom.

Seeing as we lost Booth to scurvy nearly a week ago and Fitzsimmons is a pacifist, only the Baron and I escaped our latest bloody encounter.

The savage leader gave us a crude charcoal map (scratched on tanned flesh of some kind) and instructed us to follow the river to civilization. I beg the gods grant us some small measure of mercy in this venture.

To die at this point would be to grant Cholmers my eternal envy.

For now, my watch is over and I will attempt a few hours of fitful slumber.

Gods be with us. Gods be with us.

There was one house on the block that every student would cross the street to avoid in passing. The house itself was ominous, seemingly abandoned, obscured by the dry man-sized weeds that stayed brown year-round. Of course, it didn’t help that every kid in the neighborhood propagated amateur horror stories with the three story structure as its inevitable centerpiece.

As if these tales weren’t enough of a hindrance, the house’s owner had placed several rather impolite “no trespassing” signs at regular intervals along the wrought iron fence that secured the property.

There was one young boy that did not give the house its due caution. While his companions would watch gravely, he would stroll casually along the fence (sometimes with the audacity to drag his fingers along those iron bars that kept the terrors of hell safely at bay!).

Then an overcast day did pass when the boy stopped suddenly in his path past the local haunt. He turned curiously toward the noise that had drawn his attention. Creaking. He peered restlessly through the trembling weeds, unable to discern the source of the disruption. It sounded like wood, old wood, bending, threatening to splinter before being bent back the other way. Creaking, steady creaking. The boy realized his knuckles were white as he curled his hands in fists around the bars.

He called out a simple greeting. His only answer was that faint perpetual groan of warped timber. The boy’s eyes strayed to the gate nearby. A thick length of chain was secured by an ancient padlock that may well have been made of stone.

Finally, hesitantly, the boy resumed his course and strode to school.

But that creaking never left his mind. He wondered at its source. While his fellow pupils practiced arithmetic, his imagination traced over and back upon his steps. As the day progressed, he half-expected to be carried away by some distraction, but his attention to this mystery became an obsession.

As night finally fell, he resolved himself upon his grand course of action. He would solve this mystery before he slept. He would know. More than he feared the stories of his contemporaries, he was terrified of being forever sleep-deprived by this mundane mystery.

The boy slipped out his bedroom window and into the light of the full moon. No other pedestrians troubled about his midnight errand, save for a dog behind a fence who erupted into a sudden barking fit that sent his heart fluttering into his throat.

At last, he stood before the house. Wind whispered through the weeds. The chill of the night’s breath curled around his neck. But the boy had come this far and would not be turned away. With youthful vigor, he scrambled up the wrought iron fence and before any rationalization dared rob him of his resolution, the boy leapt down into the forgotten yard. He crouched low in the dead growth, so like to the defiant curling nails on a corpse that would not be stopped by their ruined host.

Then he heard it. That abysmal creaking! Its horrible moan was like a symphony of angels to his ears; for all the countless times he had replayed it in his mind, he feared to have imagined the entire occurrence.

His feet carried him toward its source like eager soldiers not needing a captain’s command. They simply knew what must be done. And thus the boy crept closer to his siren’s call.

Creak. Creak. He stopped. His advance had finally afforded him a view of the porch. It was a rocking chair. His heart sank in disappointment at his being tormented by some old furniture in the wind. But at that moment, as he was ready to begin the return journey to his soft bedding, the clouds parted around the moon and something caught his eye.

The chair was not empty. There was a man. A pale man. He had merely mistaken this skeletal figure for the worked wood of the rocker. Creak. A slender foot sent the chair groaning atop the bowing boards of the porch. The boy peered through the gloom, attempting to identify the man’s face. But the stranger wore a hat, slim-billed, of a style that had been out of fashion for decades. The face was obscured in shadow.

His curiosity compounded, the boy stalked closer. Through the last of the weeds. Up the rotted steps. Onto the porch. The man did not seem to notice his approach. Still, even at this range, the boy could not make out the features of this stranger’s face. The covered porch muted the moonlight and thereby ignited the fires of inquisition.

Perhaps the man simply slept and was not roused by his trespassing. It would certainly seem rational enough an explanation, given the hour, but the boy’s questioning would not be sated by simple reasoning. The youth spied the man’s slender hand that protruded from his dusty, moth-eaten jacket and curled limply over the arm of the rocking chair.

Before he could stop himself, the boy extended his own hand toward it.

Inches away, the creaking stopped.

The cold skeletal hand sprang to life and snatched the boy by the wrist.

As the child cried out in surprise, he was silenced by the man’s gaze.

The stranger had lifted his head and now the boy could see his face in full view. It was sunken and bone-white and its eyes were lidless. The lips were drawn unnaturally apart, baring two rows of rotted teeth.

The boy screamed in terror.

But before his shriek could escape his lungs, it seemed to be swallowed inside of himself. He could not pull his eyes away from the skeleton’s predatory gaze.

He felt himself spinning inside his own flesh. The warmth was being drained from his body as his surroundings spun and lurched wildly around him. He closed his eyes to fight the sudden nausea.

When he opened them, he knew true horror.

The boy looked up at his own smiling face. He was cold, cold, cold. He could only watch as this visage of himself smirked and stepped away. There was an impish malevolence in its manner that haunted his fragile spirit.

Unable to blink, he could only watch as this devil skipped down off the porch and disappeared into the tangle of weeds beyond.

Panic swelled up in his chest. He conjured up every ounce of strength in his being and attempted to spring out of the rocking chair. But he did not move. For all his furious thrashings, he could, at most, angle the chair back and sometimes forth. Creak.

Creak.

Creak.

Then the boy knew the true source of the sound. It was not the creaking of some aged footboard. It was the groan of his now brittle ribcage, moaning against the sagging lungs that would forever seal his prison of foreign flesh. He wished only for a tear to express his hopeless torment. He was denied that comfort.

And somewhere in the distant stillness of the night, a youthful laugh echoed off the shadowed buildings.

A flower for the maiden with green eyes,
Green like winter’s windswept pines.

A flower for the maiden full of life,
Like lightning dances through the sky.

A flower for the maiden makes me smile,
With her charm, her laugh, her style.

A flower for the maiden just because,
Flowers and maidens are long lost loves.

There did exist a door in a wall,
As did a time before the fall.
The hinges they were hidden,
Like a seamless supposition;
Or a dreamless apparition,
Through the whiteness of night,
Toward that hidden portal door.
White on white on white on more.
But the heart could give course,
Were its light enough to guide,
The blind beyond their pallor.
There one could cease a stride,
And un-snuff eyes most bright,
To descry a shadowed line;
A nakedness or hiding door.
The promise of ever more,
More than mere salvation,
More than endless morrows,
More than lifted sorrows,
But less than expectation.
Less than secrets undressed,
Or the best mortal guessing.
Less than a fatherly blessing,
Did lie beyond that shut fast.
Still the hand seeks handle,
Like a poet turned vandal,
While the hearted light lasts,
To illuminate upon the mind,
That door in its wall, that;
Cherished few ever find,
And fewer still ever grasp.

They paved over my holy grove
They scored and scarred my lucky stones
They tore out all my mountain’s gold
And dared to buy what was not sold

I hear them reading rhythmically
Their poetry of history
This haunted place
Is their palace

The corpse of a leaf
Betrays my prowling
And they are on me
To subdue the beast

I bleed and I fight
Against their great tide
I howl and I bite
But they get inside

They deem my visage unclean
They stretch foreign flesh over me
They smother my last feral keen
And dry my tears with whispering

I am encaged in ribwork bone
Confined to my cardiac home
Warm and wet in a fatal womb
Sealed alive in my fetal tomb

They dim the light outside my skin
With their cloth and their tradition
At last they have stolen the sun
While I am left to breathe my blood-
forgotten.

one sad suicide
one endless progression of days
ended with superficial sighs
an easy escape

oh meaninglessness
oh me and my mess

finally excitement
finally a purpose

i know what i must do
i know what i must do
i know what i must do
i know what i must do

here about to die
i manage a smile
call it sick satire
before i expire

i hear the bugle calling
as i make my last retreat
it wonders where to i go
it pleads, i am not alone

will i end my life
or the one i live?

the sun can set
but rise again

i find your hope bewildering
i know not what you think you see
i know into you, not you me
i am immune to empathy

still on that clarion cry
willing me breath, not to die
my death will not split the sky
so i wonder why, why, why

but it does not relent
i offer to repent
but it wants me to live
it counters every gift

thus its song does cease
and leaves me in peace

i know what i must do
i know what i must do
i know what i must do
i know what i must do

i will kill myself, you see
but in part and piece, only
i will kill the misery
as the bugle sang to me:

healing will stop the bleeding.

One score and five since my fleshly birth,
One score and five since I joined this earth.

As my hands have known this time,
I in turn have known their worth.

Wetted with grief in passing tears,
Pounded in mirth with lusty cheer.

This day thus freed from unseen bonds,
In open greens; my sorrows gone.

For I am the sun and wind and stone,
Here I am of blood and spark and bone.

One score and five spent in deathless berth,
One score and five spent beyond all worth.

I am endlessly unable
I have always failed
To resolve my own notions
With your tragic tradition

I feel this divine divide
Like a knife
My whole life

Would you want me to fear your name?
Would you want me to be ashamed?

A lie told over and over and under
Is still a lie

I feel this divine divide
Worst at night
Like holy light
Burning me blind
Out of spite

Would you?
Would you?
Would you want me?
Would you want me to breathe or bleed?

I die to define you
My vanity in vain
I can but refine me
And pray you did

In kindred vein.

Dearest Existence,

I would not have God heal my scars
Nor would I Fate map me my stars

I may today demand your surrender
Even if you believe me surrounded

I am easily affected
By hatred and affection

I too stretch my living limbs to the sun
Like my ancestry: trees and kings and sons

I will embrace you sister and brother
But for saving me, peer, do not bother

I would not have you heal my scars
Nor would I you map me my stars

I am ever independently yours.

The emperor in his crypt
The peasant in his dirt pit
Share lifeless inheritance
Peers among a lasting end

Lucky like three leaf clovers
These graves will cover over

Time will not suffer to wait
Like the face of a statue
Our heroes will dull and fade
And may not be born anew

But this our dam is holding
The oak keeps at its growing
No matter whether we see
We must weather stilly seas

A bold course must be chosen
Before the mast is broken

Abandon your fearfulness
Scatter all doubt to the wind
There is not wisdom in dread
Human hearts are meant to mend

Now snatch up the reins from Fate
Lash the captain to his wheel
No mythology too great
Your grand adventure is real.

This day your bones do undo their birth,
Returning hence to marrow of earth,
Rest now noble frame and golden words,
Make regal the dust and sport for worms.

Succeed in death as you did at most,
With more grace than humble gods dare boast.
No remedy could pass you unknown,
King Midas, the dove among us crows.

Without you to overdress our wounds,
Pride and shame shall cease to be festooned.
My heart might repent its fear for doom,
As you sleep breathlessly in your tomb.

Perhaps our coffers would best be robbed,
To bankrupt these dreams of ornate cogs.
I pray this kingdom then comes to naught,
May your scrutiny join you in rot.

“Burned into the backs of my ribs
This treasonous accusation
I am no traitor to your reign
Oh God, I am not your enemy

At once it descends upon me
The anxiety of a dream
The monstrous spokes are turning
The lateral pair gone retrograde

Top leaves the bottom, halving
Soul ceases the body, having
Everything below, nothing above
Nothing beyond this backward love

Have I squandered my heaven
Waiting for another one?
Is this death a preparation?
Has my war just begun?

Will you still call me your son?

Oh God, can I breathe?
Oh God, cannot I breathe?
Oh God, I have never been so near you
Have I?

Oh God, I can hear you murmuring
Oh God, just a little louder please

Will you not speak more clearly?

Oh, I am so confused
Am I the steward of my pew?
Oh God, tell me that is you
Oh God, I just wish I knew

Tell me what they have done
Oh God, I will save you
Oh God, I will heal you
Back into One.”

While I busied about mundane tasks,
You forged for yourself an earthly flesh.
While I bid at the mortal market,
You found this my pale marionette.

From your perch beyond the stars,
You dispatched your avatar.

Without even a breath of warning,
You revealed your chosen form to me.
With no weapon but a knowing glance,
You stole across my previous path.

For we were both flesh and bone,
There chiseled from the same stone.

My peers and me; we saw the same man.
But you were mine; a revelation.
In that eternal instant I knew,
Beyond knowing false and knowing true-

What it was I was and what I am,
What I do dare and dare not become.
This understanding then rescued me,
From the jaws of my own treachery.

You bestowed my new life all at once;
Freed from anomalous existence.

Avatar, I forever thank you,
For deeming the unseen be perceived.
Avatar, I forever thank you,
For donning a mask to expose me-
To me.

What is it guides the crow in his flight?
What is it drives the moth to his flame?
Is it love? Is it hate?

What is it in me hates you so deep?
What is it makes my goodness so weep?
Why can I not be at peace;
With you, my adversary?

In my marrow I know why,
All that lives in me aches to see you die.
Your blackness arrests my heart.
And stains me ugly, if only in part.

How I long to cut you down on open ground.
To be granted such means or madness;
The utter damnation of consequence.
Until to the hell you breathe, you are bound.

Swiftly would I set aside virtue today,
To stamp your spiritual debts all paid.

My wrath would know no merciful rest,
Until you are naught but stillness,
Until you are forgotten flesh.
My darkest arts all gladly blessed.

But what then would become of me?
There is no bath for one so bloodied.
There is but wrath and raging study.
What devil does a devil sleep fearing?

In hating hate what do I then forsake?
Is it my love I must lash to the stake?
The heart is a vessel of fluid shape.
By its contents it binds or it breaks.

I will quiet my storm to an even tide.
I will remain myself and there reside.

But should your hatred grow too bold,
Know I always stand unflinching.
You will forever find an adversary.
You will forever be forever opposed.

The tides are on the rise.
The skies are fuming pale.
The sun is blister bright.
The Bible has its hell.

And there is nowhere left to hide.

The world is buried, burning, turning in and on itself.

All our hope feels fragile, brittle at best.
All our cracks are chasms, bitterly blessed.

Everything is sinking and smothering, real and unseen.
Everything is caving and crumbling, there and between.

Everything is freezing and frightening, abandoning.
Everything is running and retreating, everything.

Except for me.

i look, but i can’t see me anymore.
i look, but i only see the mirror.

“I shall judge me and judge me most just.
I, without worship. I, without lust.”

His eyes cascaded along the contours in the wall with such familiarity that he wondered if his gaze had not scarred the stone with those words before the words had branded themselves upon his brains. He often wondered at that. He often whispered at himself in the dark. He whispered quietly, absently. He was no madman. He knew the words were merely memories, come to keep him company in his captivity.

He stared at the murky pool of water in the battered brass bowl that he often fancied to have been a collection plate in a past life. He imagined it passed between clean hands and filled with sterling offerings. He pretended at its being a vessel for faith in physical form. He watched his reflection recoil like a startled animal at his breath’s passing over its surface. He wondered if it might start and flee in fright, leaving him forever alone.

He began to despair at such a possibility. His torment was short-lived though, for a remembrance rushed to rescue him from his reflection.

He recalled his own image as it danced along the luminous skin of the harbor beneath the mismatched boards that threatened to peel and curl and shrink away from their task were it not for the nails driven so deep as to make unerringly clear their one servile fate. He was but a boy and concerned himself not with the skeletal remains of the forest that bore him upon their backs and instead fancied the water that winked up at him in the midday sun.

He had always found water hypnotic. Seawater was indeed especially narcotic when mixed with his sailor’s blood. He remembered his inability to pull his eyes from its surface. He was as one bewitched. He loved the brine as it seemed to slink among the shallows. He hunted the tide as it tongued sands near his home and withdrew upon his predatory approach. He always smiled at its rogue waves that would soak him without warning. He flirted with the seas and they flirted back.

He recalled its salty touch. He fancied it as one does an animal. He pooled it in his hands. He wondered if any of the droplets in his grasp conspired to sink ships. He wondered if any of the water upon his palm had smothered the last breath of a struggling sailor. He wondered if any of the saline jewels upon his brow had storming hearts like the one in his breast. He wondered if by drinking them down he might invite that tempest into his blood and know the feral thunder of the gods of the seas chiseled upon the prows of vessels moored to the dock.

His eyes lost their fanciful glaze and returned his spirit to his immediate surroundings. He returned to his own vessels and their moorage. He returned to his cell. He suddenly and deeply contemplated the meaning of his imprisonment. He did not ponder on his crimes, for he broke the laws of men with a glad heart and would a thousand times again. He instead doted upon the idea of incarceration that had him lashed fast the floor and his dirty drinking bowl.

He thought on his accusers. He summoned their faces to his mind’s keen eye. He retraced the stern etchings upon their brows as they condemned him to a life of in a cell. He realized he had swallowed whole their judgment as it has been passed down like a hungry sea would suck a vagabond galleon into its maw. His cell was meant to break him. He was meant to die in that everlasting stone box. He had died. He had surrendered his heart. He had surrendered the seas.

He sat upright for the first time in an age. His spine seemed more gratefully erect than the arching backs of the barmaids he had bedded and bedded again in the many ports of the mapped world. He almost smirked in remembrance. He remembered that the judgment of men was nothing more. His soul could not be snuffed by stone walls or a stone door with an iron lock. He could not be contained by this container. His walls were no more a prison than his flesh for he would most assuredly be parted from both in one fashion or another.

He realized his imprisonment had been willful. He was not in a cell. He was in his flesh as he had always been. He heard the heaving and crashing of the sea in the distance. He had not been able to hear it for years before that moment. He heard it in his ears and held it in his heart and there it stayed.

His walls were nothing but stone. His walls were nothing. His everything suddenly had become nothing while his nothing had grown into something.

He sat upright and motionless in his cell.

His lips welcomed his smile like a dear old friend they had not seen in years and years.

He began planning his escape.

Since birth I have striven to stride in your tread,
To walk as you walk, that we might go abreast.

From you I have learned to do as I have done,
To regard myself with strength and trust and love.

For in life, goodness rarely rides a white horse,
And much right can be won with a rusty sword.

You show me first to point my compass inward,
And in doing find, for me and mine, safe shores.

In you I see what I hope is best of me,
Father, you are the good man I strive to be.

Since my first day I have sought to make you smile,
To find my path with your blessings all the while.

From you I have learned to do as I have done,
To regard the world with strength and trust and love.

For in life, kindness keeps all darkness at bay,
And even the most thunderous storms will fade.

You show me first to be a light for others,
And thusly wend my way amongst my brothers.

In you I know love and love most multiplied,
Mother, you are the home where my heart resides.

While men slumber and slumber on,
The darkness wakes, daylight by and gone.
We, taught to fear the night and a shadow’s touch,
We, bred with wavering sight at sleeping love.
Goddess, how we forget your name and name anew,
As if a fearing stroke could make it true.

Goddess, do you dream of us or we of you?

As the darkling stream whispers by on either side,
It stems or leaves at the pitching of an eye.
We, who cover over earth with works and word,
We, the errant tides of fleshly urn.
Goddess, how we bequeath the dark to evil ills,
When good should walk the wood, at night, as well.

Goddess, can we spare you from our hells?

Believe in me and so shall I.
Give your love and never die.
Burn in me and grow and stay.
Show me night as darker day.

Goddess, now I know your name.
Yours is mine, we are the same.

The cannons dream tonight
Leaden heads cold and dry
Many leagues from my sight
Where dreamers never die

My field is ghastly gray
Gray and still like a shade
Armies all march’d away
Buried their dead then prayed

But I still man my post
Outnumbered and alone
A living war with ghosts
Slow and severe like stone

Mine a soldierly path
My vigil never slack
Inviting my own wrath
In case my heart attacks

Ever, ever I stay
Fighting this fight in place
God, my general, please
Please, please, please
release me.

Under the milk-white nocturnal jewel so bright,
Since sable firmament first knew the archer’s fire,
And men counted constellations of gods as sires,
The Bandit King had prowled all peripheral sight.

He spared lupine pearl upon its mantel of stars,
For a quarry beyond the resplendent red dawn;
Thus he forsook the rest to Death’s eternal yawn,
The Bandit King burgled instead haleness of heart.

Seldom did men win the elusive crown of peace,
Eyed with waking mind such spectral divinity-
Yet this sacred boon steal did he to rookery,
The Bandit King, the ever resurrected thief.

For their oft-purloined vitality men did mourn,
Knowing only stormed shores of dogmatic war;
All the while bedding hot salvation like a whore,
The Bandit King rejoiced at their impotent scorn.

Thus my search for seraphim did I gladly cede,
And turned my bitter burning to the brigandine,
Until bled dry of his darkly delivered dreams,
The Bandit King slept forever dead at my feet.

Though we breathe the same air, you and I,
Our lives are much removed, yours and mine,
You erode with winds that give me flight,
I hunt skies beyond your earth-bound right.

Here I vow, ne’er to bow, to suffer,
Not goods, no evils, gods nor devils,
Your cumbersome coffins and steeples,
I shall not relent, stay your offers.

My aerie is mine, atop the pines,
Your cages are yours, to live to die.

You, born to crawl; I, to fly, fly, fly!

A door opens.

“Oh. It’s you.”
“Were you expecting someone else?”
“Of course not, I just thought–SHUT THE FUCKING DOOR.”
“Jesus. Calm down.”

A door closes.

“Were you followed?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“We don’t have much time.”
“Then I’ll forego the pleasantries and skip to the important part.”
“That’d be–”
“Don’t interrupt me.”
“I’m sorr–”
“This would of ours was not meant to last so long.”
“What?”
“Something went sideways.”
“The hell do you mean?”
“Hell is precisely what I mean.”
“Oh God.”
“Not really, I just thought it sounded good.”
“Fuck you.”
“Listen to me: it’s all going down.”
“Pardon me while I fetch my Bible, won’t you?”
“That storybook will not avail you now.”
“How dare you question our Father’s–”
“Spare me the blasphemous riot act. God did not write that book. It was written by men. Men who professed to behold God’s Will. Men like you.”
“Like me.”
“Yes, you self-righteous prick. Only they had the foresight to know it was coming a long time back. You’re standing in its shadow and cannot bring yourself to look up.”
“Armageddon.”
“Armageddon, Ragnarok, Gotterdammerung, the Twilight of the Gods.”
“The end of the world?”
“For you, yes.”
“You think it’s coming?”
“I know it is. Not because I’m privy to conjectures or divine whispering, but because I can see it with my own fucking eyes. If you’d look, you could too.”
“I can’t see much of anything at all. What did you do with the light in here?”
“Your eyes will soon adjust. It will start like they foretold. The floods, the fires, the quaking earth. Then–”
“The Rapture.”
“Rapture? Hardly. God will take his chosen, yes. But there will be no white light from the clouds and blissful passing. They will be smothered and burnt and rent by the dying throes of this world. This planet is an organism trying to survive, defending itself. For it is also a child of God.”
“When will it begin?”
“Soon. The tragedies will be intermittent. The world governments will swoop down to the rescue, media coverage will be drastic and severe and then all but disappear. But the damage is not slowly increasing, it’s exponential. The snowball has become an avalanche and now the whole mountain’s following.”
“That sounds pretty bleak. Should I start digging my bomb shelter?”
“I brought you here for another purpose.”
“You didn’t bring me anywhere. I came here of my own accord.”
“Right. Of course you did.”
“What is that smell?”
“Good. You smell it too. The governments will desperately attempt to preserve order, civil, then martial. That will fail. The damage will become too great. The world economy will buckle and fold. The internet will become fragmented. Our country will resign itself to local governments, city-states. Some will survive while others are destroyed.”
“No. There are too many resources available to us. Too many great minds. We will overcome.”
“That’s heart-warming, but hollow. There will be hope, but it will wane. Society shall be reduced to the individual. There will be those unable to adapt. The grief will overwhelm them. The climate will become too harsh. The will required for survival will not thunder as it must.”
“You forget, we are all born with the will to survive.”
“And we are immediately domesticated by this existence. We trim our claws and become reliant on external food sources. We take to fanciful things. We will be helpless as housecats thrust into the wild wood.”
“Come away from there, won’t you? Come to where I can see you.”
“And there will be death. Much death. That will be your Rapture. Then there will be those who remain. It will not resemble anything you’d find in the Christian fiction section of your climate-controlled corporate bookstore. By chance or sheer will, some shall survive.”
“What life would there be in a world without God?”
“New life. There must be those to set it right. After the storm blows itself out, there must be those to rise from the ash and ruin and begin again.”
“And it will be different?”
“No. Not different. But it must continue. I will see that it does.”
“You will, will you?”
“Yes. But you hold the key. Which brings me to why I brought you here.”
“Key? What key?”
“The one around your neck.”
“You’re truly as cracked as they say if you think I’d ever let you out of here. This conversation is over.”
“As you wish.”
“Wait– is that?”
“Why ask questions to which you already know the answer?”
“Is that the FUCKING GUARD? Jesus! What have you done?”
“Only what needed be.”
“How did you move his body all the way over here if you are chained to the wall?”
“I didn’t move the body.”
Moments later, a door opens.

When I hath lived the last of a lion’s days,
When my breath is at last forever stayed,
When this bird in my breast is fast uncaged,
And I take wing abreast with my soul’s sage;

Lament shall I the wending heart freshly died,
Desire shall I my heel’s hunger now expired,
Cherish shall I warlike thirst for fleshly fire,
Repent shall I my earthen lust here unsired?

Bequeath will I naked poet’s page not signed,
Forget will I the cinders of dawn most bright,
Forsake will I the phoenix and his bold cry,
Unbleed will I boiled blood of hate to-night!

Thus I no more do wrest with mortal pain,
When my flight be-comes rest of gliding vane,
When this red fate at last bends me prostrate,
When I hath lived the last of a lion’s days.

shrink
I must say, the subtext is all the same here.

patient
What do you mean?

shrink
I’m glad you asked.
(pause)
The feeling that you’re being taken advantage of seems to be a recurring motif in our meetings.

patient
I guess you’re right.

shrink
Would you say you’re a “giving” person?

patient
Yeah. I’d say I am.

shrink
Humor me, if you will. Can you give me an example?

patient
(exhales)
Yeah. Ok. Yeah. I have an example for you. There was this hobo outside my-

shrink
-I’m sorry, you’re referring to a homeless person?

patient
Yeah.

shrink
Of course. Pardon my intrusion. Please continue.
(scribbles notes)

patient
(eyes lingering on notepad)
Yeah. So, anyway, there was this hobo who always panhandled outside the building I used to work in downtown. Every fucking-
(looks suddenly to the shrink)
Sorry.
(clears throat)
Every day this guy was there. Without fail.

shrink
And you would give him spare change?

patient
No, not at all. Never. I never gave him a dime.
(chuckles in reflection)
(shrink scribbles)
Actually, sometimes I’d jingle the coins in my pocket and stare at him as I passed, just so he knew I had some.
(shrink scribbles furiously)
He knew I had it. He knew I could spare it. But it was mine. Just because I have it and he does not, does that mean I should feel bad for him? I mean to say, does he deserve my pity and my money? I work for what I have. I didn’t piss it away on an alcohol addiction or crack or God knows what else. Don’t get me wrong. Nobody should have to sleep in a gutter. I wouldn’t wish it on him. But I certainly didn’t put him there. You know?

shrink
I see.

patient
Anyway, this guy hated me. Hated me. Obviously. He expected me to give to him. He silently demanded it. He summoned down the expectations of our whole society with those eyes of his. I can’t stand that shit.
(glances to shrink)
So, months passed of the same routine. Some days we wouldn’t see one another, but most every day I worked, there he was, quietly cursing me with his guilt trip. Then it came time for me to move on. I got an offer I couldn’t refuse with another firm. I was to finally part ways with this nameless hobo. Knowing our paths would never again cross, well not unless he turned those dirty quarters in to a fortune 500 company…
(chuckles and makes eye contact with shrink)
(shrink stonewalls him)
(shrink scribbles more notes)
Knowing we’d never see each other again, I decided to do something special. I had already cleaned out my desk and said my good-byes. So I headed out front and there he was. Honestly, I was afraid this would be one of those days he wasn’t gawking at people, holding his ridiculous sign. But, as it seemed, I was in luck.
(pauses)
(smiles)

shrink
What happened?

patient
I gave him a one hundred dollar bill.

shrink
Really?

patient
Yeah. And his face just lit up! It was fucking magical. I mean, I can’t distinctly recall seeing that kind of sheer human joy on somebody’s face except during those split seconds right before orgasm. And that’s what it was for him. That hobo stared at me like I was a demigod. I half expected him to get down on his knees and start worshiping me right there in the street.
(shrink smiles)
But he didn’t. He muttered some unintelligible words of thanks, dropped his sign and broke into a run. And this guy clearly had some pretty serious joint problems, but he was half-sprinting, half-skipping off in the direction of the liquor store.

shrink
And how did that make you feel, to give to him like that, to fulfill his need? Do you feel like it was worth that one hundred dollar bill?

patient
Well, the bill was fake. I spent twenty minutes upstairs photocopying it to make it look right. But yeah. Shit. It still felt pretty good.

To an eager shoulder my devils alight,
In wicked stride we ravish the night,
We, goblins and gremlins and ghasts,
Newly escaped from Hell’s hot blast.

Knocking on good Christian doors,
Tormenting alike saints and whores,
For we are the clergymen of mischief,
Drunk, with blasphemy on our breath.

One October evening we get even,
For each year of this moral prison,
Decency and chivalry set to swing,
From the gallows of our dark revelry.

Tricks and treats and witching harvest,
An impish heart flutters in my breast,
Tonight we cackle in undying delight,
We honor horror, magic and fright.

From one devilish soul to another,
In mayhem we, monsters, brothers,
Revel this haunted Hallow’s E’en,
And bid you the happiest Halloween.

Imagine it for just a moment. Hell. Imagine it exists. Imagine it as the most puritan Calvinistic sinners-in-the-hands-of-an-angry-God hellfire and brimstone. No matter what you believe. If you’re Christian, sorry, bad news, the Muslims had it right. If you subscribe to any other religious affiliation, eternity turned out to be the scorned opposite of what were banking on.

So there you are. In Hell. Suffering. The manner makes no difference. Details are not important. Imagine a lake of fire if that’s what comes easily to your corn-fed Western soul. All you know is torment and the details of any life you had lived are quickly lost in the everlasting punishment you now endure.

Then, something happens. Imagine it all ending. Imagine you find yourself sitting in front of a glowing computer monitor, once again inside of a body, incarnate. You look down at your fingers. Imagine you can appreciate the minute bodily processes responsible for rotating your hand in front of your face. Imagine you can respect the complexity of your optical organs as they communicate the image to the proper neural pathways in your brain. Imagine then your hand feeling your eyes upon it. Imagine your own perception of yourself.

Imagine then the absence of pain. There is no torment. There is no visceral suffering. There is only the calm rhythm of your lungs as they supply oxygen to your blood so it can course through that fist-sized turbine in your chest as it pumps life through every capillary down to your toes.

Instead of blind suffering, you are at peace. Sitting. Comfortably. Lazily. Imagine being thrust back into this world of nature and balance. Even then, you are not forced to examine it from a distance. You are right there inside of it. Imagine this body of yours is completely capable of interacting with this environment and performing the will of your soul via these organs and tissues and electrical charges. Imagine then, that you are not bound by the oppression of any outside forces. Imagine you are sitting in this fictional chair before this fictional computer monitor with this fictional gift.

Imagine what you would do with that life. Imagine the ins and outs of your breathing not as some egg timer, ticking down the hours until it is over. Imagine this atmosphere as it is drawn in through your nose and expands your chest. Let it not go unnoticed. Imagine your life is in progress. The time isn’t ticking down toward nothingness, toward death and that zero hour where we all find out if these ideas we treasure of divinity and deity and dogma are truly heaven-sent or merely bullshit. Imagine your time is ticking up.

Imagine this heart of yours is keeping you in the game.

Imagine every breath shoved back out into the air is yours.

Imagine it drifting back into creation with your name on it.

Imagine this moment as something precious.

No one can take it from you unless you surrender it.

Killing time is murder.

Imagine you could choose.

Imagine you could choose anything for yourself.

Imagine that.

As future days yearn to be passed,
As trade winds yearn for sail and mast,

As night yearns for dawn’s first blast,
As the crusader yearns for heathen mass,

As drunkards yearn for the foaming cask,
As devils do yearn for god’s great rasp,

As the captain yearns for oceans vast,
As death yearns for his bitter task,

As the gambler’s dice yearn for a cast,
As lies yearn to become truth, alas,

I yearn for…

It’s not that I couldn’t remember dying…

I mean, I couldn’t; but what really got to me was that I couldn’t remember living. Living. It’s so terribly important. It’s that arrogant passing of time that demands our daily decisions have lasting and vital impact upon our souls. Is that really the case though? Are we propelled into action by the nature of our unchanging spirits or do our choices in this life readily affect the quality of our spiritual being? Are our souls rock-solid or mutable like clay? Standing where I found myself standing, it was difficult to be sure.

It was right out of a Lifetime made-for-television movie special. The pearly gates, the warm lighting, the haze hanging about everything. It was as if some artsy film student had smeared Vaseline around the edges of my lens. Not really my thing, but the people around me seemed to be digging it.

Harp music filled the air as those cupid-looking greeting card angels plucked away with those tortured blissful expressions on their chubby faces. The line was taking forever but I guess if I were in the habit of making obvious jokes, I’d say I had forever to spare. Then I’d do that confident chuckle and probably get a courtesy laugh from one or two of the people waiting in single-file around me. But I just wasn’t that kind of guy. At least, I couldn’t remember being one in life. Of course, as I said before, my recollection was a bit diminished.

While the guy at the podium grilled the people ahead of me, I stole a peek through the ivory fence. Not all too impressive. There seemed to be a central shaft of light and everyone was crowded around it. Like when you see those stock footage newsreel clips of thousands of middle-easterners all praying toward their particular Mecca at sunup and sundown. It was like that, only everyone was on hands and knees around this faceless aura of light. They just kept bowing prostrate and coming up again for air. Over and over. The expressions on their faces were these horrid combinations of ecstasy and desperation and humility. Kind of like when you’ve been dry-heaving at the toilet all night and finally get something liquid out. Even though it burns your nasal passage and tastes like spoiled orange juice concentrate, it can be a religious sort of relief. Well, in my experience anyway- I think.

“Next,” the man at the podium bellowed.

I stepped forward to what I assumed to be the designated spot. I didn’t remember where the guy in front of me had been standing. The man, balding with these faint pockmarks around his cheeks, flipped intently through a large tome on the pedestal before him. What a cliche.

I waited.

He finally lifted his gaze to mine.

“You led an interesting life.”

“Did I?” I asked earnestly.

“You don’t recall?”

“Should I?”

He regarded me dubiously. That is to say, he had a dubious look on his face and I felt he was acting rather dubious to boot. It was an awkward moment. I’m sure the people behind me must have noticed. I just didn’t say anything.

“You do not appear to have committed any heinous trespasses.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Except one.”

“Oh.”

He consulted the page in front of him and spoke again. He must have been paraphrasing or something, unless the eternal annals kept of our lives are particularly informal.

“You didn’t commit murder. You did not succumb to any sexual immorality, though there was a remarkable amount of masturbation for such a short life.” He looked to me again, disapproving.

I didn’t really know what kind of response he wanted. So, again, I figured it would be best to keep quiet.

“Conversely, it seems you managed to do quite a bit of good. You helped your fellow man, lead a reasonably moral life and strove for virtue.” He peered down the bridge of his nose.

Being that he shot me such a damning stare for the whole masturbation thing, I expected living a virtuous life to draw a bit more pleasant fare. It didn’t happen. Honestly, I didn’t really like this place much. It kind of felt like being late for class on the first day.

“But it seems your life can most accurately be summed by a complete absence of God in your heart.” He slammed the book with a flash of theatric action.

“Didn’t you just say I lived an arguably moral life and attempted to achieve virtue for myself and those around me?”

“I did.”

“God isn’t into that?”

“Of course he is! But you failed to hold him into your heart!”

“I see.”

He regarded me with disgust.

“Luckily for your eternal soul, God shall show you mercy and still welcome you into his Heaven.”

The pearly gates swung wide.

I didn’t move.

“Carry on then! You’re not the only one here!”

I turned back toward the endless serpentine line of patient souls waiting for judgment. Not one of them returned my eye contact. I rotated back toward the beaming light of worship through the gates.

“You know, I think I’ll pass.”

“What?!” He cried, his voice cracking slightly.

“Yeah.”

I stepped out of place and began calmly walking into the blank white haze to my left.

“God shows you his grace and you have the audacity to deny him!? This is your only chance! You shall never be welcome here again!”

“Are those your words or his?”

I’m not sure if he responded. If he did, it was lost in the haze. I honestly didn’t have any idea where I was going but something about that felt right. It seemed like an adventure. Something about that felt like Heaven.

But maybe I shouldn’t have turned away from the gate.

Maybe I was making a catastrophic mistake.

Maybe it’s this kind of thing that got me killed in the first place.

I had been following myself for hours.

Cautiously at first, but I had grown increasingly bold. The theater, three rows back and two seats to the left. My eyes never strayed to the screen. Out into the weekend crowding. That pretentious little coffee house. Every step he strode seemed to beg me to do what I knew need be done. And then my window presented itself: the long way home.

I hated the long way home. He knew that. He must have. Maybe he had picked up my scent. But something tells me I would have known. Like when your eyelids flick open if someone stares at you long enough while you’re sleeping. Something like that. It didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything.

That’s when the customary doubt set in. “Are you sure you want to do this?” “What about the consequences?” “Is this in keeping with the pursuit of virtue?” All things he would have said to me if I gave him the chance. That complicated, troubled prick and all his pompous self-pity. Fuck him. I mean, this wasn’t real murder we were talking about. It’s not like this was some stranger. It was only myself.

He hesitated before turning down an alley. Like some prowling predator on the Nature Channel, my heart leapt into my throat and fluttered around like a caged bird. He almost changed course. What good is a shortcut on the long way home? But he didn’t. One more contradiction. How fitting…

The actual act wasn’t all that interesting. I could sex it up for you, but why? That’s all he’d want; the martyr. It didn’t read like the cells of some gritty graphic novel. There was no cinematic spray of blood like those ridiculous Japanese cartoons. I simply placed my hand over my mouth and jabbed the weapon home to its hilt. There was a sound. A wet sound. Like right after you take a shower and you push that pressure release on the faucet head. What’s that thing called? I don’t suppose it matters. It was the last thing on my mind at the time.

With care, I eased my crumpled form down beside a dented trashcan and blanketed it with a scattered newspaper. The cover story was a least a week old. Something about one of my other selves committing some violence or participating in some political intrigue. Rather dry reading. Certainly not enough to have interested me at this point.

As I exited the alley, the scene of my crime, I nodded to myself in passing, a sober man of simple pleasures. He seemed to know what had happened. Maybe he saw the whole thing. Maybe he just knew. Maybe he could just feel it like I did. Not guilt. Not mourning. Just, relief. It was something in the way he thanked me with his eyes, an almost imperceptible smile. But I saw it. We were all better off after this particular death of self.

They say you die a thousand times in a lifetime.

Well, truthfully, I’ve never heard anyone say that.

But I just did.

A proud people of history
Pages in gold, inspiring
Pages of heroes before me
Succeeding so effortlessly

And I’m almost home, almost there
But I’m breaking up in the invisible atmosphere

My one-man mission undone
My mother’s unwanted son

With precision I can picture it now
As my cockpit glows and grows red hot
While men of science uncover how
My many calculations ended in naught

Now this:
Funeral for a friend
Our fallen countryman
He stole our hope and
Failed the motherland.

Labyrinthine
Locked in my head where I belong
Lost among the dead

I am my own minotaur
I am a lifetime of attractive scars

Another careless incision
My clumsy surgical stitching
Tightly woven, poorly knit
My cyclical cerebral shit

Labyrinthine
Lost among the dead where I belong
Left here to be bled

Feeding my own minotaur
Feeding my spiritual civil war

Shadowed halls of darkling doubt
Stonework walls tempting me out
Turn and turn, return without refrain
My skeletal remains mark my way

Labyrinthine
Left here to be bled where I belong
I will not be long

Freedom from my minotaur
Freedom from myself, myself, my self

Solution is yoke and illusion
One cannot subsist on confusion
Spare the mind: escape, resign
Defeat is triumph disguised

Labyrinthine
I will stop bleeding eventually
Slowly or suddenly.

Adventurers upon the ether
Slumber under naked canopies
Encounter each, then an other
Beyond vesper and memory.

After the dusking of humanity
Is born a most luminous dawn
Eyes hooded from trivialities
Spy the spoils of freedom won.

Again the feral incarnation
Into a wild world, a birthright
A fleeting nightly emancipation
The stubborn sun bleaches dry.

We, dreamers far from home
Stranded in sinew and bone
Gifted with but one return
Our sojourner’s nocturne.

One dares the solitary road
Ragged and regal and free
With hope ever cast in stone
Striding still and steadfastly

Fell footfall and heart’s beat
Flight from isolation, one self
A doomed dogged journey
Into a lightless black realm.

Seek not succor from seraphim
Nor the ire of fleshly devilry
For serenity is wrought within;
A soul conjures its own release.

I, a soldier without his sword
Bleed red, red, red these words
Awaiting now my last return
My sojourner’s nocturne.

A gentle visceral unraveling
Disconnected disappointment
Pacified by the lies I tell myself
About virtue in my kinsmen

Something serpentine lurks now
Twisting in my shallows
And I lend a tattered ear
To its quiet, reassuring hisses

It begins its deviant tonguing
Flickering like lightning
Words on the winds of a storm
Everything I ache to hear

I welcome its warm lapping
As it delivers a dark solace
Blessing me with seeds of
Wrath and gore and vengeance

And hate.

An impotence replaced
With the serpent’s strength

I shall conserve my mercy
Only for those deserving

For this is a day of crimson
For cries of war; of heathens
With no quarter for children
But driven unflinching riposte

My guided strike and thrust
Sigil of the snake unfurled
Deep do I sate my black lust
Before the eyes of this world

Cold and fixed upon the sky
Cursing me bitterly as they die

I turn to the serpent in triumph
But find him already upon me
His eager breath at my collar
Slowly constricting lovingly

My vision fades with his kiss
These illusory victories of mine
A warm splash of my vitality
As his fangs greet my spine

Each dying spasm his delight
The fevers of my animal fear
A heart coursing with venom
His gift; his life; his phantasm

His love.

If I were bound to the dark arts within my heart
If I were then cast into an ocean I’d sink like a stone
Like a stone from the ramparts; my castle’s coming down
Soldiers taken apart like a tear-soaked suicide note
Line by line by self-indulgent line it’s mine all mine
So get your own.

If I were instead lashed to the dead weight in my head
If I were made to pay for all the world left unsaid
There would be one hell of an execution; take your seats
Here comes hesitation in the face of certain death
Inch by inch by futile inch we creep toward devotion
But it’s not home.

Somewhere along the way we got turned around
Wandered off the road while the darkness howled
We are calm ’cause we, we’ll never be found
Found fresh flowers for your grave expression

Please arrange them around
My hallowed heart
My hollowed heart

You are
Holding my head under water
Holding my heart in the fire

Lean your head down
Tear my heart out
I’ll never need it
To feel like this

Swallow my life-blood down
But take care not to drown
You can forget my habitual rescue
This time I won’t fucking save you

Somewhere along the way we got turned around
Wandered off the road while the darkness howled
We are calm ’cause we, we’ll never be found
Found fresh flowers for your grave expression

I’m giving it to you
My hallowed heart
My hollowed heart

I am
Holding my head under water
Holding my heart in the fire

If I were chained to my invisible understanding
If I were then bled of my vapory arrogant misery
To feel my heart’s final bleating; so fast so fucking faintly
Taking care not to choke on my overcooked last meal
Time my time my precious time spent in desolation, alone
I should have known.

Men take great care to protect themselves against the violences of existence. Life oft thunders at the doors of our hearts, prying wildly for any imperfection, bellowing its discordant furies without rhythm or apology. The individual is a candle, dancing timidly as he burns; his being an opposition to the dark that yearns only to swallow him. Most are contented by a vein of wick and enough wax to endure the pale hours of night.
Such paltry contentment no longer sustains my being. For even in this security, existence is never assured. One finds only enough distraction to blind himself from a true life; honest, confident and free. When the eye squeezes focus upon every miniscule vulnerability, one merely winds the ticking clock of his eventual doom. He is resigned to the quantification of all things. Instead of exploring this gift of creation, he desires only to protect his current holdings, those he deems well enough for satisfaction. He then builds his fortress. Physical attacks are warded by armor. Adding, layering, hiding. Such devices only prevent the individual from discerning his own heart. Whatever the temper of steel, it can be broken. No matter how secret a word, it can be spoken. The man who never looks upon his own breast, for fear of exposing, already loses that which he seeks to protect.
Some exist merely by being. Some exist with ferocity; the heart pounding as a war drum. Much of my life have I spent being. I desired to protect myself from outside attackers; never realizing the serpent within had coiled himself in scaled knots about my visceral parts. It is with no artful skill that I now attempt to free myself. For freedom is truly my destination and I truly do not possess it. Thus begins a journey with no near end.

I have, in my life, employed emotional armament in the hope of preventing external jabs and thrusts from breaching my vulnerable areas. But in doing this, I smothered my own growth. I locked myself in with the beast and invited his cruelties with impunity. For my eyes turned only outward in an attempt to protect that which I did not understand, but by some instinct knew to be precious and beyond value. No deceits lead me to this path. I chose it for myself. I simply did not allow my eye a clear view of the consequences.
Honesty can make a man vulnerable, but only if he is honestly vulnerable. I utilized everything but honesty to fend off the attacks of existence. Sarcasm, cynicism, apathy; all of it misdirection. The magician moves swiftly and nimbly to provoke the illusion of magic. The audience is meant to believe, but never the performer. When the magician succumbs to his own illusions, he creates a keen-edged weapon and wields it upon himself.
No longer will I be duped by my own sleight of hand. An honest exploration of oneself will transmute vulnerability into strength. I am the alchemist and my heart is my gold. I seek not only a glimpse of myself but deep oaken roots into the fiber of my being, ergo I might grow strong and full and tall.
Before one begins such an adventure, he must not only know his destination but his purpose for footing out toward the horizon. I pursue an understanding of vulnerability and its trappings not to strengthen my defenses, but to strip them away in entirety. I wish to stand disarmed and defiant before my foe, knowing my hide impervious to his sharpest blade. This prize is not one easily attained. At present, I struggle savagely, blocking and parrying every strike, lest it penetrate my defenses and sink into my soft flesh. It is during this transition I am most vulnerable for I shall lay my sword and shield to the earth and begin the exacting process of removing a suit of armor I spent decades constructing. As each piece of my true form is lighted by understanding, it will burn and blister under a foreign sun and I may only vaguely recognize it as my own. But it is this hard-won familiarity I desire.
Unhindered by such burdensome defenses, I shall prowl with an animal grace and freedom of stride. Only in peeling away my helm will my eyes shine unobstructed and my ears prick at every clarion sound. Free of stale air, each breath of wind upon my face shall carry with it the howl of liberty after years of imprisonment. When I gaze upon my reflection in the pool, I shall know the familiarity of my own self in the stead of abysmal strangeness. I shall succeed in escaping exile from myself.

Vulnerability is an illusion of perception. A man protects the areas he deems most readily wounded. It is natural. But these are decisions he ultimately makes for himself, for no stranger with a forked-tongue could rob a confident man of his firmest strength. Adversely, if an individual decides vulnerability no longer exists, it will instantly vanish. They key is to decide for oneself the gravity of potential wounds. The most useful instruments in this task are understandings of honesty, confidence and the self-image.
Honesty is more precious to the heart than its blood. It exists within the self and equally without, each variety dependent upon the other. To exercise complete honesty with oneself directly involves the will to see that which does not readily wish to be seen. It is persistent effort, requiring constant attention. Often, one will only half-realize an aspect of his character, forcing the subconscious to its subtle art. The willingness to delve into these dark possibilities and unearth the root of oneself will prevent others from digging in grounds untilled. Only when a man possesses the ability to explore himself in naked honesty can he be fully honest with the rest of the world. If another body brings point to a fault, the honest individual will merely agree or disagree, free from the vulnerability of surprise. In this respect, the honest man will find no use in outward deception, for there is nothing to hide from the world if he hides nothing from himself.
True confidence is a derivative of honesty. Some possess a hollow confidence, heir to those never properly tested. It appears genuine, but can be spotted readily by an eye keen to real potency of will. Confidence is won by surviving the fires of trial and hardship. A man who honestly knows his own ends becomes confident in what he can accomplish. It is in reaching those ends, the threshold of breaking, that an individual finds strength in his ability to overcome. Vulnerability is defeated by confidence when it prevents the possibility of outside wounds. When confidence is earned and bestowed upon oneself, it can never be stolen or sabotaged by any outside element. There is no need for emotional armor when every incoming attack is calmly and confidently turned aside.
The self-image is born directly of confidence and like honesty, exists in duality. Inner self-image exists separate from the outer self-image and one should not be predicated by the other. An inner image or perception of oneself is reached through an honest understanding of his traits. This private image is founded solely by the individual and should be invulnerable to outside influence. The outer or physical self-image is most readily assessed and attacked by outsiders. Each individual is gifted with a body and it should be viewed as such; a gift. It is a vehicle for interaction with this world. It is the natural and living flesh of a natural and living environment. Every society affirms its fickle and temporal concepts of what passes for physically attractive and what does not. Bodies are not chosen and they are not earned. Those who base perception upon the outer appearance are effectively blind. Likewise, he who obtains his self-image from the passing judgments of society gains nothing of substance, for his self-image can just as easily be shattered as it is bolstered. But the body is an animal. It possesses great strength and flexibility, the potential for change. One can largely mold his own animal appearance to suit his desires. The outer self-image is most easily assessed because it exists in the physical world and can be recorded by the naked eye. Once an individual realizes the outer self-image is the least important aspect of oneself because it tells so little of character and personal growth, he will cease to be vulnerable to attacks upon it. One cannot by wounded in an area he strengthens with honesty and confidence and clarity of perception.
Vulnerability exists in the mind and can thusly be dispelled by the mind. Honesty is not meant for moderation. A fullness of honesty fills the individual with strength. An open account of one’s faults rids the individual of needless secreted vulnerabilities. Confidence derived from others is weak and rightly can be broken by others. Confidence given by the individual to himself can never be taken back by outsiders as it was never theirs to give. The self-image is effectively the realization of one’s honesty and confidence. Society is powerless over an individual who creates this for himself in lieu of allowing it to be assigned him by his fellow man. These goals cannot be purchased or snatched up in an instant. The individual must seek them deliberately and purposefully. In this pursuit, vulnerability can be overcome and open strength its successor. The mind rejoices in honesty, confidence and belief in one’s own image. One needs but turn his eye inward. When a man binds his own hands, the key to his fetters lies within his heart.

It finds pieces of something
That used to be me in the valleys
Between its broken teeth

Its heart sinks in realizing
It was born into the beginning
Of a world that just started ending

A keepsake
A killing machine
A perverse new sanity

Screaming in the hollows
Dying slow by the phone
We are all going down alone

It is the disease we forget
It lovingly licks its lips
Like a shark to a shipwreck

A keepsake
A killing machine
A last ditch sanity

It is patiently killing me
While it whispers reassuringly
And I believe I believe I believe

I believe everything.

Now that you’ve away
Where you were crying
Is stubbornly drying
Under my burning gaze

In your flight to the trees
Our blood sheds its warmth
Alone in this frightful storm
I know you hear my calling

Into the lightless canopy
Silently hunted by the night
A parting on the inside
I know you hear my calling

Why won’t you answer me?

Break time is officially over
Let the beatings begin

Bow and be thankful
For scraps from his table
The bone he throws us
Is bigger than most

King me
And I shall teach you humility
King me
Let me redefine divinity

And if you lived in hell
You know you’d be home now
You would be at home

They bring me their virgin blood
Like pity or mercy could be bought
They offered primitive possessions
And I laughed my head right off

King me
And I shall teach you humility
King me
Let me redefine divinity

They are just dying to die for me.

The sun had long set
By the time I left
Following the only tracks I could find
Blood bleached blue by the moonlight

Dawn came with something to prove
I found our last hero
His nose in the snow
Nothing like the statues of my youth

My tiny reflection in the tears
Frozen to the frown on his face

And I carry on, I carry on
I just hope I won’t be long
How can you withhold from me
When you know I am ready?

I hope I never find what I am looking for

A search for noble blood
In an age of broken loves
Seeking stars, stalking the heavenly seed
A wayfaring dream, or are they seeking me?

Sailing the ancient galleon of bone
I found the villain’s heart
Bleeding its one cruel art
In my own derelict ribs of stone

I embark the mired fens of death
Bestowing breath to my new flesh

It’s steady on, steady on
Into the halogen dawn
Where rain falls mighty
Like angels and kings

The journey I began in vain
It ends in one final refrain
It ends in me.

I still remember the day I saw the king
Swinging from the gallows
A crown in the dirt
The priest trying to calm his fellows
Screaming if you do it right it doesn’t hurt
If you do it right it doesn’t hurt
As I passed on my faithful steed
They were all lost in hollow song
They raised their hateful eyes to me
And I knew it time I moved along

They chased me well out of town
And long into the woods
I’d love to forget the things they said
If only I could
Screaming curses and divinities
A thousand off-color divinities
But the wind finally bested them
The night laughed and cast its shadows
I still think of them and wonder when
I’ll join that sad king in the gallows

For now I find a tavern and order an ale
Pray bad memories heavy enough to drown
Sing with the band and look at the girls
And try to forget that fated town
In the back pocket of the world

And I’ve had that horse since it all began
He’s fucking crazy but he’s my only friend
He loves drinking wine and telling lies
He’s fucking crazy and he’s my only friend

The tale of my days can be told
In one long laugh and a fistful of tears
While me and my friend grow old
Toasting to our adventurous years.

Suddenly I recognize
Something in your eyes
A ghost, a specter
From another life

A distant candle in
My abandoned ruin
Patiently haunting me
Through the neverending

This could all just end
Out with the undertow
If you would just relent
If you would just let go

Now the metal man wants to know why
He’s bleeding
And Aphrodite wants to know why
She can’t breathe

It is bleeding through
The sameness of you
An alternate timeline
I won’t be shackled to

And the faithful heart wants to know why
I pulled the stars from her night
The wolf wants to know why
I do not venture outside

Bathed in lunar light
I choose my lupine right
To bleed with my brothers
And revel the night

This could all just end
Out with the undertow
If you would just relent
If you would just let go

Just let go.

Wake up and welcome
Your winter wasteland
Not where you’re going
Never where you’ve been

I see shadows moving
Underneath the ice
I just need something
To remember me by

I hear hearts beating in the snow
I hear hearts beating in the snow

You are deep sea to me
Ten thousand pounds
Pressing down

This kind of quiet is deafening
This kind of quiet

No one around for hours
Track the only trail I know
Footfalls to paw prints
The wolf leading me home

I hear hearts beating in the snow
I hear hearts beating in the snow

You are deep freeze to me
Ten thousand frigid pounds
And my shivering heart
Can’t get the blood all the way
Around

For the first time
I pray for fire
I pray for something
To remember me by

In this cold, I feel life slipping away
Buried by snow, I know this is it
If only, only I could set myself ablaze
Just give it a minute
Just give it a minute…

i’ve been waiting for faith in pill-form
i’ve been waiting for the day when i can say
“and i never looked back.”

i want the fires to finally come
i want the smoke to burn my eyes
and to know i am alone
i want to walk through the cinder and ash
of my former life

sometimes i am afraid to fall asleep
sometimes i hear thunder and i think
of the end of the world

because now is not the time to crash-land
because now god is fucking with something
he does not understand

i told you never to come here
i told you they can smell fear
they say the end is coming
but they say it’s a good thing

if it were all over tomorrow
would you really want to know?
would you really want to know?
would you really want to know?

…then i won’t say a word.

If it turns out I was wrong
All along
And we’re just animals
With His souls
Tell God I’m sorry
For not believing
In Him, if He
Believed in me

Please accept my sincerest apologies.

I’d say I’d see You
Here in Hell
But I really doubt
I ever will.

the world is full
of beautiful dead people
unfeathered
and afraid to fight

then she said, “you”
“i thought you were dead”
and i said, “i know”
“i thought so too”

i am an angel
crawling when i can fly
i am an angel
with these skeleton wings
that you’ve plucked clean

someday they’ll find my remains
somewhere in your veins

suddenly i’m swimming
there’s blood in my eyes
drowning a demi-god
i smile and you realize

“i’m already dead.”

i am an angel
crawling when i can fly
i am an angel
with these skeleton wings
that you’ve plucked clean

someday they’ll find my remains
somewhere in your veins

then she says again
“it was a misunderstanding”
“just a misunderstanding”
and i say
“i miss understanding you”

i am an angel
crawling when i can fly
i am an angel
“i’m already dead
…and so are you.”