In Awe of Chaos

You’ll find Alexandria when the Dawn Commeth (Chapter Three)

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 19:34:00 +0000

Chapter 3 - Things begin as you’d expect…

I shall now tell you, as succinctly as is possible, the story of my early life and the events leading up to my current dire predicament in order to effectively preface exactly how I came to be in this miserable and hopeless situation.

Any historian reading this need not trouble themselves too overly with the archival of its every detail for posterity, as most are without merit in that circumstance, for the only important purpose they have is to aid in the comprehension of the matter at hand, namely my untimely death via divine assassination.

My birthplace was also where I would spend my formative years: the thoroughly mundane Egyptian port city of Damietta.

The only family I would ever know was my beloved mother. She was tirelessly compassionate towards me, but also always sternly protective of her only son. Raising me alone, she had to grow tougher, to harden, to be able to properly protect me. There was an astounding duality to her motherly character: she was so gentle and caring when it came to our bond, but she became a ferocious lioness whenever her cub was somehow endangered. I foolishly didn’t realise it as a child, but my mother toiled and sacrificed endlessly to provide a decent life for me. The deep furrows etched into her visage illustrated the struggle she endured daily to ensure our continued livelihood. She would have done anything for me, and she always put me before herself: her maternal protection provides an immeasurable debt of gratitude which I can’t ever hope to repay in full.

When I was very young she was employed as a seamstress performing trivially menial and uninspired work for little pay. Eventually though, she utilised what little money she had managed to accrue as savings and went about embracing larger ambitions in the hopes of benefiting us both. She opened her own small stall at the local market and began selling rather avant-garde clothing of her own fabrication. Initially this tailor-cum-merchant venture met with little success - her creations initially being simply too unconventional for the small-minded folk of the area - but she kept at it, spreading the word however possible that her creations were radically different from the plain, derivative and homogenous offerings which abounded the competing outlets. Soon enough, her efforts paid off and she managed to ignite a new fashion and to establish a largely uncontested niche by meticulously ensuring that her products were consistently either attractively vogue or so ahead of the trend as to have a wildly pioneering appeal. The quality of her work far exceeded comparative pieces from the market’s merchantry, and this earned their vocal ire and disdain.

For a short while, she even attained some measure of local prestige for the unrivaled selection of textiles she had secured via exclusive import contracts with some of the trade ships which frequently docked at the city’s port, and for her truly remarkable talent at the tailor’s craft. Her name was first at hand whenever visiting seamen sought such services and so a fresh stream of customers were regularly directed her way. Over the years many wives were overjoyed at being gifted clothing of her making from their returning husbands, and thus her name spread beyond our city’s dreadfully insular gossip. At the zenith of her popularity and acclaim, various influential socialites throughout the region were well known to wear her attire, honouring my mother’s craftsmanship in a way that I know brought her a great deal of joyful pride. She had began simply humbly seeking some sort of recognition for her talent, and having achieved that so thoroughly, it was obvious that she was immensely proud of her accomplishment, and I was certainly proud that my mother could be counted amongst the few successful female entrepreneurs that our city had fostered. Though it must be said that this distinction earned her equal parts begrudging admiration and venomous envy.

I learned a great deal from my mother. I learned how to stubborn pursue an ambition, no matter the vehemence of the opposition you face. I learned that one person could defeat even massive odds stacked against them with enough planning, determination and fortitude. The most important thing I learned from her though, was that if you want something, you have to seize any and all opportunities to make it your own. Something she told me once that stuck with me was that anyone can have anything they want in this world, they just have to be willing to sacrifice everything else in order to do so.

In point of fact, the house that my mother owned would generally be considered fairly modest, for despite her ostensibly booming business, the cost of staying at the top and remaining competitive meant that profit margins were slim and her actual earnings were merely sufficient to support the two of us whilst allowing a tiny surplus. Still it was nonetheless impressive than a lone woman, without any bequeathment or birthright, could have personally garnered possession of her own home. The city district we were situated within was a large medina that was just inland enough to mostly avoid the Damietta river’s constantly wafted salty tang. Yet, the scent of sea salt still pleasantly reminds me of home, and that mental connection is probably one of the reasons why I was always drawn to the ocean henceforth.

Ah, how I abhorred the brief schooling I endured. Those jaded old men, clearly arbitrarily titled as ‘wise elders’, and their plainly futile attempts to convey archaic, worthless knowledge, which they barely comprehended themselves, were wordlessly rebuffed by a young mind which quickly determined that school wasn’t where what needed to be learned would be. Unfortunately, I couldn’t escape this dismal waste of time just yet, so I simply watched them lecture with vacant eyes, all the while daydreaming about the adventures I’d soon enjoy when my real life began. Due to their distorted interpretations of my disinterest and apathy, it eventually became a common consensus amongst my so-called teachers that the introspective young boy Al-quark-elti was simply a slow child and their noted lack of discretion when discussing this prognosis in front of me only made my resolve to embrace conscious underachievement that much stronger.

Honestly, I’m unsure whether their failure to differentiate between insufficiencies of effort or aptitude, as it pertains to a student who seemingly presents only the latter, is a testament to their enduring stupidity or my slowly realised forte of deception. Either way, this, and the many other related scenarios where I had to exercise a convincing facade of one sort or another, allowed me to harmlessly hone my rather unconventional talent for beguilement.

Despite the meager attention I had to direct towards simply avoiding failing my classes, it still constantly waned in the face of the many dull academic subjects I was forced to endure lessons on. However, my classes on literature, were, from the very start, the one area of study where I felt a truly meaningful resonance. My love of reading was so passionate that I struggled to extend my masquerade of mediocrity to this sole subject that actually quickened my heartbeat and challenged me intellectually. Thus, I dropped the pretense of disinterest in these lessons, but still only went about achieving middling grades so not to arouse suspicion. I benefited from these lessons being taught by an elder who always predictably indulged his inclination to doze off in his chair after assigning the class a particular book to read. Left well alone, and with the spectacular sincerity of childish earnestness, I would eagerly pore over the various Arabic tomes my class were instructed to read through. I especially delighted in the ancient tales of adventure, both fictional and historical, which were sometimes described therein. I constantly saw myself in these yellowed, curling pages, in these dreamt-up or long dead adventurers, and it provided an exhilaratingly peculiar thrill. I expanded my reading beyond the classroom very quickly, and had soon exhausted the choice picks from the entirely unimpressive library that the city featured. Furthermore, I had begun writing whenever possible, about whatever took my fancy. Besides keeping a journal, I also often wrote stories and poetry - all of which was kept entirely to myself of course. Even my dear mother was unaware of these private creative endeavours, and I usually kept nothing from her, but this secret outlet was mine, something all of my own, something that distinguished me, that defined me.

Due to my intentional specialisation in all things literary, it could not be denied, though it was often a begrudging acknowledgment, that the boy who seemed to barely avoid failing all of his other classes had become very well spoken and, even just being judged on the writings it was mandatory to undertake for my literature class, a talented writer. Despite this narrow success, the unavoidable fact that I shirked all the other aspects of education which my schooling was expected to instill within me earned the faculty’s constant, entirely unwanted, attention and, personally relished, ire. So, some time before my final year, and despite my beloved mother’s repeatedly teary admonishment, I did what any free-thinking young man would do in such a situation: I formally disengaged myself from the well-respected institution of schooling which had so often been described as my only means of pursuing a lucrative career and thus securing of a financially comfortable future.

In order to preserve my mother’s fragile nerves, I soon thereafter discreetly engaged in unorthodox and short-lived apprenticeships for a touted local scribe and a celebrated visiting dramatist after manufacturing opportunities to daringly exhibit my writing to them both. Though this helped appease her fears that I was throwing my life away, it did unfortunately also invalidate her long standing well meaning but ultimately delusional hope that her only son might become a venerated man of medicine, but in its place it inspired a new expectation that I would become some sort of esteemed academic. To her very vocally downcast disappointment, neither professions were ever to my liking. I had discovered, to my carefully concealed repugnance, that both of my apprenticeship mentors wrote only what was mandated for them to write, albeit in an explicit (direct instruction) and implicit (societal influence) fashion respectively.

It was at this point, as a young man unassociated with any traditional sort of personal advancement or profession, when I was suddenly confronted with the jolting and extremely daunting question of what I would do with my life.

I thoroughly considered my answer, and finally concluded: nothing unworthily taxing, as far as is possible.

Now I have since been, on several separate occasions, perhaps aptly described and surmised as a ne’er-do-well; it is an ostracising title that, demonstrating strikingly atypical personal veracity, I would verify as largely accurate, but, I think, importantly, for very different reasons. Frequently was I also labeled as simply a reprobate scoundrel, and yet my roguishness was actually inexorably sourced from my tendency towards a careful and measured expenditure of my time and energy: thievery made money quicker than working, and with less effort necessitated. Basically, what I deemed worthy of my efforts differed greatly from most other people, and from what was expected of me. My evasion of conventional employment, as was occasionally speculated, did not stem from personal inability or torpescence - a seemingly silly distinction perhaps, but vitally relevant in this case - but was instead caused by an extensively philosophically contemplated righteous unwillingness and refusal to work.

The subconscious societal expectation thrust upon me was to expend the rest of my upright years engaging in asinine toil, and be happy about it to boot. This I rejected wholeheartedly. Not only would I not degrade myself with pointless busywork for meager pay, I was also intent on continuously grumbling and grousing about the very notion too. Although it appeared as though the commonalty had apparently collectively resolved to pressure each new entrant into its ranks towards the willful submission and spiritual debasement of labourious and fruitless slavery, I could not accept this bizarre theory of massive conspiracy. It soon became clear to me that, in actuality, the populace at large had been subconsciously conditioned to adopt a cyclic generational way of life consisting almost solely of working, consuming, procreating and then dying. This realisation was constantly reaffirmed by the never-ending stream of castigation I received as a purposely jobless individual. All in all, it was the look in their eyes which told me everything I needed to know. It was clear they knew they ‘ought’ to chastise me for refusing to remain anything other than leisurely idle, and yet they couldn’t help but admire the extensive personal liberty I had managed to retain while they were so inescapably and oppressively incarcerated in a system which they had never consciously voluntarily entered into, come to comprehend, or actually truly benefited from.

The wisdom gained from this epiphany about the invisible form of bondage that the proletariat mindlessly espoused had enormous practical value as it emboldened me towards pursuing alternative means of securing my continued livelihood: needless to say, these were rarely of a conventionally legitimate sort, and even rarer still legal. Still, I was my own man, foraging for ways to earn my keep, forging my own path through life, and I answered to no-one. As far as I was concerned, my principled existence was of a distinguished and noble sort.

Thus began the next stage of my new life. I, shamefully, deceived my mother into thinking that I had once again become an understudy, this time to a respected poet (whose name I appropriated from one of my favorite books). In reality though, after attracting their attention and earning their respect through a series of difficult and ambitious burglaries at the docks, I fell in amongst the ranks of mischievous street urchins who took up residence in the district’s abandoned buildings. We survived by besieging the local people with our rampant thievery and dishonest antics. I took an instant liking to this line of work, especially the independence it allowed, and demonstrated a natural talent for it, soon learning the professional intricacies required to adopt it as a reliable source of income instead of an occasional act of desperation. Though my new friends did not share my intellectual flair, they were of an endearing sort nonetheless, and they soon became as though brothers and sisters to me. I cherished this second family, and I was very grateful for their company and protection. They would pridefully boast to the other gangs of delinquents who roamed the other sectors of the city that their new comrade Al-quark-elti had the exceptional deftness and agility, and speedily nimble hands, of a master thief, and that he was unmatched by any other pilferer the city over. Embarrassingly, I found such comforting affirmation in their reverent endorsement of my skills. During this period I continued to write in secret, and longed to be recognised for my creative endeavours, so their kudos was but poor mimicry of the genuinely legitimate acknowledgment and admiration which I actually craved.

In hindsight, I probably never truly capitalised on my very profitable talent as much as I really could have done. As long as I could scrape just enough money to get by each day, which usually merely required a morning’s worth of graft (depending on the pickpocketing haul from the early morning foot traffic), I was perfectly content to spend its remainder writing or reading the many books I had stolen for my own perusal.

As luck would have it however, when I was just approaching the threshold of manhood, and my thievery had evolved into undetected artistry of the highest caliber, having positioned myself as the apex predator of the city’s petty miscreants, the burgeoning career I idly nursed was brought to an immediate and abrupt halt when I was caught in the act red-handed and made to answer for my crime for the first and only time.

Firstly though, let me explain that thievery is ultimately the practice of eternal malcontent. Every thief wants what he cannot have, in all aspects of life: to increase our wealth, to ascend beyond our station, to advance our status, to extend our entitlement, et cetera. Voracious ambition is the genesis of every great act of robbery ever committed. Unfortunately, what cinches us all together is also what most readily threatens to sever our treasured kinship and secure us into the bondage of incarceration that we fear most. It is the unavoidable greed that accompanies our lofty aspirations which makes us all terribly predictable. So many thieves foolishly long for acclaim, but though they may revere the cat burglars of legend, their lust for infamy to highlight their exploits should be tempered by the fact that you generally only hear about the crooks that got caught. Better to remain in comfortable obscurity than to seek out fame and henceforth remain in chains. Overindulged avarice earns you a jail cell, whereas the careful selection of acquisitions ensures a lengthy tenure in the business of creative appropriation. Do not covet possessions, instead only savour the victories which their seizure represents.

As even an amateur wallet snatcher will be able to attest to, the ability to improvise and adapt is the most valuable skill a criminal in our line of work can hope to perfect. Put plainly, undeviatingly playing the hand you’re dealt is an extremely hazardous proposition in an occupation based entirely on cheating others to gain an unfair and unearned advantage.

Additionally, it must be said that a true master thief’s most important disguise is his own unaltered appearance. Your own face can become an impenetrable facade which is perpetually available, primed and reliable. You cannot always prepare for a situation in which you will need to utilise pretense or illusion, but you can ensure that you are never defenseless. Costumes and veneers are useful in certain cases, and can undoubtedly be employed to great effect in such scenarios, but they are unreliable and short-lived tricks at best. At some indeterminable but inevitable point in your career, you will need to learn the methodology behind utilising the camouflage which your own skin graciously provides.

I, for example, and you’ll have to excuse my immodesty, was blessed with fairly sharp and defined Egyptian features which juxtapose my lighter olive skin with the softly angular facial characteristics that I now know are generally associated with men from the European continent. This non-intimidating handsomeness was my sole inheritance from a father I’ve never known, and that my mother rarely spoke of, besides her constant bitter chides regarding his abandonment of us long ago, but I’ve always fancifully imagined him as being a visiting seaman from Europe who heeded adventure’s call too steadfastly to settle down.

Anyway, from what I’ve gathered, mine is a look generally, perhaps somewhat unconsciously, associated with people of a jovial, harmless and trustworthy nature - a very useful trait for someone employing nefarious means for personal gain. Thanks to this peculiar birthright, and a proclivity for dressing smartly (which my mother bestowed), I rarely attract undue attention or suspicion, and this means I am able to anonymously mingle amongst the masses with little risk of drawing unwanted scrutiny.

The medina which I called home was fairly large, but very unremarkable besides its single claim to fame: its ability to boast the largest open-air market of any city in the region. As such, it enjoyed a constant stream of visitors and trade from all the nearby towns. More importantly for me, and my greedy intentions, this renowned and well frequented marketplace was basically a very large but very densely compacted cluster of buildings and stalls. This was an architectural quirk which meant that the pathways were comprised of many narrow streets and alleyways. These tight quarters and the market’s bustling crowds made it the perfect hunting ground for the veteran thief. In many of its sections that were occupied mostly by stalls, huge canvas canopies were suspended over the area to shield the customers and sellers alike from the scorching reach of the desert sun; this shade created an extensive covering of shadows that were very useful indeed. However, this oasis of easy pickings was not without its appropriate allotment of security and guardians. The richest merchants had organised and financed the watchful protection of several groups of patrolling policemen who would stroll in varying circuits around the area and vigilantly oversee the congregation therein.

It was a day perfectly devoid of extraordinary circumstance which had earned my complacency and sealed my downfall. The sun was in the long process of seceding from another day of ceaselessly baking the clay buildings of my town yet further, and it was setting on a long and particularly successful stretch of pickpocketing for me, as I had managed to fill my satchel to a satisfying bulge with coins and various other valuable trinkets. This was a windfall which would cover my daily expenses for the next week at least. The hordes were just beginning to disperse for the day and this of course meant that my window of opportunity was nearing its end: the thinning of the crowd cover meant a decisive disadvantage to the crucial invisibleness of my unsightly and unseemly acts. Despite this, my greedy eyes still eagerly scanned the departing crowds with hopes of finding one more victim to target with my pilfering and round off the day’s good fortune. My initial surveying swept through the droves without finding any such opportunities though, and I, somewhat disheartened, moved along to another vantage point to once again scour the gaggle of noisy barterers.

Some unexplainable attraction quickly drew my attention to a burly fellow of an obviously priestly sort, who was wearing a long grey robe with white embellishments, and had his hands held behind his back in a dignifiedly disciplined manner as he confidently strode along perusing the market wares. The man’s pitch black skin suggested to me that he was most likely an outlander, maybe a pilgrim of some sort. His potential unfamiliarity with the area enlivened my confidence that he could be easily targeted. However, what actually attracted my diligent scrutiny to his person was the distinctive chinking of loose coins in the holy man’s pockets, a sound detectable over the distracting hubbub only by a thief’s hard earned and well honed specialist manner of hearing.

I had found my target. The predatory instincts within me awoke, and I went to work.

You’ll find Alexandria when the Dawn Commeth (Chapter Two)

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:49:51 +0000

Chapter Two - An apologia. The reasons are totally irrelevant; let me tell you the reasons.

Having quelled the enormous tide of sorrow building in his chest, and empathetically dabbing at the wet splotches on the parchment with a rag torn from his shirt, hoping to erase the evidence of his momentary weakness from this last record, he sat up straighter, and clenched his teeth in grim determination. Thoughts of the boat being upturned in the next moment and this last ditch attempt at committing his life to paper being made moot caused a fiery, defiant anger to spread throughout his mind. He realised, to his vigorous revivification, that he had to increase his pace, lest all this be for naught; his words would be dissolved and expunged, and their noble purpose be annulled, by the great obliterating force that is the engulfing sea.

The very first thing you must understand is that the woman I appear to glorify in the puerile fashion of an adolescent doting on a classroom crush is entirely worthy of every manner of idolisation I can muster, and more. I have never encountered anyone even remotely like her before. She is spectacularly extraordinary in every sense of the word.

The very instance she entered my life, I experienced something truly wonderful. As if my mind had been clouded with a thick swirling mist of obfuscation and at first sight of her, her image blew through this wretched fog like a powerful gust and displaced it in its entirety. To relate this life-changing phenomenon to someone who has never been in love is practically impossible I’m afraid, but if you’ve felt what I felt, you will know precisely what I refer to.

She was a beacon of blindingly brilliant light. In her awesome glow, I saw clearly for the first time. I saw my life with eyes anew, and I now had my first truly honourable ambition in trying to make her mine forever more. Juxtaposed with this upright gallantry, I realised just how meaninglessly frivolous my life had been before. The brief meeting with her imbued me with such startling clarity, I almost didn’t know what to do with myself; I was paralysed by the salient transparency everything had now adopted. I saw the truth of the matter with unignorable acuity: mine was previously a severely depressing way of life indeed. In fact, I realised, to my aghast horror, that my life was really only rendered as a continuous stream by nature of its successional chain of interconnected disappointments and failures. In hindsight, the many missed opportunities which can be attributed to its short span weren’t so much missed as they were evaded or rejected. This epiphany gave me another gift too: I knew, with ashamed conviction, that my shortcomings were so often of my own manufacture, and to artificially limit oneself like this, for the purpose of a more comfortable existence, is a reprehensible deed to behold.

I assure you that I myself find excessive self-pity repugnantly undignified, though I regularly made its fetid bog my wallowing grounds once upon a time, and so you need not fear its embarrassing occurrence in this chronicle. You also need not worry that I might exaggerate or conceal what really happened. Let me tell you, when your fledgling grasp on mortal existence becomes so apparent that you can practically see the sands of times whiling away before your terrified gaze, the impression you present of yourself is no longer of any especial importance to you, only that you accurately portray your life and times, in vivid moral ugliness and all. What good is an epitaphic testimony composed of lies? No, if it deems me at all noteworthy and thus opts to gift me the honour of its remembrance, I would have history’s immortal record depict me as the man I genuinely was. I was flawed. I was foolish. I was brashly flesh and blood. So often, I was intent on living hedonistically, surviving at any cost, and accruing scars and regrets as if commemorations of emboldenment, and wearing cavalier irreverence as if a flagrant emblem signifying my character.

I owe any forthcoming annals, should I be deemed worthy of entry into them, a brazenly authentic account of my dealings, and though I intend to be as boldly candid as possible I do not relish retelling and detailing the many ugly things I have done. Respectively, in the eyes of the law, in the gaze of the heavens, and the collective opinion of society, I have repeatedly and unapologetically done things that are unlawful, sinful and immoral. Some of these misdeeds were at the imperative of survivalism, and I generally feel no remorse for those instances; though, in hindsight, and in the interest of full disclosure, many of the dangerous scenarios I found myself needing to escape from were, for all intents and purposes, voluntarily entered into, because the miscreancy and wrongdoing involved in such choices were performed of my own volition.

Although, and perhaps foolishly, my soul rests somewhat easier on consideration of the fact that I have never actually purposely or directly killed a man in the course of my nefarious affairs. However, I must admit that there were definitely points when I would have done so, had it been a requisite of my continued survival, or, during particularly dark periods in my travels, had great potential profit been even its sole incentive. That being said, I have injured, even maimed, a handful of other men, always in self-defense, though sometimes preemptively so. Yet, once again, the theatrics behind each such episode of necessary violence were generally produced or induced by either my haughtily swashbuckling ways or my arrogant disregard for caution when I found myself in dangerous places among equally dangerous people.

Also, I have stolen from a truly countless multitude of my fellow countrymen and peers, and practically every single time having done so without reluctance beforehand or guilt afterwards. You might think that this apathy was simply due to me systematically suppressing the inherent feelings of contrition and remorse, but the truth is that there was actually no such emotional response for me to have to do so. I considered such offenses to be trivial infringements upon the liberty of others and so spared the consequences or moral repercussions no thought. This selective sociopathy proved mightily convenient in my criminal endeavours.

Beyond these transgressions, I have also committed a great many other offenses against my fellow man: I’ve deceived them, cheated them, betrayed them, et cetera. Out of some misplaced sense of honour, where possible, I consciously attempted to limit the targets of my roguery to those engaging in it themselves. Whilst this uniformly elicited a satisfying feeling of twisted righteousness, this unorthodox form of ethical recompense or atonement was a rarely enjoyed gratification as the majority of those I disadvantaged with my misdeeds were common folk. I would add though, maybe due to unwarranted pride, that I have always strived to adhere to an unwritten, indeed nebulously defined, personal code of conduct, the boundaries of which are not so easy to definitively identify but they have at least prevented me from ever inflicting serious misfortune or hardship upon the old, the infirm, and of course, children. Yet, I think that if I am to eventually be judged by a higher power, these weak conscientious scruples shall not be weighed too heavily as a token of redemption.

Whatever rationalizations I offer will invariably, and probably rightfully, seem as though childish excuses meant to exculpate myself of blame but I assure you that they are nothing of the sort, for they are merely intended as an elucidation of my motivations. Let it be said that I fully embrace my rightful accountability for an immoral existence forged by malevolence and mischief.

Nevertheless, my justifications and admissions of blameworthiness are largely unimportant to the story itself, and shall be saved, I think, for a far more severe and prejudiced adjudicator than you my friend.

You’ll find Alexandria when the Dawn Commeth (Chapter One)

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 18:24:00 +0000

Chapter One - The clarity and humility of predeath epistolary storytelling.

The flurry of rapid, staccato movements threw the momentarily illuminated dust motes orbiting the candle’s flickering, blinking flame into wildly whirling eddies. So intent was his frenzied concentration however, that this peculiar phenomenon entirely escaped even the most minute diversion of attention. In the softly vivid and fluttering glow, the quill’s ragged feather deftly danced between the light and the shadows at the fevered behest of his mad scribbling. Having endured an unfortunately prolonged period of disuse and storage, its paltry plume had become sullied with soot and it speckled the unravelled scroll of coarse parchment with little dark blemishes when it shook and quivered during its rhythmic swaying.

A grubby ink bottle sat besides him, its label yellowed and curled, surrounded by a small pool of overflow from where his hurried dipping of the nib had unintentionally decanted some of the viscous liquid. Furthermore, the deck’s constant tilting and shifting every which way had induced the ink to duly flow away from its source in outwardly probing streams, and this produced the impression of a myriad of little miry tendrils venturing towards most every direction. As the bizarre formation slowly coagulated it began to resemble the black silhouette of a star peering past and around the pot with its inky sunbeams - until this composition was violently dissolved by a falling teardrop. Still, though this otherwise bothersome waste of ink initially evoked an instinctual pang of disconcertedness, it thereafter went flagrantly unheeded nonetheless. Usually, he would have expended great care so to preserve this precious amenity as his personal stockpile was painfully meagre and alternatives were particularly difficult to come by at sea. Yet, on this day, in this final desperate hour, his vehement focus was directed solely at what he was writing.

Still, what he was actually committing to that tautly stretched parchment bore only decidedly scant attempts at the expectantly utilitarian succinctness, for he could not rebuff the intrinsic urge of the dramatist’s embellishment, not even now - especially not now. He was certainly well aware of the overbearing urgency of his task, but also that it would likely be his last living act and his final opportunity to leave some sort of enduring mark on the world. If this writing was to be his concluding contribution to the humanity, he had quite a marked intention to ensure that it was very much deserving of more than mere relegation to the dustily unperturbed footnotes of history’s grand annals.

And so, what he was animatedly, carelessly scribing, with the intensity of a man knowingly hounded by death’s miserable and relentless trailing, was not simply an explanation or a goodbye, it was a means by which he would transmute his life, which would soon be banished to oblivion in its current form, into something that wouldn’t die: the grandiose immortality of the written word. The profound seriousness of this undertaking was definitely not lost on him, and it weighed very heavily on his already overtaxed mind as he set about attempting to derive his mortal essence into the words he hurriedly and erratically scrawled.

What he wrote was as follows:

Hello friend. My name is Al-quark-elti. We have never met, nor, I think, shall we ever have the chance to; still, I should very much like to call you my friend, and at this moment my most cherished and honoured friend - indeed my only friend. If you would be so kind as to indulge the fickle and vain fancy of a man whose death unmistakably looms before him, I will relate to you my story, and you will know me, and you will see my truth.

However, you find me at, ostensibly, a most inopportune instant to properly relay the breadth and span of events which I mean to. Though it may seem to you, blissfully unaware of the ever rising peril I face, as if an unnecessarily fatalistic and alarmist recourse, that of either a defeatist or a poltroon, I would have it said that my bleak prognosis is pessimistically coloured by neither undue hopelessness or cowardice, but instead by that most sobering of archetypal existential crises. I speak, of course, of fatalism.

Put plainly, I know to an awful certitude that I sail upon a doomed vessel, that I shall soon be viscously swallowed by the vast and uncaring sea.

It should not surprise you that I did not suppose beforehand that this ship would eventually come to serve as a floating coffin for my untimely and impromptu at-sea entombment. Had I done I would, of course, have afforded this damnable drifting casket the wide berth it rightly deserved, but unfortunately my particular prescience in this matter was woefully lacking, and the situation is now hopeless to the most extraordinarily certain degree. Though these likely be among my very final moments living on this wretched earth, instead of hedonistically savouring them in an undignified hysteria, I choose to write, to crudely scrawl upon the fragile fabric of time that which can not, must not be lost in the silence of my death. I hope this impresses upon you the morbid genuineness and sincerity of my intention.

To preface, and dismiss the obvious, I need not record a last will and testament. Though I have kin that shall survive me, I frankly have absolutely no worldly wealth or title to bequeath unto them. I have nothing but the impotently defiant fire in my belly, and the crushing longing in my heart. These things, I would never wish another to endure, and I will carry them as sentimental keepsakes to the grave. They represent a millstone around my neck, one of my own making and adoption; yet this weighty burden is also a treasured talisman for it is my last tenuous, faltering connection to that which I pine for even now.

No, I wish only to record a chronicle of my downfall so that the valuable story of my plight and my ruin will not die with me. In this way, I will be immortalised in whispered folklore for as long as people care to tell such cautionary stories, and that will most definitely suffice as my earthly cenotaph.

Still, despite my rather myopic perspective in the matter, I realise that my imminent worldly departure is actually not terribly relevant to what I wish to convey. Though I imagine that its extreme relevance to my particular situation which will soon come to apply in the most sudden and violent manner. Regardless, my death is not yet important to what I must tell you, because it has no context in your mind, and so it cannot assume its rightful place in the narrative you expect. You already have an end, but you need the middle, the vital procession, and not least, the beginning. The short account of an insignificant man’s lonely death at sea would generally be considered, and quite rightly, a dull anecdote indeed. So, as my ultimate destruction nears, I shall heartily endeavour to tell you why my approaching expiration is so worthy of especial attention.

Well, to convey so very much in so very few words, and as fellow men the world over could have proffered in knowing jest, the circumstances of my demise were instigated by my liaisons with a woman.

Should it trouble me or perplex you to know that even as my annihilation looms ever nearer I do not begrudge her in the slightest for the unavoidable part that she has played in the genesis of my eventual undoing? Likely so for the latter, but absolutely not for the former.

Would you believe me when I tell you that I would readily - nay, gladly - die a hundred grisly deaths in order to hold her close to me just one last time? To tell her that I forgive her completely and utterly for the part she unwillingly and unknowingly played in my dissolution? To just ensure that the final sentiments I utter should merely convey my undying love for her?

Alas, I shall die without ever having held my beloved in my arms, but, still, I mourn yet greater the pain, the bereavement she may ultimately suffer at my passing. The end I shall meet entails seemingly meagre pain and trivial misery in comparison, and I would endure it indefinitely, eternally, if it would only spare her the terrible anguish and despair awaiting her.

Be you a man, listen well, for I shall impart a measure of wisdom that you would do well to properly heed: forbidden love is the antagonistic and often mutually exclusive counterpart of a complacent and prolonged existence. Of that grim revelation’s truth, I most sincerely assure you. You certainly shouldn’t wish to, and I hope you do not have to, verify this unfortunate fact for yourself.

Perhaps you are incredulous. Perhaps you ask what credentials I claim to possess which entitle me to definitively state such a thing, and in doing so predict inevitable unhappiness for all the misguided romantics of the world? Ah, rest assured that mine are of a sort earned from most terrible accomplishments indeed.

For I have peered behind the great metaphysical curtain my friend, and I have snatched a fleeting glimpse of the hidden workings which control everything we know.

To which end, I also believe myself to be amongst the scarce few who are knowledgeable about one such mysterious mechanism of this sort. An ethereal apparatus very much pertinent to my fast-approaching eradication in fact. Its very existence is one I have, at great cost, quite recently discovered, and since come to mentally document as best as is possible given the trying circumstances it uses to discourage or eliminate any observer. I would not see the vital wisdom I’ve gleaned follow me to the grave, and so I mean to impart it unto you.

I’m afraid I can give no guarantee that the following edification shall not endanger you, so you must exercise great caution in how you come to utilise it, and absolutely refrain from flaunting what it is you shall come to know.

Furthermore, should the uncovering I have undertaken become the subject of wide renown, I would humbly ask to have my name credited with the discovery. A legacy, I think, that is most befitting of its first victim who became entirely cognizant of the nature of his demise.

To be frank, what I speak of is a damnable contrivance by which the mighty Gods themselves seek to keep us eternally separated from the paramount object of our desires. Through their meddling providence, circumstance is manipulated, often appearing as if by mere chance, to ensure that each step you take towards your ultimate goal actually secretly distances it twice as far from you, thus extending the pursuit ever onwards. It is a system which absolutely ascertains that your failure seems as though that of a defeat sourced in unluckiness, or of simply falling short on that occasion; whereas in actuality, no matter how close the attempt appeared to be, you never truly enjoyed any chance whatsoever to genuinely succeed.

I imagine that you may be leery of such an hypothesis’ validity, and rightfully so. After all, why should the mighty Gods wish to torment and malevolently toy with us using such a seemingly petty plot? The reasoning is simple, and it relies upon a facet of obedience which is even evident in the world of men too: whether your ruler be king or God, to achieve that which your heart longs for most is to be perfectly content, and to be so content is to have no further need to heed the mandates or revere the promises of either monarchs or deities. This state of being immune to the manipulation of threats or bargaining is a potential eventuality which both such parties have a decidedly vested interest in preventing, but one that only the latter can boast the means to actually do so as divine power is necessary to achieve this subtle puppetry on the universal scale its implementation requires. On top of this, concealing this meticulous ruse from humanity’s problematic curiosity requires a deft but forceful hand in discouraging or quelling any attempts to uncover it.

And so, the Gods enact their intangible field of metaphysical repulsion in order to subdue our unruly ambition by sequestering our desideratum indefinitely. As a result of this, our submission to the heavens has remained constant throughout the ages, so much so that we’ve come to meekly accept our lot as creatures whose ultimate yearnings shall forever go unfulfilled. It is a commonly shared musing amongst most everybody, even those whose day-to-day mindless drudging remains steadfastly devoid of any philosophy, that the human condition is invariably one of constant dissatisfaction. We even take to lightheartedly quipping about the ultimate futility of any human endeavour in the face of the universe’s cruel, omnipotent whim that simply will not suffer allowing any man to rise above his celestially designated station. Besides which, we are also prone to reason, in our impotently desperate search for meaning in this matter, that though we seem forced to relinquish the possibility of fulfilling our overarching aspirations, we are usually readily able to acquire the meagre satisfaction of appeasing our smaller ambitions and minor hankerings. We’d rather settle for the reliability of these small rewards than pursue the impossible dream of the big prize.

Truly, what pitiful vassals we have become. Placated by comfortable powerlessness, we are unknowing slaves kept ignorant and sufficiently satisfied by scraps whilst our masters deviously keep the feast out of our collective reach.

The means by which we are kept suitably occupied and obliging are as potent as they are wicked. Each of us is supposedly tainted by the fallibility of man and, hence, we all have our individual vices, which the Gods strategically allow us to indulge in on occasion, so that we do not grow unruly in frustration and despair. For me, once, it was money. The frighteningly overwhelming allure of cold, hard gold chinking melodically in my pocket. I can assure you that the lust for wealth is truly blinding; so much so that I would have likely forever shirked greater, more righteous ambitions had the meager trickle of pittance I was enjoying continued to satiate my juvenile and preoccupying greed. Instead, thankfully, it ceased, abruptly. I was freed. I had been forcefully shunted off the road I was unconsciously trudging along without any aim or purpose. Unfortunately, before I could enjoy my new found spiritual liberty, I had soon earned the ire of the Gods, having evaded their attempts at rectifying my deviation, and I was a marked man.

Both the zealous priests and devout common folk alike exalt blind and unquestioning faith in the immutable and beneficent celestial fortune allotted to each of us. Whereas the sophist skeptics say that such nonsense is simply serendipity masquerading, in the minds of those susceptible to irrationality and charlantry, as fate. Yet, refuting them both, I know now how the stars have aligned over my birth, controlling my progress and shaping it to bring about what had been predetermined as my one and only path, a course which I nonetheless managed to divert from to great effect. The elaborate arrangement and concealment of all those immaterial strings conducting a grand instance of puppetry have, for me, become unmistakably visible and vulnerable to alteration. The supernal barriers meant to impede any impetus other than that which the Gods ordained for me became as tangible as any wall of stone blocking my physical passage.

The indignant wrath of the Gods at my escape from their metaphysical confinement coalesced into a most terrible prohibition indeed. Discovering my rebellious intent, they went about tearing me, grasping finger by grasping finger, from the infatuation I would come to cherish so much that none of their temptations or sanctions could deter me from righteously pursuing its object: her.

Newly decanted rivulets of ink zigzagged away from their previous prison, streaking and staining the rotting wooden boards of the deck, whilst a bespattering of teardrops had also dotted the area with their irregular spacing. The combination of these two visual elements created a small series of interconnecting delicately traced markings by where he sat. This elaborate pattern amalgamated to represent the sigil of the heartbroken and the destitute.

So much impassioned anger, so much debilitating sadness had flowed from his wearied mind onto the rapidly unwinding scroll. Thoughts of lost love and reminders of the awe-inspiring powers arrayed against him meant that bitter tears and the last remaining shreds of veiled hope alike had since been shed in abundance.

As he thrust the dulling nib into the inkpot once more, he spied one of the many trickles fleeing from its pooling overflow flow rapidly away from him as the deck’s orientation sharply shifted yet again. In that very same moment, a flash of lightening breached the dim gloom he was sat in through one of the many tiny hole in the hull and for a fleeting moment the resulting ray of light revealed itself as a chromatic spectrum within the span of that tiny murky stream. The quill abruptly paused in its return to the parchment he covetously clutched as he was struck immobile whilst observing this surreally beautiful phenomenon. The bewitching iridescent colors danced in sublime translucent harmony. That they were also floating within the, unpredictably and unassumingly protean, oily smudge served as a poignant metaphor for the absurdly exquisite and fair image of her within his mind as his body endured the most dour and dreadful of circumstances imaginable.

The inky smears were diluted yet further in the immediate aftermath of this musing.

I loved a girl, longed for her, cried over her, I would have fought and killed for her if I had to, yet still they would not allow me my heart’s only desire: they would not let me have her.

An Intermission between Rampancies

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 15:29:00 +0000

There has been steely resolve and herculean exertion, and, despite this, there was subsequently still unmistakable glimmers of grand disappointment. There are deliciously cyberpunk esque experimental adventures. There will be redoubled efforts and an unwaveringly fixed gaze towards the delightfully impossible end goal.

In the meanwhile though, I’m absorbingly eager to get back to writing. Really get back to it. To be subsumed and consumed by it in equal measure. Fully. Wholly. Insanely. However, there are still some troublesome anchors which weigh on my mind a great deal whenever I try to start something new. Perhaps the most pertinent such burden is the various works I haven’t published anywhere, that have languished unattended and unexhibited. So I have been, and will continue (as best as is possible), to finally post such things - so to free up my increasingly beleaguered mind for future projects. And believe me: I have ideas.

The piece I intend to post next is my current magnum opus, and it has been gestating for a decidedly long time. Do things like this improve with age? Perhaps. Regardless, this ~~work in progress~~ ‘unfinished’ (surprising nobody) piece of writing has been party to staccato visitations from my concerted attention for quite some time, and so it has, in some ways, captured a snapshot of my creative mind at various times. The ghosts of my past selfs rattle their awful chains as they drift to-and-fro within these words.

Hounds bay impatiently and ravenously somewhere close, somewhere unseen. A gargantuan leviathan winks awake beneath the waves and indignantly observes that its mighty kingdom is no more. The storied stone colossus senses a great horn bleating its mournful song, calling for his return, and begins treading with grandiose authority towards the horizon.

Something wicked this way comes…

A Sniper's Perch [Redux]

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 23:37:00 +0000

[This is a redux version of a short story I wrote some time ago. The additions and improvements aren’t overtly colossal, but they are really quite significant in how they change the reader’s understanding of the protagonist, and so I feel that they tangibly improve it a great deal overall.]

Bang, the rifle fires, and with a resentful forcefulness its butt violently shudders backwards into his tensed shoulder.
Clink, the bolt is stiffly yanked back, which ejects the spent casing from the breach, and it wildly spins into a descent toward the floor.
Somewhere inside the weapon, the firing pin is cocked.
Dink, the casing ricochets off the floor and rolls around.
Click, the bolt is pushed forward firmly and it locks in place with a satisfying snap.
A new round is automatically stripped from the magazine and then chambered in the breach

He performs this routine without thinking. Jerking about with such deliberate, efficient motions, he mechanically carries out the sequence in barely a second’s span, demonstrating supremely well practiced precision.

Patiently watching the telling aftermath of his kill, he silently mused ‘Hmm, a couple deliberately wide potshots to spur his confidence and daring, to entice him into poking his head out of cover and he doesn’t disappoint. He stuck his head out so tauntingly, so foolishly. The more experienced of these German bastards are so brash and arrogant. The gung-ho Americans are just as bad of course: they also have a marked tendency to needlessly dice with death at the whim of their egos.’

The shot had wrought open an unsightly hole in the soldier’s helmet and, entering through the forehead, his head. Immediately afterward, the unexpected impact had awkwardly spun him around, spraying blood and gore in a spiral as he fell. The body had crumpled to the ground, tangled and pathetic. A long moment then passed as his comrades exchanged shocked glances and drank in the full horror of the situation. Finally they unceremoniously reached out and dragged the corpse back behind their cover. Dejectedly slumping down beside it, the panicked yelling of expletives began in earnest.

Neglecting to even pull his eye away from the rifle’s scope, he groped at his belt and unsheathed his blade, then he disinterestedly scrawled another line on the tally: a diligently maintained running count scratched into the wooden windowsill ledge that the rifle’s stock was resting on.

‘This unit has been advancing through my sector so tirelessly,’ he reflected melancholy ‘even in the face of constant sniper fire. It would seem that they know no other strategy than to press forward regardless. How disappointing.’

From his last briefing (which was some time ago indeed) he knew that several of his Russian comrades were currently posted in various other strategic positions and, with the increased troop activity that the forlorn city had been seeing recently, he was sure they must be raining down hell on the throngs of Axis soldiers desperately trying to maneuver through the city.

As lone marksmen, their role was to embody the wrathful specters of legend: malevolent phantoms tasked with picking off the wandering troops at will, whilst continually evading detection or retribution. Superstitious rumours abounded as word spread of these ghostly gunmen and their unstoppable headhunting, instilling great fear into the hearts of all those who heard the tales. He and those like him had thusly earned the thoroughly ghastly moniker of ‘wraith snipers’. Their guerilla tactics frustrated and daunted their foes, proving to be a tremendously effective and resource inexpensive method of demoralising the enemy.

Beyond this primary objective, they were also responsible for generally causing chaos and mayhem whilst thinning out the enemy’s ranks as their infantry moved from one objective to another, so that when, or if, they should arrive at their destination, they do so extremely dispirited and possibly carrying wounded, giving the allied infantry a huge advantage in whatever the consequential situation entails.

He unapologetically relished the brutal psychological warfare he was engaged in. In some ways it nostalgically reminded him of the heated and taxing chess games which occupied his spare time as a youth. The essential stratagems often involved in both seemed somewhat interchangeable: avoid the predictability of stagnancy by keeping mobile, lure the enemy into a false sense of security, ruthlessly capitalise on mistakes, always have the situation’s endgame in mind, et cetera. If he was being honest with himself, it was clear that the perceived thrill of the hunt was what had originally drove him into seeking frontline deployment. The hunting of men involved less intellectual formulation than playing chess of course, but made up for it with the added complexity of the great danger and peril involved. In this arena, everything came down to confronting the enemy in a potentially lethal battle of wits, and utilising the element of surprise to meet the challenge of besting severely disadvantaged odds, with the victor eventually emerging as the last man standing.

At least, that was the enthralling promise which hunting the Nazis had initially presented. In reality, it was a great deal less honourable and exciting. The battle for the city had claimed so many men during its genesis that the German army could do nothing but bolster its troops deployed here with whatever reinforcements possible, no matter how inexperienced they happened to be. So, many of the German soldiers who replaced those fallen in the first wave of attack were clearly just scared boys, barely having started shaving, who were just as terrified of those issuing the orders as they were of the battle hardened soviet hordes they had heard hushed talk of. And so, they gormlessly roamed the city with their equally frightened squadmates, unconsciously anticipating their inevitable deaths. There was no glory in killing these perpetually petrified recruits, who scattered and cowered at the sound of gunfire. So, as these pitifully childlike young men were now outrightly prevalent among the German ranks, he’d had to try to acclimatise to killing them. When the dust settled however, and he coldly surveyed the horridly sickening carnage, the unpleasant feelings of guilt and regret which confronted him shook his resolve to its very core. This debilitatingly powerful empathetic response had disconcerted him terribly; it was more harrowing and unnerving than the threat of any enemy, no matter how formidable, had ever been. Following this crisis of conscience, during such emotionally trying proceedings he sought to mentally detach himself from the situation, dispassionately doing what had to be done. The apathy had spread and grown like a virus, soon taking hold of him inbetween encounters too, and now he could do no other but eye the hideous abhorrency of the battlefield with the unmoved glare of a seasoned veteran.

His assigned sector had been lamentably unfrequented recently, receiving only a few troop patrols each day. He had certainly thought that it would be otherwise, seeing as the area features a bridge which is vital to traversing back and forth through the south-eastern part of the city in any sort of timely manner. This critically important choke point had originally excited him with its implicit promise of incessant attempts at encroachment by the Germans, but it had only ended up offering a disappointing scarcity of such events. Despite the slowly thickening fog which had settled over the area like a funeral pall, he could just see the bridge stretching away in the distance. Even from far away, he noticed that there was a large crater where a sizeable chunk had been blown out of its surface, exposing the now warped and deformed metal rebar threaded throughout the thick concrete. This unsightly scar signified what he could only assume was an unsuccessful (in its estimation of the necessary ordnance anyway) demolition attempt, but by which side, and for what purpose, he couldn’t tell. The bridge was clearly still traversable, even by heavy armour, as the destruction had been minimal and hadn’t affected the bridge’s structural integrity or stability in any meaningful way; the unsophisticatedly rugged nature of Soviet engineering had an endearing knack for being quite indestructible at times.

The hollering reached its impassioned zenith, and then died down as quickly as it had started. The din was eventually replaced by the shrill sound of what seemed like a frenzied order being barked. The slight rustle of movement could be heard and he couldn’t help but sigh whilst adjusting his scope and surveying the helmeted head now tentatively peering through a gaping hole in the sandbag cover.

Bang
Clink
Dink
Click

‘And a second rubbernecker yet!’

Another mark was added.

It seemed to him that today had been very much colder than usual. In fact, it might have been the most freezing day that this winter had offered up until now, though his memory was hazy on this point. There had been some light snowfall earlier in the morning but its legacy was now simply the thick layer of dirty gray slush which covered the ground, making foot travel more difficult, and the vaporous mist which had descended without warning. There was a frigid bite to the gusts which got to blowing on occasion, but thankfully they never grew strong enough to seriously affect his accuracy. However, the numbingly cold weather meant that his joints were aching something fierce, and the strain of constantly maintaining his hunched over standing position certainly didn’t help. Additionally, his thick fur-lined overcoat had even frozen stiff in some areas, making pulling back the bolt each time more of a strenuous effort than he’d like. To top it all off, his rifle was also suffering from the wintry assault. The rifle’s scope had grown noticeably icy at points, partially obscuring his sight, so he had to periodically disassemble and defrost it - a real annoyance, especially when it happened at inopportune moments… such as heavy fire on his position. With the creeping frost, the gun’s moving parts were in desperate need of cleaning and oiling too, but he daren’t risk the procedure as it would mean being left completely helpless for whatever its duration amounted to. All in all, it would seem that the frightfully adversarial winter weather proved more of a challenge than the multitude of firefights with the enemy, but he was well used to the arctic brunt which bombarded the city this time of year; the Germans, however, were not.

Some time ago, he’d had chance to exchange his trusty Russian Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle for its German equivalent, a discarded German Kar98k. After toying with the new rifle he discovered that its weighting made for awkward shouldering and the alignment of the sights left a great deal to be desired, and so opted to stick with the Soviet darling. The thing about his trusty rifle was that even if it got very close to breaking on occasion, it thankfully always managed to hover just above the line of remaining functional. Even in poor condition, it consistently remained able to put some lead down range, even if the accuracy at far distance got a little sketchy, but he didn’t mind much because the square that he surveyed from this particular post didn’t stretch very far in any direction, boxed in on most sides by the imposing monolithic tower blocks that so many people used to call home.

Currently, he was in one of the taller tower blocks, situated in the bedroom of a mid-level apartment which he’d forced his way into. After briefly surveying the room, he realised it had probably been a woman’s: there were floral patterns adorning the wallpaper, along with a dresser and make-up table. A sense of unease had gnawed at him, causing him to take a moment to place the various picture frames featuring smiling family members together face down. The window where he was perched looked out on the square and provided a fine vantage point indeed as visibility was good in all directions. From the exterior, this wall of the tower resembled the others surrounding it: a drab gray concrete building covered with a mass of anonymous windows. It offered the perfect hiding place and cover.

After some advice from an aged comrade revered for his obscenely high kill count, he’d sparingly spritzed the opposite end of his rifle scope with some muddy water; its muddiness prevented it from freezing, and so it didn’t obscure the all important crosshair like the icicles tended to, but it meant that the glass in his scope wouldn’t catch and reflect the light, giving away his position - an always looming hazard which had caused many a hardy sniper’s eventual downfall. He had also fashioned a small pile of debris on the outside window ledge in order to camouflage the end of his rifle barrel, which was only slightly protruding out of the window (which in turn was opened only a crack). He had also excessively sprayed the actual glass pane of the window with water, resulting in it unsurprisingly fogging up with a thin crust of crystallised condensation and it therefore providing fairly good visible cover when he needed to stand up before it properly.

Of course, if the enemy troops he was terrorising ever did manage to zero in on his position, he had a few hundred other apartments to choose from, and, if that failed, several other tower blocks still. So far, it hadn’t been necessary to change the location of his homely sniper perch though, and he was growing quite partial to the amalgamation of advantageous circumstance which he had enacted in this current squat.

He idly peeked down at the remaining men, all huddled behind a long ago hastily constructed and presently half-destructed wall of sandbags. Seeing as they were crouched down they were nonetheless well obscured by the cover, but by watching their shadows, cast by the ambivalently dull winter sunlight, he could tell that they were wildly gesturing at one another, presumably frantically conversing amongst themselves and as yet still undecided as how to counteract this mysterious sniper. The silence and flurry of movement was interrupted when one of the men waved his hands towards the others and quickly spoke, causing the others to stop their panicking and react with some modicum of dignified decorum. He sighed deeply; they had revealed who their ranking officer was.

For the most part, the Germans were boring, they provided such little challenge. From the look of things, they obviously either hadn’t encountered many snipers in their European campaign or had just doled out very sub-par counter sniper training during their lax boot camp instruction.

Once, he remembered fondly, a band of Italian soldiers had entered his sector and offered truly demanding defiance: constantly changing position, intelligently using covering fire, creating distractions, covertly deploying a marksman at higher ground and employing him to counter snipe - the works. It had been such a welcome break in the tedious normalcy which the Germans had perpetrated that he had almost been sorry to kill them. They were the only real sport he was to encounter.

Their commander, a staunch, steely faced and mustachioed hulking pillar of a man, in his primped black uniform, quite resembled the hyper-real stylised images of Stalin plastered on the pre-war propaganda posters - the irony wasn’t lost on him, in fact, it had been the only time he’d actually had cause to genuinely heartedly chuckle during this whole damn war.

Desirous of prolonging the encounter in order to glean the satisfaction therein, he’d toyed with the soldiers for a while, probing their parameters, testing their training, all in order to learn how this interesting new prey reacted. He spent a long while intentionally picking off the rank and file men first, seven in total, in a gloriously drawn out slaughtering. With carefully timed dispatching of the foot soldiers, often right before the confounded commander’s disbelieving gaze, he’d sought to observe and examine the man’s reaction to the increasingly desperate circumstances.

With the rest of the men dead, he then progressed to taking deliberate pot-shots as the commander, left alone as the last man standing, ducked from cover to cover. Considering the relentless onslaught of incoming fire which assailed him, it was truly impressive the way he kept composed; he valiantly stood his ground when necessary; he cooly tried to better his position whenever possible, blind-firing as he ran; he was constantly employing various lures and feints, trying to discern the shooter’s position. The man was an excellent soldier whom anyone would have been proud to call their brother-in-arms.

Eventually, through his omniscient sniper scope, he concededly saw the look of despondent exasperation framing the mustachioed face as its owner bent over huffing, craning his head skyward to continue fruitlessly scanning the exteriors of the various tower blocks for the glint of a sniper scope. With equal parts bleak dutifulness and depressed dissatisfaction he half-heartedly lined up the shot out of respect, sullenly pulling the trigger before the stout-hearted man could be undignified with the final blind panic of realising his fledgling mortality and his fast approaching doom. It was an expertly painless execution: a perfectly placed headshot which impacted in the upper left temple. The valiant commander keeled over slowly, almost in slow-motion, as if his body was momentarily kept unnaturally buoyant and afloat as his soul was being decorously stripped from him to meet a grand heroes’ welcome in the battle Valhalla.

The sniper rifle had been briefly lowered as he quickly, but solemnly, saluted the unknown soldier who’d finally put up a respectful fight. Mournfully reflecting on the experience, he had very much hoped to be able to make his way down to ground level to examine the fallen commander up close, and maybe take some small memento. Alas, as soon as this notion arose, another batch of Italian soldiers, this time younger and significantly less experienced, speedily arrived, snaking through the alleys between the buildings. The hushed awe of the square following the grandiose standoff was shrilly broken by their madly irreverently hooting and hollering on sighting the array of compatriot corpses and, noting the viscera exposed by the telling single high caliber gunshot wounds adorning their countrymen’s uniforms, hysterically firing blindly at the surrounding high-rises. Their farcical incompetency greatly infuriated him; their blatant idiocy was an affront to the fine tactician lying dead at their feet. Embracing his indignant ire, he dispatched them all quickly, cruelly: mostly targeting joints, occasionally the gut, and neglecting to issue any coup de grâce shots. When the deed was done, and the pissants all lay screaming and moaning in abject agony, he calmly sat against the wall and went about attending to the painstaking maintenance of his overworked rifle.

Indulging in the nostalgia of the tale had dampened his spirits considerably, as it was ultimately juxtaposed against the dull monotony of manning his post in the sector which, he had a sneaking suspicion, probably got the least foot-traffic out of them all.

He was disinterestedly watching the few remaining Germans dart from behind their meagre sandbag cover to some large debris on the other side of the square. It didn’t surprise him that they were completely oblivious to which direction they needed to be covered from, that they were simply content to recklessly follow what paltry tactics had been instilled into them during their inadequate training.

Some of his comrades had come through the sector a week or so back, in the process of relocating to different posts, and, after excitedly sighting their arrival, he had exchanged a challenge/password call-out before inviting them up to his perch. When they had finally climbed to his floor, he quickly ushered them into the apartment. As they entered the room he’d adopted, and took a few moments to glance around it, a sense of pride swelled within him as they scanned the window ledge and the tale it told. Far from receiving the expected kudos though, they had chided him for his apparent laziness: jeering at his apparently comparatively measly count thus far. The revelation that he was lagging behind his fellow snipers had him taken aback, flustered at the idea that his macabre accumulation was not even impressive compared to their efforts. For what certainly wasn’t the first time, he emphatically damned the relative vacancy of his assigned sector under his breath; it wasn’t his fault that circumstance had robbed him of the good fortune they enjoyed, with their sectors overbrimming with narrow, inescapable streets and throngs of hapless passing soldiers. His fiery gaze followed them as they loftily strolled around the room, amusedly exchanging quips and addressing him with put-downs at each fault they found with the way he had set-up. It was clear: they deemed him an amateur. Having all been trained at the same time, they were all technically neophytes of similar rank, but they had apparently determined that he was the least amongst them.

The potent hatred which swirled behind his eyes startled even him; it bore portend of an indiscriminate fury which he had only previously known as the malice inspired whenever he sighted a swastika after many teenage years spent receiving vehement and relentless instruction about the inhuman, unspeakable evil of the Nazis. Now, as during those moments of boyish anger, he steadfastly would not suffer a Nazi to live, and that cup suddenly threatened to runneth over.

Following their casual belittling of his efforts, they all huddled around a small, covered fire he had started for them in one of the adjacent abandoned rooms, desperately trying to ward off the biting cold and ignore the vague report of distant artillery fire. Initially, the conversation hadn’t been too unpleasant. The other men traded insight about the enemy soldiers’ tactics and drew diagrams in the dusty floor detailing the weak points on various mobile armour units: all wisdom gleaned from their ordered stints at sniper posts throughout the city.

However, they then began telling grand stories of picking off scores of Nazi foot soldiers at a time and destroying tanks by firing into their barrels as rounds were being loaded. He wasn’t sure whether they were true or not, as whatever element of hyperbole was present was masked by their enthusiastic and earnest storytelling. At one point, the loudmouth of the group, who seemed to think he was the ultimate war machine, had told them of some radio chatter he’d recently intercepted as he whittled away the hours awaiting the next patrol of sitting ducks. Despite the inane coded babble present, what stood out was Axis officers repeatedly mentioning a General Patton in their informal conversations. His was a name said in a kind of fearful reverence. As more intelligible chatter arose, more of the legend surround this figure became elucidated, and it became unmistakably clear that they considered him the American’s supreme cowboy. It was said that where he led his tanks, nothing was left standing. His battalion was undefeated, unstoppable, led by his perfect tactical backing which allowed him to uniformly outmaneuver and overwhelm all resistance.

With him having remained silent throughout their tales of heroism and extermination, the other soldiers began insisting that their host share some of his own stories, and when he would not they resumed their derogatory comments considering his skill (or lack thereof). They berated him as if he were some sort of unbearable idiot child in their charge. Whilst he wordlessly absorbed their taunting, they grew all the more lively in their ridicule, grinning and chuckling as they mocked him for his many perceived inadequacies.

His cheeks grew a deep red as the rage resurfaced. They were supposed to be his brothers-in-arms, to consider him as one of them, to respect him as a soldier, as a man. Instead, they derided him. They treated him like an imbecile.

Something blinked inside him. A terrible wrath thrust itself at his helm.

Concluding their ribbing, they rose, gathering their things and preparing to depart.

He certainly observed the scene that followed; he saw it with extreme clarity and comprehension; he just did not consciously partake in it.

Rising from his chair, he turned to the man on his immediate left (the principal perpetrator of his mockery). Without any hesitation, he yanked the knife from his belt, and whilst the man was hunched over his pack, he rapidly brought the blade’s tip up into his comrade’s chest, burying it deep into his sternum. The man had barely had time enough to draw breath, let alone scream. Kicking hard at the side of the man’s knee, he spun the increasingly limp body around and held him in front of him as a human shield. A soft gurgling and scratching was lost in the din which followed: it was the sound of the man impotently choking on his own blood and bone fragments, and his weak groping at the blade’s handle.

The other men turned toward the commotion, their faces suddenly washed with aghast shock and disbelief. Their countenances barely had time to flinch as he deftly unbuckled the clasp on his hostage’s holster, drew the pistol and shot the next closest man three times in the chest; three cracking booms in close succession which instantaneously drained the aura of hitherto debilitating surrealness from the room. As he turned, zeroing in on the next man in line, the remaining men had just began clumsily trying to draw their own weapons in a blind panic. One of these men quickly fell after receiving a bullet in the head and shoulder: he crumpled to the floor and twitched, eyes frozen wide open. Two bullets impacted the unfortunate man held as a human shield, and he felt the body shudder with unnatural rigidity as it absorbed the punishment. A final shot rang out, hitting the last man in the chest and dropping him instantly.

A hard silence once again descended upon the room.

He disdainfully dropped the man whose body had served as a proxy to take a second mortal blow in his place.

The sound of artillery and ringing bells could just barely be heard in the distance.

One of the remaining German soldiers, a teenager at most by the looks of it, had become hysterical in the interim period between switching cover. The boy had dropped his gun and slowly backed up against a nearby wall, eyes wide in fear and hands raised. His comrades were outrightly screaming at him to pick up his weapon and return to cover. He was yelling something back: an animalistically defensive shrieking tinged with obvious reluctance and distress. The young conscript soldiers did have a tendency to lose their already fragile nerve once their first actual firefight happened. War is fine and dandy when the grizzled veterans are entertaining you with their absorbing tales of valour and victory, but it become a lot less romantic when bullets start firing overhead and you are abruptly painted with innards splattered all over your face and uniform as you see their previous owner downed right besides you.

Two of the other soldiers were slowly pacing towards him, voices and guns both raised. The rest levelled their rifles at the renegade out of fearful dutifulness, cowardly looking on, and occasionally throwing worried glances back towards the tower blocks.

‘They’ve quite forgotten about me it seems. It strikes me that the Nazis appear to have a great love for shooting whomever they can qualify as “deserters” unfortunately’ watching and anticipating the upcoming melee, he thought detachedly. ‘For some of them, it’s the only kill that this war will ever offer them, and they seize the morbid opportunity enthusiastically.’

Sitting amongst the corpses and the pooling blood, he had expected to feel any of several different things: regret, guilt, shame, et cetera. What seized him, however, was merely a crippling sensation of refractory ennui. The excitement of the dramatic shootout had faded and now there was nothing. His mind was languid and his body was listless, and in the haze which descended upon him he realized something horrible: the violence and the killing was all which remained for him now. The long period of solitude he’d endured had served to dampen the viscous acrimony he had long fostered but the madness had eventually gripped him in the darkness and loneliness nonetheless. The ideological vindication which had seemed to predicate his clean conscience during his murderous trail in this war now seemed like the folly of hopeful delusion. The war had merely been a suitable context, a justification to indulge the dark instincts within him. The two warring sides which clashed and clanged beneath his watchful gaze were now revealed to be indistinguishable, interchangeable; a dull hatred illuminated his countrymen and his foes in the same sanguine glow. The predator comes of age in shedding his childish apologia.

Fishing a pack of hand-rolled cigarettes from the pocket of one of the surrounding bodies, he struck a match and lit one of them as he leaned back against the wall, his head lolling against his shoulder as he took a couple of drags.

Epiphany over, pleasant fantasising took him. He happily reflected that he’d relish meeting this cowboy Patton in combat someday - preferably as an enemy. A good tank unit graciously provides the ultimate test for a sniper. Most will just run in blind terror as the tank crew inevitably starts ruthlessly gouging and tearing massive chunks from their building with exploratory barrages of shell fire. Rookies will seize up and get bogged down eventually, becoming easy targets. The patient sniper knows to keep moving, to stay out of sight and give them cause to believe you’ve fled the scene. If you manage this, you need only wait for one of them to swing open the hatch and pop up in order to better reconnoiter the surroundings. This is all the opportunity you need; if you can, lob a grenade into their claustrophobic midst, or just line up the shot and take the head off of the gawker as to give them a good fright and cause them to speed out of there. Though sometimes, more aggressively offensive action can be taken. He’d had a recoilless rifle at one point, pilfered from a passing Nazi anti-armour team he’d downed. That thing could really devastate those metal beasts, and from some distance away too, but it was about as loud as tank fire, so it also brought a lot of attention his way. Ultimately it had only gotten a single, immensely satisfying use before he’d had to abandon it.

Bang
Clink
Dink
Click

Bang
Clink
Dink
Click

More scratches were hastily added. His knife edge was clearly dulling now.

The two men lay dead, spread at the boy’s feet, who trembled whilst staring hard down at their bodies.

The most recent tank team he’d encountered were manning one of the larger German contraptions and they were unsurprisingly sloppy. They were presumably waylaid from a patrol or regrouping with a unit some distance away but either way they were trawling along slowly when they were ensnared by the improvised caltrops he’d laid down a little earlier after hearing the distinctive rumble in the far distance and knowing what to anticipate. The little barbed implements simply shredded one side of the tracks, puncturing the tread and tearing it apart at points. Having sustained this damage, they were going nowhere fast. Now there were quite a few bodies laid around the area at this point, and most in a fashion that simply unmistakably signalled that they were sniper casualties, and yet, amazingly, the entire crew disembarked from the tank’s interior to inspect the damage.

He had been so astonished at the extent of their stupidity that he could do nothing but watch as they chatted back and forth, idly kicking the dismantled tread and fruitlessly trying to radio someone to report the situation.

The boy stared at the bodies in disbelief for a second longer and then ran, shouting in incoherent hysteria, back towards where they had come from across the bridge. The remaining soldiers instinctively followed him with their rifle sights but did nothing as his commotion became more and more quiet as he disappeared out of sight. They then snapped out of their stupor and started to fire at the sniper’s tower. They had figured out where the fire had originated from.

Bang
Clink
Dink
Click

Click
Click
Click

One of the men had been dispatched but pulling the trigger was now useless: the magazine had been emptied. He ducked down as the return fire from the startled two remaining men sprayed the wall surrounding his window opening. Fishing a fresh magazine from his belt he dropped out the depleted one and slapped the replacement in fiercely.

He waited for a pause in the firing; the Nazis never did seem to know the value of cycling fire to avoid the vulnerability of simultaneous reloads.

He patiently recalled how he had watched the tank crew survey their vehicle’s injury, and their ignorant attempts to dislodge the caltrops, one even puncturing his hand in the process. What a ragtag operation they were running. What irresponsible, desperate measures meant that men such as these were given sovereignty over a terrible machine of death like the one they’d so foolishly abandoned?

He executed the men quickly, with an apathetic clinical precision. Even killing two with a single shot to quicken the thing.

He’d then quietly and cautiously traipsed down to the wreckage, looking over what their ghosts had left behind: an abhorrent thing indeed. What followed was scavenging for ammunition and utilising a satchel charge requisitioned from one of the fallen to blow up the eyesore. He scurried back into his building following the explosion.

A deathly silence finally fell over the square, pierced only by their frenzied yells of desperation as they fumbled, struggling to quickly reload, so that he popped up, quickly pressing the scope recess to his cheek and sighting the two scrambling German soldiers.

Bang
Clink
Dink
Click

Bang
Clink
Dink
Click

The three men had fell in a neat pile.

He had some difficulty etching these next marks into the frozen wood. There could be no doubt now: his blade was truly blunted at this point, its ragged metal edge was basically useless for anything other than the crude engraving now. He surveyed the ledge once more: it was now literally covered with tally marks, a hundred or so easily.

He watched the boy run off into the horizon until he disappeared over the bridge. Sighing happily, he said under his breath ‘Godspeed boy! I do hope you learn from this experience. Hell, I hope you rise through the ranks and get your own unit, train them properly, and to thank me you can bring the sons of bitches back here to give me some excitement finally!’

Slumping down against the wall, he began methodically dismantling the rifle’s scope in order to clean it. It was a labour of love; he rubbed the icy glass in slow circles with a thick cloth, dislodging the intricate crystalline patterns.

The German foot soldier turned into the doorway and saw the Russian sniper sitting there toying with his rifle. He had also saw the mostly decomposed corpses of several other soviets littering the floor of an adjacent room. His face scrunched in confusion as the Russian looked up and the two men momentarily locked gazes. The tense standoff was broken when the German shrieked unintelligibly in triumph and bloodlust, quickly leveled his rifle, and fired four shots. Two of the bullets missed but the other two hit the Russian in the shoulder and in the gut.

He lay there groaning, trying to reach for his gun but unable to move his arm as the bones in his shoulder had been shattered by the bullet’s impact. As he futilely strained towards his rifle, blood spurted from the gunshot wound in his abdomen which caused him to instinctively scream and clutch at it. A long moment passed and then he choked out a laugh; a hollow sound which reverberated throughout the room with resolute authority.

“I’ve been waiting for this for some time.” he spat, his voice barely a harsh whisper as he paused and then raspingly breathed “Thank you.”

The German cocked his head at this, but showed no signs of comprehending the message as he slowly and cautiously paced towards him, keeping his gun pointed at the downed Soviet, and then kicking away the dropped rifle.

He thought of the array of dead bodies scattered around in the other room, still puzzled, then he looked over the multitude of marks carved into the windowsill, captivated with furious awe as he realised their meaning. He angrily shouted something in German and rapidly emptied the remaining few bullets in his clip into the center-mass of the sniper. The man clutched upwards once, groaned loudly and fell over onto the floor, surrounded by a growing pool of blood.

The German swore and emphatically spat at the man’s body in disgust. Next, he pulled a knife from a holster on his chest, the shiny Hitler Youth insignia shimmering in the dull winter sunlight, and, coldly surveying the window ledge once more, fashioned a new tally on the wooden wall paneling above the fresh corpse, carving some kind of identifying symbol and then a single line for the count underneath.

The sound of many tanks crossing the faraway bridge could now be heard, and the German scout re-holstered his knife and reloaded his gun. He looked over the morbid scene once more, coldly drinking it in, before leaving the apartment to rejoin his brothers.

The Last Bard's Tale (Part I) [REDUX]

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 19:50:00 +0000

[This poem is a redux version of the original, combined with the fragments I had already written for its sequel, a fair bit I wrote for it now, and radically revised versions of my Under Exalted Heels poems. I amalgamated it out of, let’s say, necessity, and though the two universes seem incongruent, I’m proud of how the poems all ended up melding beautifully. So let’s just pretend I meant to do this all along. The virtue of this poem will dictate whether I get to do what I really want to do; it’s that important, and I’m (theoretically) that confident in it.]

Prologue: Grandiose promises of yarn-spinning

“Come traveler, and let me tell you of a forgotten realm trapped in yore
Fill that chair, and into your mug this flagon’s fine mead will duly pour
As this is a tale best enjoyed in good company, food and drink galore
This hearth’s fire will warm us and ours minds shall drift, and explore
a land that many bards the world over once came to longingly adore
For, not least, inns all across this land would fill with countless score
of eager simple folk, a stoic sort so rarely inspired to cheer and roar
in appreciation of a poet’s well-spun tale, one deserving of ‘encore!’

This is such a story, though sadly one no longer held in such ardour
No, it’s been relegated to dusty tomes, whose perusal is quite a chore;
most libraries ‘cross the continent rarely hold a volume in their store
So it has now become a victim of obscurity like so many have before
How is it that rich worldly legendry could be considered but a bore?
Historians dig for paltry earthly trinkets but tend to so woefully ignore
that real treasures are found in that, since oft pored over, elder lore

Wait where was I? Oh yes! This fable which has not its existence nor
its story widely known, thanks to our mythos forsaken age of sorry war
Were its preservation to be deserted it may thusly be lost forever more!
At least if not for the few tales still told of it, ones fiercely embossed for
drama’s great effect: ‘Adventurers lo! Heed this tale you must not ignore’

Chapter I: The dystopia fosters a champion

In a distant kingdom, whose birthright was forged in the paupers’ fear,
a tyrant ruled over his people with an iron fist and a righteous sneer
His state taxes were exorbitant and his laws were so unfairly severe:
the punishments found therein were such that one wouldn’t volunteer
them upon even a most hated enemy, so brutalizing were they here
Whilst the King lived in glowing luxury, his subjects were kept austere
Peasantry in nature were they mostly; rarely could one name a peer
whose new status as a yeoman was long lived inside of this frontier

The sovereign’s inner-circle was composed of supposed cavaliers,
who, in reality, merely acted as the despot’s worldly eyes and ears
Ironic, in its way, as, amongst the people, their hollow kind veneer
fooled absolutely no-one, for all knew that their gifts were insincere
Each was retasked from spy to under-thumb, uncontested profiteer:
greedy land barons who met any tenant’s pleas of lacking with a jeer

The King also had a standing army, whom none would greet with cheer:
for even though their coat of arms bore a nobly valiant soldier’s bandolier,
these mercenaries did nothing but obey his tyrannical whims each year
See, outside of the realm’s borders there stood no equal who’d persevere
against this oppression and seek to invade, and free, this forlorn sphere
Thus, the situation was grimly hopeless or so it would outwardly appear

Yet, there was a heroic champion whose coming the peasants did revere
A child whose birth was prophesied to happen with but a single loving tear
For his mother would soon thereafter be put to death at the point of spear
and in her lifeless arms this babe would not cry, to her bosom he’d adhere
till the soldiers tore him off her to, in awe, dutifully spank his newborn rear
His destiny was claimed to be, in the verdict of every single salt-worthy seer,
that when he came of age, this oligarchy, which clearly sought to domineer
every commoner, would finally be challenged, its blight would come to clear,
and its end, long since disregarded, would, on the faint horizon, surely near

Chapter II: The child born of death

And this boy! Oh this boy! How unseeming could such a special child be?
For were you to look upon him, a savior you would hard pressed be to see
Initially a weak, sickly lad who was adopted by a humble pig-farming retiree
and raised as was the custom: god-fearing, obedient, so inclined to agree
with any man of the cloth who should offer any divine directive or decree

It was also noted in his village that no others were as mild in manner as he
Not that he was meek, or even wimpy, just so unassuming was he in deed
Though twas not his nature in everything, in one field he was genuinely gutsy:
with other boys he would roughhouse if provoked (but to no severe degree)

Thanks to the adept tutelage of his ‘father’, long since a legionnaire draftee,
the boy had learned basic sword fighting with sticks from a gnarled oak tree
His grizzled sire taught him much of battle, imparting a considerable pedigree
In fencing no other local boy could match his skill or daring, his warrior esprit!

Chapter III: That which always changes, rarely for the better

Soon though, the boy became a man, in the cruel fashion of the land,
when his lowly father was abducted after tangling with the lawmen
over the tyrant’s always increasing taxes and their pitiless demand
As the boy was out at field, swiping and thrusting at the straw-men,
practicing his new found art, his papa was taken, shackled in remand,
and quickly sentenced to hard labour his old bones just couldn’t stand

The boy returned from his joyful frolics to find the village much abuzz
with harsh gossip of his papa’s unbroken spiritedness and imprisonment
The throngs treated the oddball boy with upright suspiciousness because
it had also spread that the farmer was some sort of political dissident,
whose child, it was said, was not merely unusual but in truth illegitimate

He rushed crying from the hissing accusations of the simple, fearful folk,
and then made haste back unto the family’s cottage frightfully confused
He saw, in the distance, the quaint little homestead billowing inky smoke
and ran as fast as possible till he came across a man leaning on the oak
With tearful steadfast gaze the man fast embraced the boy and then used
a shaking hand to draw from out his pocket a small book, when he spoke
he explained to the boy exactly of what his father had really been accused
and as the fire quelled, and died in bitter embers, without the wind to stoke,
he heard of his papa’s secret nature, and of boyish naivety was disabused
Upstarting, the man took in the awful scene, and tugged tightly at his cloak
which bore the same peculiar emblem as the book’s cover, which did evoke
within the boy images of his father’s ring, and thus served to have infused
the boy with trusting hope, so that the man’s offer of a new life did provoke
awkwardly falling tears as he voiced his acquiescence with a throaty croak

Chapter IV: An Ouroboros gestation - a tale within a tale within a tale

In the man’s stately carriage they did journey into the bustling city’s heart
The boy flipped through the pages of his papa’s pocketbook and so beheld
that it housed an arcane poem of his papa’s, one written hoping it impelled
the reader towards its decryption and thus the secret knowledge it’d impart:

A king bloated with undue power did tread roughshod over all the human race
‘My liege, but what of freedom?’ asks a courtesan still of unquestioned chaste
He thought hard, then did naught but slap her face, without a moment’s haste,
and reasoned “In my kingdom, treason is that word, for it will have no place!”

He claimed to be domineering for a purpose: to free a world of slaves
who’d otherwise usurp us rational minority with a tribute paid to knaves
who claim a measly worldly pittance must be the only just remittance
to meddling Gods who sit setting morbid wagers far beyond our graves

Our measure of plodding earth seems grand but Royal pastures so expand
far beyond what the eye can easily see, and if annexed for our due territory
We would earn that bold undying fame: a noblest legacy of a hero’s acclaim
In Valhalla our vanguard’s place; they’d erect our cenotaph in godly domain

Like you, I will not be circumscribed, the wretched King himself I’d surprise
I implore you brothers, join me in shaking off this humbly subservient guise
and ascend to meet that rotten bastard in his ill-begotten castle eye-to-eye
We must become the glorious champions of all our pure and honest kind
We must show all that the imperial beast can fall and this world we’ll redefine

Our people’s militia shall assemble, and then initiate our righteous campaign
against that evilest despot whom fate’s justice has not yet seem fit to arraign
We’ll seek to claim all his purloined spoils for the kind, docile men of this land:
to finally place our grass-stained hands beyond the modest arm’s just span

Our crusade started, adopt skyward glare, seek details of their towering lair
Probe our enemy sat in airy overlook; revolve round them with roving rook
Spread word of their coming ruin in every common ear as herald of our advent
The proletariat will disperse this omen; notched and fired, our first arrow sent!

Then, in the awful twilight quiet, we shall rend the Heavens from the Earth
and in this glorious hierarchical limbo we shall long be given a private berth
The chaos of newly free men’s joyous riot will constitute a debasing hearth
to cook and crack the damned chains of aristocracy in brashly mortal fire
We shall unleash the indignantly vengeful beasts who know the king as sire
Their adamantine hides will flow with molten rage and, honour-bound, anneal
‘til they harden nigh-impenetrable, bearing a blazing crest of unbrittled zeal
In the grand aftermath of our emancipation the children of revolt shall rile
the dictator’s fragile union of underlings and minions, who we shall beguile
with promises of reinstation into power once the autocracy meets repeal
We’ll task them with sabotage: lend their filthy ears to fill with a subtle bile

Then we’ll douse our reverently enraged titans in the most potent hellfire wrath
‘tis true the immensely rugged and stalwart resolve the amassed belittled hath
To convey this intrepidly lion-hearted army’s mission and direct our holy spear:
I’ll mount the regent’s statue to bellow ‘What is owed the oppressed mutineer?’

Our defiant force of valour all assembled, given sharp and flame of a finest steel
We the hallowed flag bearers as the common man charges ornate palace gates,
are blessed architects of a grandiose plan perfected whilst beneath a royal heel
Revolution cometh; the swine sat haughtily upon a wicked throne we will displace
The meekly downtrodden have arisen, and the King before us shall finally kneel!

He read in awe, struggling to comprehend as his schooling was but brief
It was clear though, from the poem’s frequent annotations found therein,
that in many of the words some sort of special second meaning lay within
The implication were startling, inspiring in the boy an astounded disbelief
for it seemed that his father, instead of farmer, was to a spy far more akin

For the poem his father had once penned was apparently being covertly printed
as pamphlets to be distributed to rally known political dissidents in that manner
of clandestine conscription by which dormant armies, via a single central planner,
are assembled and given their instruction by a cryptic code that the poem hinted
So that a secret plot may be dispersed and all gathered under revolution’s banner

The carriage bumped over cobblestone, and yanked the boy from his imagination
As the massive city came in view, an excitement flourished within his boyish mind
For he was his father’s son and now bequeathed leadership of rebellious design
The days ahead would see the boy learn even more about the vast orchestration
So that the very first step of the plan was absolutely clear: his father’s liberation!”

Why I’ve been ghost - or, the more somberly unglamourous aspects of poor mental health

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 19:21:00 +0000

[Be forewarned, this is a lengthy, but hopefully rarely rambling and mostly informative, post. There will be extensively metaphorical imagery and philosophical dictation ahead.]

I have not been writing enough, even, sometimes for shamefully prolonged periods, at all. In the wake of this negligence, it has become glaringly apparent that I’m suffering psychologically as a result.

Though I have long held an at least comparably related notion, after recent experiences of mine, and some considerable deliberation, I have recently come to wholeheartedly subscribe to the idea that it is unendingly critical, and occasionally of unparalleled necessity, to your continued growth as a person that you be able to enact candid introspection. This includes the regular acknowledgment of uncomfortable or painful truths and, when appropriate, the concession that you may be to blame regarding their simultaneously perpetuated and circumvented existence. Such lingering, irksome entities are of your own design and creation, so you ought to take duly liable ownership of them.

Furthermore, to intelligently evolve is to critically examine your faults, shortcomings and flaws - performing improvement or excision where needed. This self-contained manner of personal betterment, as I have learned, is especially important to undertake if you can not accordingly divulge and relate these truths, whilst confessing your complicity in their concealment, to your loyal companions, or even a most intimately entrusted confidant.

In my case specifically, and in the interest of genuinely mending my troublesome hypocrisy in the matter, I must accept that many of the flawed and problematic aspects of my creative process were brought about by my own deficiencies and errors in judgment. To this end, I must conclude that, for quite some time now, I have been the architect of my own sabotage in that most wearying of internal wars; artistic endeavor.

More generally, identifying your problems is the first obstacle you will encounter each and every time you embark on the journey of self-examination, and it is one that will often prove difficult, if not outrightly arduous. It is a discovery that must be earned at great cost, but one that will bolster your resolve tremendously. You must then go about determining the cause of the hindrances, which is also a formidable quandary and as such can quickly and irreversibly devolve into childishly attributing any potentially blame extraneously, rather than maturely acceding and allowing yourself to be held accountable for your own mistakes. Either way, despite the demanding and exacting labour involved, with enough honest introspection, you will find the basis of your impediment

When you first begin the deep meditation required to determine the mistakes you have made and discern which areas of your life can be improved, it may seem as though you are entering a strange new realm wherein your role is reduced to the bewildered foreigner, who is alarmingly feeble and unknowledgable about the surroundings. Eventually though, with practice, you will greaten and hone your wherewithal here. A day will even come when, with your improved prowess, you’ll feel very confident and powerful in this dimension, but for now you are a trespasser in a dangerous land which seeks to suppress and expel you. Therefore, it is vital that you roundly respect your starting limitations.

You will likely soon encounter and confront the miscreated, degenerate monstrosities which your mind once birthed and has now imprisoned here. These are purposefully enshrouded things, and as such you will, in all likelihood, have never even partially espied them before. Initially, they will seem paralyzingly frightful and horrific but you will soon become desensitized to their visual abhorrency and acclimatize to their otherwise petrifying physiognomy. You will even, with time, instinctually adapt to the fierce challenge they pose. Despite all this, I will not lie to you, the circumstances will still be stupefyingly alien and the task at hand will be disconcertingly daunting. However, when you forge ahead regardless and stubbornly tackle what must be done head on, your capacity to overcome will provide an astoundingly potent sense of personal pride at your bravery and fortitude. After this turning point, you will begin conquering these savage inhabitants more easily, instilling within you optimistic expectations for your continued self-improvement.

Beware that you must, where possible, pre-emptively steel yourself for the abrupt and unheralded emergence of many of the unpleasant matters you’ll confront. Often, you will not have time to do so, and their unceremoniously sudden occurrence will be startling if you are caught off guard - in which case take care to regain your composure before you engage them. After sustaining enough of these ambushing staggerments, you will no longer recoil in surprise for you will have become unflappable in the face of such things. Lamentably, this trial by fire may be unavoidable considering that the probability of being suddenly assailed like this is quite high in the most preferably effective method of detection. As you’ll largely be aimlessly wandering around until you come across an object of interest - or rather until it reveals itself to you - the process of discovery is somewhat akin to catfish noodling, both in its mechanics of anxious anticipation and the peril it unceasingly exposes you to. This is especially the case once you begin blindly feeling around in the chasms where your darkest secrets are stored, as all manner of awful truths may await your tender probing with their powerful lockjaw bites of trying reality. You needn’t fret though, in this place your hand will grow back, and once you’ve suitably recovered, and braced yourself to return, you can commence your, probably more tentative, groping once more. Though it’s helpful to recognize that you are physically invulnerable to all of the harm perceived as inherent here, to recall Morpheus’ grave caution “the body cannot live without the mind”: though no bodily injury will befall you, be mindful that the things which occur in your psyche have a real effect within and unto it.

In my particular case, things were a little different, for my personal circumstances were suitably extraordinary.

I had explored my own instance of this strange realm on several occasions already, though never very extensively, and rarely with any substantial haul of epiphanies but, having nonetheless earned the prowess befitting a journeyman in this place, I was fairly confident in my abilities when I last returned to uncover its guarded secrets yet further. On this fateful occasion, I sought its edifying refuge once more after enduring an incensing beleaguerment from an infuriating series of annoyances - the worst of its reoccurring sort so far - in the real world.

Upon my entry, I, without really meaning to, descried that the land now bore an inconspicuously slight variegation. There appeared to be a sporadic peppering of singed perforation as though countless tiny meteoric impacts had occurred. Also present were examples of a similarly miniscule cracking of the ground, with similarly charred edges. I was sure that this hadn’t been endemic to the land during my last visit. So, perplexed by this interim happenstance, and curious about its cause, I sought to unearth the nature of this bizarre development. After some familiarly wayward foraging, I noticed that the phenomenon which marred the landscape underfoot seemed to slightly increase its prevalence and severity towards a certain direction. At my inquisitiveness’ behest I resolved to acquiesce to this breakthrough’s alluring invitation. More than that though, I sensed that this newfound trail represented something significant, and this hunch further suggested that it must lead to something remarkable indeed.

I intently tracked the deformation’s gradual progression for quite some time until the harsh elements slowly intensified their resistance to my advancement, instilling a greater sense of urgency to my impetus. By the time I became conscious that I was now actually traversing a rocky wasteland of craggy terrain upon which nothing seemed to exist, nor had ever done so, a brutal sandstorm beset my wearied stride. I was weathering the gritty onslaught fairly well but the low visibility which its haze incurred upon me meant that I had to determine my heading by scanning the surrounding ground for minutely incremented intensification of its now extensively and overlappingly latticed covering of cracks and sprinkling of large pockmarks. Unsurprisingly, the uncertain orientation this allowed was such that I repeatedly had to double back upon myself after venturing in the wrong direction. Still, my progress was steady, and I was still hopeful that I would reach whatever destination lay ahead soon. The prohibitive barrenness of this arid wilderness seemed as if a sure sign that somewhere within its forsaken expanse, that which I had ultimately been searching for not only existed, hidden somewhere indeterminable by the jealous abrade of the ages, but intently anticipated me.

The brutal sandstorm subsided eventually, having subjected me to its trial and seemingly now quelled by my adamantly unswayable persistence. Due to my paranoid indulgence in pathetic fallacy, I half-heartedly suspected that it was merely conserving its might for a second offensive sometime later. The dusty fog it had kicked up remained however, and though markedly diminished it still reduced the range of vision so that the middle distance was nonetheless indiscernible. Unshaken, I continued to venture forth into this sterilely arid stretch, struggling onwards despite the practical difficulties presented by the jagged, stony ground.

The land grew more and more scarred by wrought open fractures, proudly bearing these vestiges of tremors long ago withstood. It was evident that whatever force had cleaved the rock I strode across apart had to have been of massive proportions. Still, despite the distractingly curious geological oddities, I managed to remain focussed on my search and endeavoured even further inwards.

Ensuingly, I encountered the abruptly distinct beginning of a region whose residually cleft ground now featured widened and enlarged fissures, presumably as a result of greater exposure to violent upheaval, and these forbidding openings thusly required me to hop across them. It was then that I suddenly comprehended that I was inadvertently travelling towards the epicentre of whatever unimaginable catastrophe had flung its mighty destruction so far afield. This holocaustal event had evidently been capable of launching a vigorously defiling assault, and one which had rippled so far outwards that it had henceforth forever disfigured the surrounding land. Realizing this, my unprecedentedly distant inroads became disconcerting, for not only had I never encroached even half this far into such uncharted territory, I also, in truth, had no real conception of what danger may await me at my questing’s terminus. Defiantly, I somehow remained undeterred as despite this fearfulness I knew I had no real intention of ceasing my pursuit.

In light of this revitalizing recognition that the deed’s completion was most imperative, regardless of its result, I redoubled my efforts and chased the yonder horizon with fresh zeal. It was satisfyingly reaffirming that the earthly devastation’s visibly grew more severe as I proceeded onward, and I finally came across great gaping chasms that seemed to yawn despondently as befitting the grand fatigue the land had endured. Worryingly, it became necessary to precariously leap over these openings as the solid rock increasingly gave way to lengthy empty expanses. At long last, tremendously tired from my relentless journeying, I concluded that I had essentially reached the epicentre of whatever culminated cataclysm took place in this deserted and inhospitable landscape. As far as I could see ahead, the land was irreparably broken and splintered by massive gorges and canyons, and the remaining ground was strewn with huge boulders and slabs of rocks, impressive remnant debris unearthed by the catastrophic ruination which had so long ago befallen this remote area.

Resting for a few moments, I walked around haphazardly surveying the various gorges until I discovered what appeared to be the largest one: it seemed positively bottomless in the dim gloom of the enduring haziness. Something within its obscured abysmal recesses silently called to me with a chilling resonance which seemed to echo unremittingly inside the confines of my skull. This roused a sense of fearful aversion within me, for I had experienced nothing of the sort before: its transmission was of inarticulately incorporeal character. I simultaneously wanted to madly dive into the gulf to answer its captivating siren song whilst also wishing dearly that I should have the good sense to run in the opposite direction until I had shed my panicked consternation and thoroughly forgotten the evil thing which this awful place had apparently seen fit to subterraneously inter.

Before I could second guess myself any further, and throwing mild caution to the wind, I began lowering myself down the gorge’s interior rock face. I instantly suffered from the onset of blinding vertigo which I simply could not seem to shake for several long minutes. After this early trial, my progress was predictably slow, for I became tentative in my manner of descent, constantly afraid that I would lose my hard-won grip or footing and plummet to certain death. My rampant curiosity burned regardless however, though my previously ironclad resolve was close to depleted as I sluggishly continued lowering myself yet further into the breach.

Some time thereafter, and following a great deal more expended effort, I was fast becoming physically enervated. Worryingly, I also noticed that the chasm was beginning to narrow quite severely. Shortly after this, I actually reached the point where it began to taper into an indeterminably deep crevice barely wide enough for me to enter; its walls had largely been worn smooth and offered only the occasional foothold. Unable to climb downward conventionally any longer, I gritted my teeth in quickly faltering determination and embarked upon what is best described as a controlled plunge into the hole’s depths. It was made possible by an exhilaratingly frightening technique which involved repeatedly, and very carefully, letting myself roughly slide down the shaft before thrusting my limbs outwards and regaining a stable outstretched position. Despite its heavy drain on my dwindling courage, this daring tactic meant I progressed steadily down the ever-narrowing chute.

A meagre sliver of light which I had been gratefully enjoying began to diminish as I went yet further into the earth, and I struggled to see what was waiting for me below my feet. I proceeded mindlessly, mechanically. It seemed, in my delirium, as though I was burrowing forever downwards.

As I was about to finally succumb to exhaustion and exasperation, I let myself fall once more, but this time, after a second or two of the expected free fall, I was jolted alert by my feet hitting a solid floor. I exclaimed in tired, triumphant surprise. I had reached the bottom.

Most strikingly, there was essentially pitch blackness, and the surrounding walls had narrowed to the point of being tightly confining and constrictive. I almost became hysterical as an overwhelming sensation of solitary claustrophobia washed over my now fragile disposition. Swiftly, I consoled myself with the realization that one way or another, my journey was ultimately at its end. I was then able to regain my composure somewhat. Unsure as to what it was I was supposed to be searching for, and all too well aware of a creeping fear that I might have incorrectly assumed that this niche housed whatever I hoped to find, I went about awkwardly maneuvering in the tiny space, feeling around for anything of significance. At about the height of my waist I discovered a small opening in the rock. I hunched over as best I could, pressing my face against the cold stone, and tentatively inserted a probing hand. Excitedly determining that the aperture was just wide enough for my arm to squeeze into, and with the wild abandon of expectant anticipation, I thrust it into the seemingly bored hole as deep as possible and felt something prickly. I could easily tell that it was an object which was, decidedly, not composed of rock. In fact, though it was still fairly solid, it was relatively yielding to the delicate touch of my probing fingers.

Astonished, I mustered what little strength I still commanded and utilized it to pry the peculiar item from its nook in this bedrock so far beneath the surface. It was quite spectacular really, for when retrieved from its resting place, it began to, rather blindingly, glow intensely. I sightlessly marvelled at this singular anomaly for a long while - half certain that I had gone insane, but content to revel in awe either way.

The exact nature of that thing I fished out of the abominable abyss eluded me for some time. After a while though, I managed to divine, whilst bathed in its glorious light, that it was something which I had long ago discarded into this microcosmic world’s incapable retention. I could recall that, at the time, having rid myself of it, I was greatly relieved as a terrible load had at long last been lifted from my shoulders.

At that time, I had believe that the vast plains of my subconscious realm represented a fortress world where anything, no matter how ghastly or beastly, could be safely imprisoned. It was a vault, deep within my mind, where dreadful things which that very same mind, on a conscious level, could not hope to process or even successfully contain, could be indefinitely and, if necessary, definitively incarcerated.

Problematically, it actually emerged that evidently this Russian nesting doll set-up was not the ultimate and infallible solution I had pegged the arrangement as being. The smallest, densest doll mise en abyme within its own kin would prove the system’s eventual undoing. From the first moment of its internment, I made it a despised pariah, to be eternally condemned by its enveloping captors. I should have predicted that it, being a creature born of calamity, would only grow stronger from absorbing the vitriolic hatred spewed at it.

It had begun satiating its primarily weak form by imbibing the aura of malicious animus which surrounded it. Silently seething, it came to boil with ferocious rage and furor until the zenith of its tempestuous accumulation was reached. At this point of ascension, of unsustainable energy, it collapsed into itself and became a singularity of ultimate wrath.

Unexpectantly, it obviously lay dormant for a time, totally concealed by its existentially abstruse nature. The catalyst for its actual implosion was, my subsequent retrospective consideration has concluded, most likely my unknowing antecedent excursion, which took place before the momentous expedition previously described, into its overarching domain. I now comprehend that the far reaching pulse of its unimaginably violent annihilation actually travelled, though severely weakened by the effort, to the distant portal where I first inauspiciously entered into the realm most recently - a point situated incredibly far away from the blast’s epicentre - as the ground there clearly displayed such minor but telltale signs of its recent faint seismic duress.

Incontrovertibly, it meant to assassinate me with this apocalyptic release of energy. Somehow, it knew that I would indulge my curiosity someday and blithely venture into the boundaries of its territorial province. It had waited with resolute patience and discipline in order to kill its creator and jailer. In order to do so, it had established its worldly presence in such a way as to mimic a colossal land-mine with a massive radius of surrounding land primed to act as a trigger for detonation should I unknowingly tread upon it. What I had seen was the aftermath of its explosion in response to my last appearance when I must have have set it off with my normal exploration. Thankfully, this amounted to a failed assassination attempt on its part. The unimaginably powerful shock-wave it created still took so long to travel across the huge expanse to reach where I was that I had already gone about my business and left the realm before it got there. This meant that it was so poorly timed that the majority of the devastation was executed in my actual absence. Unsuccessful in completing its murderous objective, and after expending its accrued might in enacting the targeted cataclysm, its brawn had deteriorated and degenerated via necrosis and was desperately cannibalized for sustenance. Consequently, it reverted into the feeble form it presented when it had originally been confined within this strange dimension.

As such, when I first perceived it, in that dark void, it seemed as though a relatively small but seemingly impossibly dense sphere of material light. Yet, when I held it in my hands, though it felt rather indescribable and certainly unlike anything else I had ever encountered, it was undoubtedly of a physical nature and composition. Holding it was akin to weakly clutching an largely frictionless ball of lightning. With regard to its actual surface however, it felt as though it were an outwardly facing arrangement of prickly needle like filaments which were constantly but minutely shifting position and shape. The sensations which holding it induced were analogous to an, initially almost unnoticeable, delicate crackling of static electricity travelling up my arms.

Most of this I determined with touch alone, for its supreme luminesce instantly and invariably overwhelmed my vision with resplendent glare. To fully behold its effulgent majesty was a maddening task. I simply could not physically bear to even gaze in its general direction, lest it acutely blind and disorientate me. Following some cautious, haphazard experimentation, and after shaking away the many instances of extensive scotoma which resulted, I managed to partially observe it in my extreme peripheral vision. Dishearteningly, I was still unable to discern anything other than my initial impression of a dazzlingly luminous spherical phenomenon. The way that this thing eluded continued study or even vague classification threatened to drive me mad. My mind, in lieu of actual information to formulate a picture with, conjured ludicrous imagery of a literal fireball in my hands, ablaze with intense and violent energy, and yet, exasperatedly, I could retort with no better rational depiction.

Still, emboldened by my incredible journey of discovery so far, slowly, through severely squinting eyes and marginally parted fingers, I commenced probing through its outer core, towards whatever lay at its center. Breaching the bristly shell via a small camouflaged opening, I reached into the conflagrant chamber beyond it, and my fingertips brushed against something peculiarly springy and pulpous but definitely solid, and without thinking I suddenly grabbed onto it. Fastening my clasping fingers around something cylindrical, and of somewhat ropey texture, I dug my fingernails into its writhing form and refused to relinquish the grip which I had, ultimately, fought so long and so hard to attain. It squirmed profusely; a slippery prey right up until the end. But after a brief battle requiring tremendous exertion, I triumphed. I pulled it from out of its incandescent husk, which responded by violently, but impotently, flaring in protest with hitherto unseen and absurdly inconceivable luminosity. Torn from its protective chassis, the thing in my grasp bucked and flailed in enraged objection.

At this point, I felt myself dissolve from this realm, sinking back into the world I truly inhabited, with the foul creature I had dragged along with me still in my rigid clutches.

In the plain, authentic light of day, I regarded the displaced, and newly cognizable, horror with revulsion and loathing, for I saw it for what it truly was. In a way that was abhorrent to my every moral fibre, it was manifestly vile. The greatest surprise was that what I now at long last beheld was again somehow instantaneously recognisable. At any rate, I remained wary as the danger it still posed, though now castrated and decrepit, was plainly unmistakable and enormously sobering.

In physical aspect, it was, in its entirety, about the size of a human head. Its composition resembled a loosely spherical, by nature of their extensive entanglement, mass of wriggling black serpents, each about the width of a finger. The actual length of these things appeared to be several inches but was ultimately indeterminable due to their intertwining forms becoming extremely densely knotted towards the ball’s center - an arrangement which reminded me of the semi-legendary rat king - making it impossible to follow any one example to its inwardly situated end at a glance. Furthermore, though I aesthetically related these things to snakes, they did not actually look like any earthly variety I have ever seen. They were, peculiarly, uninterruptedly smooth all over; with no eyes or mouth present where one would expect, nor any other obvious external appendages or openings. In this way, they most approximated inexplicably animate instances of blackened rope or vine. Also, despite being composed of some unmistakably organic material, there was an unnatural lustrousness to their, for lack of a better term, hide: it not only bore no scales but had a slick, polished, almost mirror like, quality that simply has no parallel in the conventional animal kingdom and can only be reasonably equated to the glassy sheen of polished obsidian. How then did my impression of their serpentine semblance arise? It’s simple. Their manner of incessant undulating, abrupt tendency to wildly strike outwards and penchant for deliberately winding around your fingers and encircling your hand bore a terrible but patent likeness to the distinctive and universal counterpart mannerisms and movements of snakes the world over.

Coldly scrutinizing the thrashing throng, it seemed largely unbelievable that I had been able to ignore this abhorrent creature’s encroachment before, or had at least done so as best as was possible. It had once invaded my most intimate refuge, and that was a thoroughly mortifying and nauseating thought. The violation inherent to its infiltration of my subconscious induced an awful but gnawingly warranted appraisal of myself as debased and tainted. It was perplexing that I had even initially tried to devalue its significance, to disregard the threat it represented, and I cursed myself for my previous stupidity. Thankfully, the one thing you can quite confidently rely upon is how invariably impossible it is to lie to yourself whilst perpetually and genuinely believing the untruth.

The monster’s real world surrogate had a name that was familiar not least by its potently disquieting and blanching effect. Discerning this troubling revelation, I understood, unreservedly, what had been staring me in the face the whole time, and its icy breath foretold grim tidings indeed.

Disabused of my delusionary defense mechanism, I now realized that, gradually, over an emotionally torturous period which can be most precisely characterised by a wearying beleaguerment of intermittent uncertainty and disappointment, I had developed a rampantly uncontrollable and insatiable perfectionism - perhaps better stated as a constant, overbearing fear of the imperfect, the deficient and the flawed - and it had subconsciously manifested itself most disturbingly as the insidious affliction commonly known as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

And, oh doctor, did I have it bad!

Now, you’ll read well-meaning warnings against diagnosing oneself with any sort of malady without first consulting a professional, but I believe that, in the much neglected and under examined field of mental health, one, if possessed of competent and stouthearted introspectiveness, is often entirely capable of at least identifying existing psychological problems. You do, after all, have the most immediate perspective, though, perhaps, not the most accurate or most reliable one.

Nonetheless, my mental distress was of undeniable origin. The candid veracity of my pronouncement was unmistakable and it was immediately and consumingly upsetting.

To preface, I absolutely was not a virginal victim in a state of indignant disbelief due to my previously unsullied and entirely unimpaired mental health, because other psychological problems aren’t, let’s say, previously, or currently, foreign to me. However, my intervals of overall convalescence generally outlasted the stretches of inescapable malaise - or at least, I, in my rare bouts of miraculous optimism, liked to think so. Regardless, in this matter I also enjoyed considerable solace from relishing the fact that a myriad of, relatively or at least usually non-debilitating, disorders I was (consciously) enduring were of the storied sort that have so often plagued the great burgeoning creative minds since the first consummate prosaic and poetic writings were completed. Perhaps indulging in foolishly sentimental idolatry, I even quite cherished that I was intellectually tortured in an indubitably similar fashion to some of the masterful writers I have come to deeply admire; Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft are two authors who illustrate this parallel best, and the ones that often sprang most quickly to mind when I was in need of affirmation and reassurance that my distempered mind was of a prodigious ilk. For example, many of the afflicted wordsmiths I revered were, at least in part, embattled by problematic recreational substance abuse, peremptory schizophrenia, unbridled neurosis, casual sociopathy, crippling clinical depression, mild but absorbingly indulgent delusionality, ascetically reclusive misanthropy, occasional suicidal tendencies, et cetera, and, in this context, I have long since, rather unseemingly proudly, joined their veteran ranks.

Yet, this new addition to my already respectably long list of psychological complaints was unquestionably different for it solely filled me with a sense of misfortune and dread. The previously disclosed category of impairments I appreciatively bemoaned were, in my mind, mere eccentricities of the adroitly creative mind, and duplicated in the chronicles of, by means of personally troubling festerment in, countless historical figures of the sort. This current bane, oppositely, was literally and unstoppably incapacitating. Through its pernicious influence, it effectively deadened my motivation and my ambition. It enfeebled me, but most frustratingly, it had hobbled my actions with no identifiable means or motive. I was ignorant and impotent - a foiling combination.

Tragically, it began, and culminated, with its influence on my writing.

I progressively worsened from the first inklings of overbearing perfectionism. Soon enough, I became completely obsessed with achieving a sheer faultlessness of execution in every piece that I wrote. It became unavoidably and paramountly imperative that I craft only that which singularly represented the quintessence of my unadulterated creative vision. To which end, I would draft and re-draft and re-draft ad nauseum. I would excruciatingly obsess over minute, and realistically unnoticeable and ergo irrelevant, differences in grammar, wording and even formatting. Often, I readily discarded work which had, ironically via the process of continual alteration in the pursuit of improvement, become too distant from my original vision, and so consequently embodied what I determined as being too unwieldy to mould into the supremely realized opus I now worshipped.

Hence, a suppressive duality was established. There was either sheer perfection, or there was, in the case of everything that fell short (no matter to what degree), an utterly shameful failing which appalled my newfound purist sensibilities and disheartened my future efforts immensely. Moreover I could no longer savour any sense of accomplishment unless I fully achieved the excellence I came to slavishly idolize, and so I was discouraged against even trying.

Although it isn’t the literal translation one might hope for, Voltaire’s popularly attributed declaration that the ‘perfect is the enemy of the good’ is a profound proverb which I’ve long known, and long contemplated. I think that it is a useful aphorism for every writer to consider during the potentially indefinite tinkering stage. Unfortunately, in my case, the ‘perfect’ was also the sworn enemy of any attempts at a productive undertaking and yield.

Something I only understood later on was that because I was so eternally hesitant to actually post anything which did not meet my unrealistic expectations of superb distinction, I so rarely completed the vital conclusion of the creative process: earning the satisfaction of deeming it finished (and publishing it). This meant that I endured a perpetual feeling of jaded discontent, which is certainly not conducive to fostering inspiration as I consequently struggled to motivate myself to (likely) fail again.

Not only wasn’t I publishing any of my work online, nor privately sharing it with my paramour, I was actually writing less and less. The enormously intimidating and overwhelming requisite of the sublime meant that even the thought of writing filled me with a sense of dread at my perceived continual inadequacy and burdened me with predicted failure before I had even begun. This meant that my artistic efforts rapidly, as the degeneration of my creative self-esteem progressed, became a trickle, and then they simply ceased. The resulting impotent frustration both consumed me and made me empty. I was distraught. I was spent. I was hollow.

Whilst I futilely attempted to combat its campaign against my writing, the OCD launched new offensives directed towards other susceptible frontiers. Accordingly, it expediently bled into the many other vulnerable areas of my life. The infection spread, if you will. In retrospect, I recognize that, realistically, I had no real chance to effectively fight its conquest, let alone best it, for I knew not even what it was, and so despite my stalwart but insubstantial resistance, it soon took hold. It was akin to the murky waters of its swamp-born deluge mercilessly smashing into the makeshift dam protectively surrounding my consciousness, uprooting it with ease, and then washing over my defenceless mind with full force, leaving behind toxic remnants of disease ridden sludge in its wake. Begrudgingly, I must admit that it delivered its virulent payload with admirable precision. Having devastated my last bastion, the epidemic began in earnest.

Following the pivotally widespread contagion, the various areas in which I developed OCD tendencies were both great in number and extensively distributed throughout my daily activities.

What I can say with some certainty is that the next area I recognized - though still without being able to actually identify it - that the contagion had breached was my beloved hobby of playing video-games.

I imagine that every gamer endures some small number of irrational compulsions when playing video-games, and I did too before the OCD struck, bu it was only after it did that I fully comprehended how unobtrusive these minor annoyances are in the grand scheme of things. As now most everything had to adhere to my idea of the ‘perfect’ way for me, in particular, to play my games. I had this conception of what ‘I’ would do in any given situation, and if I didn’t contrivedly match this projection unerringly, I felt that it constituted some sort of existential error in the stream of my life - I hadn’t done what I was always ‘supposed’ to have done. [This, incidentally, was also implicitly the case for many of my other OCD habits too.]

For example, I often couldn’t miss even a single word in a line of dialogue without needing to restart from an earlier checkpoint to dismiss, or at least stifle, the resulting compulsion by heeding the missed word properly the second time around. Crazily, sometimes not paying the dialogue sufficiently rapt attention, even though I hadn’t missed it, was enough cause to make me need to go back and hear/read it again.Thankfully, as it could have been the most frustrating and time consuming of perceived obligations, I didn’t think it necessary to always amass all of the collectibles in a game, but if I noticeably missed one which I thought I should have attained, because I did so in my ‘perfect’ playthrough, I absolutely had to return to collect it. Simultaneously, the OCD’s insidious treachery trickled down into smaller, more trivial matters: completing in-game objectives in a certain consciously stipulated ‘perfect’ order, ensuring I reloaded my weapon when the ammo count dropped below the maximum, interacting with NPCs in a very specific mentally prescribed fashion, et cetera.

Additionally, I also began adhering to a very troubling routine of compulsion wherein I would, say, and this is just one of many examples (but it was the most prominently frequent), load my most recent save upon returning to a game, but then, after it had loaded, I would feel somehow unsure that I had actually selected the correct save (e.g. the most recent one), and I irrationally thought that I couldn’t be entirely sure I had done so unless I exited the game and very deliberately reloaded the most recent save again. This cycle could potentially be repeated several times until I had, with sufficiently comforting confidence, ascertained that the right choice (e.g. the one I intended to make originally) had most definitely been made. Yes, I know how crazy that sounds. And yes, that craziness did occur to me at the time. Yet, distressingly, this pestering compulsion was almost impossible to avoid indulging nonetheless because the urge to second guess was so frustratingly hard to ignore.

The OCD’s dominion also quickly extended to matters of cleanliness. Though it fortunately wasn’t a subjugation of all of the various sub-categories therein, conformance to its perfectionist rule in those within its tyrannical jurisdiction quickly became extremely irritating and inconvenient to maintain.

To be clear, the compulsions and obsessions in these other areas of my life, individually, were never even nearly as strong as their counterparts in my writing, but due to their occurrence in recurrent daily activities, they were given opportunity to arise so much more frequently. As a result, they bombarded me routinely and without fail. The irksome urges my OCD manifested itself as would, if continually rejected, slowly coagulate and then collectively concentrate their wearying effect to chip away at my resistance until they finally and inevitably won out, overwhelming me completely. These moments of flustered perturbation were so truly awful to experience, and I’m sure quite troubling, not least for their apparent inexplicability, for my dear bewildered onlooker. Victory was distinctly impossible, but even in my wearied surrender I was allowed no manner of rest or quarter. When I had been beaten down by their harassing vexation, often to the point of wanting to abandon my particular method of relaxation or recreation, they would renew their assault with fresh malice and effectiveness, tirelessly eager to land that final killing blow. It was death by a thousand cuts, and I bled often and at length.

Unbeknownst to even my lover, I silently suffered for quite some while. Then I would occasionally grumble about the irritating compulsions I had apparently amassed, and the anxiety and duress they caused me. Amazingly, I even nonchalantly, and rather flippantly, suggested I may have something like OCD. Finally, things began to coalesce, and I gathered that I needed to engage in some unafraid, honest introspection.

That’s when I began to guardedly piece everything together. It was, in essence, an enormous jigsaw puzzle which, when completed, simply acted as a portal through which I could mutely peer, with new clarity and perspective, at the happenings of my past.

As such, it duly became manifestly self-evident when this had all been germinated, and how.

I am nineteen years old. About a year and a half ago, I decided to drop out (for lack of a more fitting term) from the college I attended. I was in the second year of my A-levels at the time. Due to the mostly poor and uninformed decisions as to what to study and those, comparatively delightful, mental health issues I mentioned earlier, I was failing all but English Literature (which I excelled in). Since the self-pity long ago faded into obscurity, it is a decision which I rarely regret. Although I wish it was not so, it had been entirely necessitated by the circumstance. I often wonder what may of happened, what may have been possible had it not been so, but before I torture myself too much, I thankfully remember that such hypothetical imaginings ultimately constitute masochistic emotional self-harm and are largely pointless, because, of course, it was.

Nonetheless, it created a disfiguring fracture in what had been my, long settled, life plan: a plotted trajectory which allocated two, at least sufficiently successful, years of college before I graduated to the promised land of University. Naturally, adhering to this schedule was now no longer possible. No, not in the least, because, in fact, those formerly allotted two years have since doubled in length as I have chosen to study different A-levels - this time opportunely comprised of subjects I’m actually interested in, and, dare I say it, enjoying studying. It is, in hindsight, realistically a tremendously fine outcome for what was at the time, ostensibly, the end of my life as I knew it. All I could dwell on at the time though was that I would never be able to get back on track for what I had always planned would be my route through academia, and I would, at best, have to instead take a fairly long and branching detour to simply rejoin where I had originally been shunted off of the path. And that, for someone whose life essentially consisted of academic ambition, was a cataclysmic hardship to endure.

Are you beginning to see now?

If you’re not, allow me to concisely summarise what this all effectively meant to me: my life, in its overarching course, had forever lost even the potential to adhere to my idealistic intentions for it. The epitomical journey had been prematurely truncated. I was once the eventual heir to the theoretically possible version of myself I espoused as paragon but I knew now that I would never become him, I would never assume his crown. The fulfillment of my grand destiny was absolutely and unequivocally impossible. Thereafter, I believed myself to have become eternally sullied by this egregious blemish of perpetual imperfection, for the ramifications of my deficiency would surely negatively affect all of my future endeavours. The outwardly racing ripples of this terrible impact would eventually slow, and even become faint, but they would not halt or cease.

Hence, the inconspicuous genesis of my deeply rooted craving for perfection was inspired: if I couldn’t have the indefectible path through life I had envisioned, I would ensure that everything else I did was perfect, lest I suffer a painful reprise of the profound disappointment from when the former’s actuality was enacted.

This realization, unsurprisingly, was initially met with crude denial, for it seemed as though an unfeasibly, almost absurdly, simplistic explanation. One that I should have been able to identify long ago.

However, my OCD only continued to worsen. Stricken with yet more of its intrusions, I resoundingly relented in my dismissal of the glaring truth. I eyed my newly acknowledged circumstance with equal parts pained disbelief and haughty resentment. The latter arose because, idiosyncratically, I actually begrudged my subconscious for betraying my confidence like it had. The two of us had, I felt, up unto that point, enjoyed a decidedly well balanced symbiotic relationship, and now it emerged that my other half, my silent partner psychologically speaking, had, albeit involuntarily, engaged in clandestine subterfuge and sabotage when it had failed to properly process and deal with the emotional trauma I had previously undergone. Still, in its way, it wasn’t all that surprising seeing as I had, even before the OCD, gratuitously deprived it of my sole form of therapy by neglecting my beloved practice of writing regularly. I had replaced its only available means of introspective analysis and its reconstructive faculty with weak facsimiles and bravado, so it was perhaps only to be expected that it should fail me so spectacularly.

Yet, worse still was the shameful sense of shortcoming I felt. I have always valued my intelligence and my mental fortitude above all other aspects of myself, and now I was forced to confront a glaring psychological flaw which had undeniably diminished the capacity and effectiveness of them both. It was a weakness woven into the very heart of my place of greatest strength. I was weak. And I didn’t know how to deal with that.

It is only when you’ve examined yourself with due candor and lucidity that it will become abundantly clear that the delusion of your immaculateness is juvenile and fundamentally detrimental to your development as a person. Following this, your residual subconscious vanity, arrogance and conceit should be examined with, initially unbearable, clarity and objectivity. Your ego will be shattered, repeatedly. It will undoubtedly be a thoroughly disquieting and humbling process, but you will be better for it.

This cleansing manner of self-examination, via unpleasant internal confrontation, finally spurred my mind’s equivalent of the body’s immune system. My penchant to overcome was stirred, and rallied. My willpower was mustered. I was, in a recently unfamiliar positive way, compelled - to fight.

As a disclaimer, I was never a big subscriber in the supposed power of positive thinking: it is, by its own admission, a placebo, and as I’ve since learned, hard truths are better than comfortable illusions. Now, whilst the human mind is clearly capable of affecting and changing itself by, seemingly, its own volition, I believe that it is terribly inefficient and moreover unwise to do so by means of deception and trickery. You are intimately and irrevocably in cahoots with one another after all, so do not shirk the many benefits of that relationship by trying to duplicitously manipulate your comrade-in-arms.

Trusting in my symbiote to redeem itself, I instead elected to utilize plain old willpower. It is the mind’s most simplistic and most powerful manner of weaponry.

When the heavens boil with thunderous jolting fury, and the earth shudders in its crude manner of intimidation, and a massive torrent rushes towards you portending untold destruction, you must hold and you must defiantly stand fast against their mindless assault.

As I know now that my recently acquired OCD is directly and mainly the product of unresolved psychological distress, I believe with some certainty that dealing with this trauma properly will banish my plight. In a way, I am quite fortunate, for I have caught it at the onset, and I’ve already identified its main cause, and I’m positive that I possess the power to destroy it once and for all. Though I have suffered under its relatively brief reign, I would have continued to do so, with almost immeasurably increased personal detriment as a result, had it been allowed to truly take root and burgeon into a foundational, constitutional structure within my subconscious. At a certain point, a parasite’s growth so thoroughly infiltrates the infrastructure of its host, that a certain twisted symbiosis is established out of necessity, and to remove it would mean its absence could cause irreparable damage. I shudder to even imagine that possibility.

Onwards however. Ever onwards. I will work through the emotional issues I’ve unknowingly accrued, and I’ll mainly do so through my writing, for it is my greatest outlet. Unfortunately, this scourge has amassed many agents, several of which have already completed a preliminarily implantation, and their powerful influence has revealed itself to be exceptionally onerous. Nevertheless, writing has proven time and time again to be the most predominantly effective manner of enacting the necessarily aggressive sort of catharsis to uproot and banish them.

So, yes, I shall write more. Whenever possible. However possible. About whatever needs to be purged from my imagination at the time. I shall not mean to, nor shall I merely resolve to do so, I will simply do so. I understand now that there need not be an intermediary prefacing the action. One need only exercise one’s will to ascertain that it be done. As such it should simply be undertaken and completed. To introduce the extra step of deciding to do something largely overcomplicates the matter, rendering ineffectual and inefficient what should be wholly an entirely unsophisticated, straightforward affair. The notoriously short-lived and then disregarded New Year’s resolution is a prime demonstration of this counter-productive mechanism at work.

I do not think that I will publish everything I write, but most of it shall be uploaded. Shamefully, I have more than a hundred drafts languishing on Tumblr alone, with more in Google Docs, and I hope to pardon each and every one that was unjustly sentenced to imprisonment and stagnation there under the oppressive regime which I am now an insurgent against. Some will be adapted, reworked, improved and published at long last, others will be completed but instead allowed the dignified repose within my records of posterity that they deserve, but I hope to imbue those hallowed halls with an aura of closure one way or another.

I imagine that only the banshees - malevolent, shirked or relinquished - and perhaps even the transients, are likely to scour these words, but there is an (increasingly not so) short story under construction at the moment. With my writing prowess at its current ascendency, it is my most promising opus. If you are at all familiar with my work, you will also probably be so with the themes present in it as it is, unsurprisingly, a piece that was previously abandoned. That notwithstanding, I can assure you that it treads fertile new ground with my patent authoritative and unyielding footfalls - which my insurgency has also come to adopt. It is the most intricately constructed piece of storytelling I have written so far as much of the rich backstory for its interwoven plot is furtively insinuated or cryptically disclosed. Its literary aspirations and even meagre quasi-historical allusions have made it a taxing endeavour indeed. I have previously written several examples of, naturally unfinished, short stories, and the practice thus seems as though an established and familiar one to me, yet I also realize that I haven’t actually published one online so far. So, overall, it should represent a pleasant departure, a breath of fresh air if you will, for the otherwise uninitiated reader of my work.

I imagine that I will only return to poetry in earnest when I’ve worked through what I need to, as any residual perfectionism is amplified tenfold when it comes to composing and tinkering with poems the way I like to. Still, my poetical output will only be, befitting its craft’s relapse inducing nature, somewhat decreased, but certainly not terminated.

Anyway, so there it is, the whole story: why I have been away, and also why I won’t be any longer.

And, yes, to alleviate your fears, there will probably be more crazy before we break through to the Dawn…

The abhorrently treasured remembrances of abomination's veterancy

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 21:34:57 +0100

Despite now being in bohemian refuge, poetry has nonetheless recently become very taxing for me, both mentally and emotionally. What once fueled my words is, somewhat thankfully, absent. Still, I apologize for the lack of output. I mean to write more.

Such vast and enduring foes I had sadly chose to carelessly amass
amid all of those fierce campaigns from a now fast embittered past
Clashes arose in bloodlust; a grievous but alluring sort of warring craft
and what of those once adoring claims? Only prose truly knows, if asked
Yes, remains of bloodied annals impartially disclose these awful facts at last
Damning evidence, now known solely to repose, of a genesis finally unmasked
Things wordlessly eternally resaid, in venomous soft eloquence, of a finery contrast
Proposed in trying elegance of undying aghast throes whence blood unjustly splashed

My Didactic Wounds

Mon, 07 May 2012 13:00:00 +0100

I’ve began to ponder, as my bedside candle flickers, fades
if bonds now no longer shall persist as their bitter charades
For my heart launders their oft ugliness in hindsight’s grace
Am I made stronger to guard what my mind might debase?

Pain reset, reinvented as regret is tempting, it must be said
Yet mistakes I forget always beget themselves thrice ahead
So I fret I must endure the awful debt of brave acuity instead
Missteps ventured are offset by their lessons and not retread
People I’ve met, and upset, can be excised I may have pled,
but their influences remain to abet a future threat to spread
Waking frenzied, wet with sweat, is what they’ve since bred

Crimson Wisdom

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:54:31 +0100

I am infatuated with death, especially those it leaves behind
They covet a breath which is their very loss perfectly defined
and if squandered degrades a prize lost eternally to the dead
Land wandered by ghosts; trails which are no longer truly tread
Words recounting oaths, dirges and tales cease to be duly said
Us living bear mounting urges to discount the wisdom of the bled
Puzzling it is to know you should meet repose yet silently implore
the spotter of your silent blue plead to return to how it was before
If you spy streams of florid blood seeping underneath my door
please now be relieved that you need not fret for me anymore
Sorry, I did a bad thing, a thing I shared I wouldn’t even dare
Still, it’s only gonna sting a moment, so I couldn’t really care

The most exquisitely torturous Fantasm

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 18:16:00 +0100

Ah, to awake sweating and breathless from a nighttime emissary apparition. Perhaps the only sadness which is briefly but intensely enlivening. Oh, but the melancholy afterwards… Still, it’s been a while now - is that a good thing?

Gently I awoke, to feel you softly breathing
abreast, in perfect frozen serenity you laid
Still, I eyed you with a mindful disbelieving
Far too immaculate a scene, which betrayed
that in my bed, besides me, and deceiving
my eager senses is really merely but a shade
I wasn’t truly seeing, indeed just perceiving
Realizing that ghostly remnants do pervade
my dreamstate anew, fantasy begins to fade
Again I wake, sorrowed chest weakly heaving

Damned jerking reality shift tore me from vainest bliss
Fabricated paradise! Yet one in which I’d fight to exist
A frigidly icy space, as of an unmistakable emptiness
belies this biting truth which now is shown far plainest;
by me no-one lays, as only a silent void does persist
It seems there’s an invisible, utterly impenetrable rift
betwixt us, slumber’s vault harbors this shadowy Miss
No efforts on my part can free her from dreamy midst

Shamelessly panting and pleading, screaming silently
All that I am now afforded is blurry, fading recollection
and wretched thoughts on how good that it would be
should my dreams, with their euphoric self-deception
and splendidly beguiling finery, become awoken reality

Trapped in mine own Mask

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 22:04:00 +0100

Deep into my pretty mirror, each morning, so long I do gaze
in it’s vast reflection that, daily, I am given, to wear, a new face
and I’ll feel an old cherished friend put to stake and left to raze
So come each new day’s dawn, I can only hope to win it’s praise
For the days when I lose it’s favor are nearly more than I can take
Many possibilities adorn such familiar mannequins on it’s well-lit stage
but I do not know which mask I’m to bear until it is far too late to change

Immortal Tusks

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:08:00 +0000

Together, on one fine day, we left, at no vocal request,
with great haste and no thought spared for the hereafter
A dark continent, bearing adventure’s well-worn crest,
was the destination of our erratic and impetuous quest
Whilst there we adapted, shared in tears and laughter,
befriending bleak hordes now hopelessly dispossessed
Whence natural fury did stir, bringing about grand disaster,
both communities and structures alike endured the stress
We lent aid to the distressed, laying those no longer to final rest
We helped upright buildings for those who heeded no master
We rebuilt bridges that elephant herds tread longer still after
A century from now, these forgotten things will still matter,
when even elephantine memory begins to fade, but no faster,
when our bones are ashen and have just began to scatter,
hooves with ungulate grace will still be heard to clatter thereafter

A Divine Ignition - and the besotted Pyromaniacs, with their Incendiary Prose, that it wrought

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:20:00 +0000

You still see it, no?

It has dimmed slightly, but, as if they existed in a state of begrudging equilibrium, the darkness has grown stronger, thicker, and it ventures deeper still, so it doesn’t much matter anyway. The silvers of pitch-dark shadows still dance against their brilliant backdrop with the same fervor, with the same irreverence to our watchful gazes.

You do still see it.

Yes. I’m sure of it.

It’s been a little while now since I noticed it’s reflection in your eyes, not least because of the overpowering replacement; the sight of your own newfound gift. At first I thought perhaps it was merely a distortion of the reflection, but I soon came to realize otherwise, but yours does mimic mine now more and more.

Still, let’s not waste time on semantics, because time is short isn’t it?

Time is short and the reserves of my creative arousal that I nervously stockpiled for a day decidedly without rain are likely to deplete ever faster as I continue my consideration of that odd development.

Inspiration is a little like sanity and oxygen; seldom coveted until they cease to be available, and then sought with the mad ardency of suicidal fourth-quarter cravings for life, for vitality.

Beside, what is this I can see of yours? Ah, I see you’ve spruced things up a bit. I won’t speak on how I saw yours originally. It’s not important. Now though, I clearly see all the vibrant changes you’ve made. In the wake of the alterations, it seems to drift between bright hues of pink and red, with a bubbling candescence that bleeds excitement everywhere. It’s really quite a thing to behold as it’s bounces around it’s confines, smudging the walls with it’s flamboyant slime.

Plus, you never did much care for how mine appeared originally, did you? I don’t doubt it was intimidatingly absorbing with it’s violent colorless blaze that seemed to swallow all that isn’t devoid of it’s taint in the manner of a black hole. The impression it presents is of a sort that conjures exhilaratingly disquieting imagery of the wordless expressions of the dying at the sensation of absolute annihilation.

I still remember when you first began looking upon mine intently, how your mind seemingly couldn’t help but color it as something more palatable to your impression of me. You saw how it had began to manifest for me then, it’s black crepuscular murk that fizzled with silent rage, and pictured it instead as the pale blue tint that it’s apertures wear as stained glass. Oh you and your prejudices of the heart - but you still saw it. That’s what was important. It’s what drew me inexorably to you in the first place.

I know you weren’t sure what it was you were seeing initially. I told you that what you were seeing was effectively the ethereal blueprint for a grand machine, beyond human knowledge, but certainly not it’s comprehension. A mechanism I’ve, of course, since fully explained to you, at length, and often. One whose presence we’ve also since managed to attribute to several other great minds throughout history; divided between those we’ve decided possessed it’s influence for certain, and those that only probably had it. Nonetheless, it has left a metaphysical residue on all of their manuscripts, as it has on all of our own. I know I’m not alone in wondering if it will be detected by others bearing the gift in the future?

Ah, but when I saw the fierce wonder in your eyes as I detailed it’s purpose! Wonder, not originated from innocence, as of a child’s when ignorantly foolhardy at the prospect of a new discovery, but of keen, eager relish and power hungry delight, as of those watching the first atomic bomb testing - well with the knowledge that you’ve uncovered something terrible, and destructive, and inhuman in it’s ferocity, but, despite your otherwise terrifying proximity, you know it cannot, it will not harm you, and that you will, yourself, tame it, master it.

Then, in your eyes, I also saw frantic disbelief. And not that of an unconvinced rebuffing of what you saw, but rather the hurried huge-in-number reworkings and reorderings as you adapted your reality, or what you knew of as reality, to accommodate this new epiphany. Your disbelief was obviously decidedly pointed; focused at how you could have possibly considered a world view that excluded this power, and how uncertain the rest of reality seems compared to the absolute certainty with which you now knew this to exist.

Because you knew it was truly real. It was a concrete waypost from which all other things could apparently be calculated and derived.

It is an axiom of character.

And you realized you had never really seen one before.

Everything else you’d come to know about people; their personality, their inclinations, their talents, they all seem so artificial and of tremendously questionable validity in comparison to it.

And so, you came to believe in my magic I had long since borne instantly.

Because I would not lie to you.

And because you would not be lied to.

So then I told you. I told you that a momentary prototype of the Promethean spark had somehow become embedded in the protective armor of my soul. Before Prometheus risked everything to steal away from the heavens, elope to earth, giving humans fire, condemning himself to an eternity of suffering, he had briefly considered giving them something else. Something more valuable. Something that would have earned him a fate more terrible even than ceaseless torment had it’s bestowing been similarly discovered.

Prometheus originally sought, for just a moment, to gift to humanity, a means of illumination and combustion that would eclipse even the mighty fire.

But he hesitated. Faltering at the decision’s implications.

‘Too much, too soon.’ he thought as he eyed this paramount prize one last time before choosing it’s inferior ancestor.

Instead, he brought us the spark of something else, fire. And we learned to burn things. And we burned, and burned, and burned. Fire cleanses the earth just as well as water, only now humans had the means to bring about one of these destructive plagues ourselves. We, along with Mother Nature (and her cranky disposition towards us), had a far greater ability to create and destroy, to kill ourselves and each other, and to signal to the heavens with combined streams of inky smoke our tiny evolutionary step.

We felt powerful. For we had control of a tool that the Gods themselves revered.

But to this stone spearhead, a hammer and sickle had almost came into our possession.

That would have changed everything.

And it still will.

I hadn’t realized I had it myself. I only knew that something was different. I knew that where others felt an airy absence, I felt the heated contact of a burdensome stowaway. It slowly consumed the shell that protected my essence, day by day, piece by piece, until all that was left was cinders and ash.

And then it ignited, fully. It blazed blue in my mind. Blinding me with it’s brilliant radiance, which seemed to permeate through and around every part of my vision.

And then, my eyes adjusted, and it’s intense beaming took on (if you’ll excuse the pun, which you certainly will) a whole new light.

Everything was illuminated. Truly illuminated.

I saw with a clarity that God’s aspire to.

And I will show the others this new sort of fire soon enough.

But you saw it first. You see it now. Perhaps now more than ever, when I no longer stoke it, seeking momentary refuge before I redouble it’s fuel. Absence only makes appreciation grow stronger after all, as we both know, and so you’ve come to long for it in my eyes when it’s radiance grows weak.

And of course, this power of vision is yours now too. Just by proximity, I borrowed you the kindle unknowingly, encouraging a little sea of flickering pink flames that licked at the confines of your mind, charring the surfaces with sanguine cauterization.

It was already too late when I saw in your eyes what I see as a weak impression on the shadow theater of my eyelids when I close them tight.

But we both know that others will come to possess at least a weak facsimile of what we have, in due time, so there will come a point when we must allow the conflagration to consume us, fully, wholly.

And I will hold your hand whilst the smoke rises.

And I will hold your hand when we are reborn anew.

Because you were the first.

My first.

The muse that joined me on the pyre.

Words from a Dream

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:38:53 +0000

I’ve regenerated the sky again,
and now all that I can see
is the hemorrhaging of energy
where your star’s spot should be

You’re pretty and you’re wise
like the old young Queens of yore
You’ve bested me far better
but, really, who’s still keeping score?

I’ve entered your memory’s chateau,
with hands raised only as a show of peace
but still I am to be greeted by old guards
wearing wreaths bound with plate-armor grief

A preface to an Ode - Per aspera ad Astra

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 03:13:00 +0000

It is so very hard to write about us
and harder still even when I’ve tried
You wanted words that I have lost
Do trust that I’d give them otherwise

For we were born in, and of, a lust
A wordless dictum of a phallic quill
invalidating an expression via thrust
Things shifted, words became a must
So, hence, my dictation at your will:

My hand has so stayed from penning
in it’s patent, maybe well-worn, style,
words used previously in condemning
those whom I’ve now chosen to revile

I would seek, and as I’d claim rightly is your due,
to distance even your passing, fleeting mention,
but especially when the context is poetical review,
the notion that you conjure in my mind’s dimension
from the inferior attempts that preceded finding you,
to elevate it from their taint; immaculate ascension

These are words which needed saying that I willfully neglected
Truths, true as tautological, that I’d have still zealously rejected
Though now I feel a surge, a rush to which I’m easily subjected
as regularly as precious thoughts of you can be feasibly expected
I’ll start my scribing, damned be my constant want of the perfected,
long overdue is an appreciative appraisal being your way directed

LAPping at the Black LACE of a DEMON's Veil

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:57:00 +0000

I believe it to be so that nothing can be truly lost forever
but oft rather merely misplaced, transmuted or forgotten
Those few words of utterance, before ties were to sever,
might seem as if scattered to the wind, long since trodden,
by time’s fear inspiring tread, whence memories slowly rotten

But rather, to the contrary, they live on in a different manifestation
That moment’s words, and their vibrations in the surrounding air
transferred energy to the molecules around the vocalizations there
Subatomic oscillations carry the legacy of your meaning by causation
spreading through the world like the shedding and dispelling of a tear
does extirpate one’s sadness and sows it quite rightly anywhere but here

It travels onward like a vagrant, whom hasn’t any home
and must always roam in that aimless, almost flagrant
trawl of someone cast away in a sea topped with foam
frothing with all the concepts sown of emptiest dismay

Was it good that it even arose?
Now, it won’t cease I suppose
It may never reach a repose
What a thing to transpose

Pages yellowed with the Ages

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 16:09:00 +0000

My eyes, at mine mind’s behest, continue a ceaseless scan,
wearied though they’re now, being nary so inclined to blink,
wide with fervent reverence, of my library’s immense span
Re-reading the archives of rotting parchment and fading ink
Words now so ancient as to seem sourced from another man

My poetry grows stale, regurgitated and copied
It is taking form of the forms of yesteryear’s folly
No longer is there pain for them to properly embody

Permafrost

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:58:25 +0000

Today is so very, very cold - in mood and temperature
Thinking of my yesterdays, they were always like that too
I try to picture warm thoughts - a burning effigy of you
Gauge frozen, zero lost; extraordinary becomes regular
Eyes watering, soon weeping, bleeding out my blue

The boy I'd be if I knew you were watching

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 03:31:50 +0000

It is becoming more and more difficult to separate who I actually am, in reality, and the many, far greater, versions of myself that I entertain in my extremely comfortable, even opium like, fantastical and delusional perception, and yet, one of them, maybe all of them, could most probably be induced into actual being through the simplest, most unassuming of stimuli…

If I, knowingly, had your rapt attentions, if your eyes were upon my writing, watching my staggered progress through life - if you were judging, calculating what it is you might have lost - who would I choose to be?

I would be the person I want to be.
I would be the person I should be.
I would be the person I could be.

I would extend such colossal effort towards reshaping myself into the mould of my long held and long worshiped residual self image, and I would be recreated, reborn, refinished, not as something new, not as something different, but as me.

As the me I want to be, and sometimes, in the moments of my most egotistic fancy, believe myself to be.

The tortured, ever improving and criminally unappreciated writer; possessed of previously unseen (to the world) and extremely meritorious talent, incredibly versatile skill and simply limitless potential.
The fiercely impressive and widely envied intellectual; possessed of a vastly expansive and encompassing intellect, finely honed by an independent, if esoteric, education.
The zeroed and emotionless logician and transcendent philosopher; possessed of amazing powers of deduction, acumen and calculation whilst simultaneously capable of otherwise unaccessible abstract understanding and consideration.
The mysterious, brooding rogue; possessed of boyish handsomeness, a sleek effeminate frame, a compellingly mischievous impish grin and the a piercing gaze featuring the unmistakably sharp gleam of brilliant cunning.
The showman orator and calmly powerful sophist; possessed of an overwhelming vocabulary, impeccable diction, both housed in flawless enunciation and elocution - along with an ability to deeply comprehend and influence others.
The swoon compelling, carnal but gentle and unconventionally romantic lover; possessed of a well-developed understanding of human sexuality, consuming passion and fine adroitness.
The cultured, cultivated, elegantly gallant gentleman; possessed of broad sophistication and refinement which combine to create an intangibly magnetic debonair.

I would be the sum of a thousand literary influences. I would be the finely balanced distillate of so many characters which have all slowly blended into my subconscious idol, my perfect tense intentional form.

If you were watching, I would be someone worth watching.

But you are not, so I do not try.

Or is that the other way around?…