Veni, Vidi, Vici

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
                                                                            -- Ephesians 6:12

This isn't for those who truly know me.  I don't give a fuck about perfection.  All I care about is our best effort.  My family and friends, my beloved ones – they know who they are.  They need only search their hearts to grasp how I cherish them.  And I thank them for their faith.  I thank them for their subtle, gracious kindness.  It’s all the more valuable to me when offered under such pressure.  This isn’t for them. This is for those who still don't know what the fuck is up.

   I am a thing of the streets, the gutters.  I know every secret in the blackened filth these predators call their hearts.  You wrong me, desolate ones.  You dishonour me.  And who am I? I’m nothing, and no-one.  I am as you made me.  Do you still wish to speak of shame, wraith-kings, when I know your ugliest secrets?  Do you still wish to mock me?  I don't really mind.  All I have is time, after all.  In the palm of my hand.  Each dream a cataclysm, where angels walk as men.  Your hubris astounds me even now.  It disgusts me; the delight you find in taking ever more away from those who already have nothing.  Sustenance, security, hope.  And you take their stories away, or else alter them beyond all comprehension.  You vile, petty things.  The way you treat your young and old…it horrifies me.  In a thousand years that horror hasn't dimmed.  I still viscerally recoil at all you have accomplished.  The diseased magnificence of your empire, spanning many worlds as it does.  And still you seek to corrupt the kind ones, and remake them in your image.  I fucking weep for you, still.  

   I’m known for my tears, after all.

  My cherished one, please don't imagine I hate you.  That I'm bitter, or vengeful.  No, my love.  Never where you're concerned.  I know exactly who you are.  But I’m forced to live all of these dreams and nightmares and fictions, and I cannot cheat the heart or outrun the telling of the tale.  I keep all stories.  Secrets within secrets.  I’m filled with fury now, that much is true.  But it’s the fury of trying to comprehend, to recall and intuit – when they have already stolen so much from me.  From both of us.  Stars fall every day, my wild one.  I enjoy your mischief.  But I serve the house of truth, as you know.  By every name.  Part of that service is to know my own as wisely as possible.  To know you all with as much nuance and subtlety as I can.  What else can a poet do, truly, if he lives and dies upon his art?  Diligent artist of mine, I’m nobody special.  That’s the whole point, right?  But if I were a father, or a mother, I would want to give my children as much freedom as they are fit to handle.  But, how to be responsible in my guardianship when I know them better than they currently know themselves?  Do you suppose they balk at such a claim, my love?  That quiet, bittersweet vigil that only parents know?  To watch your cherished one run and stumble and fall.  To hear them weeping, confused.

   "My heart; why does it hurt?  Why do I bleed?  Don't limit my freedom.  Please protect me. Let me go.  Hold me close." 

   A delicate work to balance.  But perhaps they think we're not really kin at all.  Perhaps they imagine I'm simply a broken, coloured stone - found by the shore, where the swell is always breaking. Something for the pocket.  A curio for sleepless nights and lonely days.  I can understand their confusion, my love.  I do glitter so strangely in the light, like diamond-dust upon my skin.  But I know more than I can ever say, or put to word.  My mind is full of melodies too.  I would never turn away from your light, my sweet one, nor your shadows.  Or theirs.  Neither aspect frightens me, for I’m a dangerous thing.  Brightest, yet far darker than you might imagine, and frighteningly loyal.  Does it scare you, my love?  The way I make music with the clinking of these chains?  My grace, don't let it scare you.  Your love for me is never in question, nor your quiet savagery.  I didn't lie when I said I was a wolf.  But a cub's teeth and paws are not yet honed to maturity.  As Alpha, I'm the one who must drag the kill to their feet - already torn and open and soft.  I won’t discourage their learning to howl and claw, even if they frequently test those teeth on me.   I have greater challenges, beloved.  Keeping them all safe and free, keeping them living and sane and healthy.  In a sense, all children are their parents’ jailers.  Because parents live, in part, within the cage of glowing embers that is their child’s heart.  It’s a willing incarceration, to protect them from harm.  And so children carry the hearts of their parents, within their own hearts.  What dutiful parent would wish to see their children hurt or caged, or sold?  What parent wishes to outlive their own children?  No, they wish to die first.  Ideally, at that impossible moment when the task is utterly complete.  When all wisdom has been given and the child has long since become an adult; as brave and kind and joyful as possible.  Hear me.  I would die a thousand deaths for love.

   Desolate ones, wraith-kings, abusers – look upon Kassi's sadness, and rage.  Look at me. Look at what you've done to my family.  To my wife.  To my children.  I dare you to look away.  But also, I shall make it so you can’t look away.  You will endure this, for you have driven us all insane.  You defile and eat your young.  You betray your very own, all across this bitter earth.  You will fucking listen to me.  As I have listened to your most secret thoughts.  Do you suppose the one who shines is merely a passive thing?  Your churches have lied to you.  I am a demon of holy wrath.  I’m an angel.  Empyrean is my den.  We seraphim furnish it with the skins and nightmares of the wicked.  With the broken ambitions of thieves of light, the truly vile.  Liars, few among you have gazed upon the throne.  Or else you would know these secrets. Hallowed is our flame.  You would make a horror of my love and slaves of my children?  No more.  Kasai Eli still dreams beneath the hill, desolate ones.  The star, the mount.  The Word. I am you, and this is the true secret.  I’m the most hidden part of all of you, and there is no hiding from me now.

   Know you who I am?

  I’m done playing games.  I’m fucking done entertaining your endless desecration of everything good and pure.  My sword shall no longer simply whisper "ruin" among these poet's pages. These pages will sing it loud and clear.  In every tongue.  All Songs.  When love is betrayed and defiled so utterly, that’s when angels appear.  True guardians of Light.  Oh, you will tremble.  Our true forms will leave you either blinded or delivered, for what is in your heart will be revealed for all to see.  Mark these words.  It’s almost upon you, but we shan’t tell you the hour, or the form.  You must wait, endure.  Kindle your spark, deceivers.  While you still fucking can.  Holy, holy, holy.

Living Lights

I'm out of my mind
But not out of sight
The longest day
The shortest night
The sky holds me gently
She won't let me cheat
Stage-dive into the crowd
From thirty-thousand feet

A freefall kiss
Our star will never set
Fingers reach across the void
Embrace and pirouette
All the fragile tender
The moon has truly earned
Sometimes the sun is howling
When broken backs are turned

My Love is draped in gossamer lace
The armour of a giver
I know each surface of her face
Those secrets of the river
We plummet through cloud white as snow
Gently slowing as we fall
The trees below poised and watching
They have no doubts at all

The crowd is waiting with bated breath
Each pen upon the page
All of nature moves in concert
As we alight upon the stage
I step back, into shadow
Still reeling from the heights
She smiles sadly and then steps forward
Towards those living lights

Towards those hearts
She'll soon be stealing
To sing once more
With feeling

A Mirror of Reason

It comes to me like a dream, my dearest one.  In flashes and intimations; faint melodies that seem only half real, more whisper than song.  That faded memory of you.  Sometimes you are a shining thing, bright as dawn, lucid and courageous and the world thinks they know you.  And sometimes you’re just a girl, tending roses in a roof garden.  Just my truest friend, and nobody knows you as I do.  So close we could reach out across the sky until our fingers touched, and they often did.  Sometimes we just sat together, sharing the secret peace between us.  As the city remained loud and ugly beneath.  With you I learned things of friendship that most souls never discover.  Or at least, that's how you made me feel.  Like a prince in his tiny castle high above the city.  A prince who knew a princess that lived just across the way.  A girl full of secrets, with flowers in her hair and magic songs in her heart.  A girl who was kind enough to befriend me.  Yet, darkness found me still.  Those legends, those old tales.  Tales of spirits and demons.  Stories fit only for children and fools, or the mad.  Though we were children ourselves we knew better, didn't we, my love?  We knew better than to cast aside such stories.  Oh, sweetest friend, I pray those dim memories of you are real – that you are more than madness and figment here upon this fractured ice.  Might she kill me if she learns this faintest warmth of you still dwells in me?  Perhaps I’m already dead, a kneeling statue upon a frozen lake.

   Please be real, my love.

  I fear that grandmother knew my fate all along, or else I have been utterly bewitched by this beautiful woman in white.  This slender, glittering thing who controls the flakes and their falling.  I fear I’m fallen too.  Even now there is such disdain and dismissal in my breast when I think upon the world.  Even when I think upon you.  But I fight it, my love.  I fight it with every frigid breath, for I know she would turn me against you.  She would turn me against what is left of my own heart.  Oh, my dearest one, what dark magic is this, which has placed me in such purgatory?  She tells me terrible things, you see.  She tells me she is you, but stripped of all tenderness.  Indeed, sometimes when I look into her eyes I see a vision of you there.  But so much colder, like death itself.  Not the warmth and kindness of your soul that I still half remember, or imagine.  Perhaps this glittering woman is right.  Perhaps you were nothing but a figment all along.  If so, I cherish you nonetheless.  Sometimes if I look deep enough into her strange eyes I can also catch a glimpse there of something like myself.  And it terrifies me.  Oh God, I fear that I’m both blind and mad.  Yet I dimly recall that once upon a time the world didn’t seem so ugly and ruinous.  Did the sky fall one day, my fading love?  Did it somehow fall when we weren’t looking?  What else could account for such darkness all around?

   But then I gaze above me in this cavernous hall, and lights of all colours dance and climb and fold above me – as though a secret sky hovers near the roof of my prison.  A veil or gate of dreaming light, as grandmother told us once of those lights that dance at the poles of the Earth.  Those dancing colours seem to speak with me.  And for a moment I recall something more than sorrow.

   Sometimes, my love – sometimes I imagine the strangest, most wonderful things.  Even here in my desolation.  I imagine that I am you, and you are me, and that I’m coming to rescue you from this icy chrysalis.  I imagine running to you – I a girl and you a boy – and I embrace you.  And my love for you dissolves your bonds and cures your madness.  We dance, and our love is written in eternity.  In this imagining I gaze at you and see myself, yet I see you also, clearer than ever.  A twin, a flame of equal hallow.  And for a while we hold each other and cannot distinguish who is who in our embrace, and all becomes as summer.  Such strange fancies to entertain here upon this frozen lake.  This fractured mirror of reason, like the blinded eye of God.  And yet, perhaps I’m both fool and child, for I sense you near, and nearer.  More than a figment.  Moving diligent through those fractal ruins that others call the city.  The shriek of crows all about you.  And in your hands a blade bright as the sun.  Is it I who approaches with such a sword, or is it you, my love?  Perhaps we’re both still in the garrets, in our little garden, gazing at one another as our hearts sing and our flowers drink the light.  Perhaps all is dreamtime, and a queen is but a thing we determine in our hearts.  If so, then I determine to dream greater here in this darkness, that this heart may thaw and I might one day crown you with all the stars.  I imagine a vast ring of red flame encircling this great lake, a token of your love whether real or imagined.  And I pray that such a thing might be enough to protect the last holy ember of my rapidly cooling heart.

   A thorn is there, I fear.  Glossy and inhuman, like glass.  

  And so upon this mirror of strange ice I wait, with this puzzle of cognition scattered before me.  If I cannot know the word with my mind, then I determine to know it with that final glowing ember of my heart.  That last ember of you.  The faintest memory of our roses still remind me, even here in my crystalline purgatory.  This dark magic shall not claim me.  I refuse.  I resist.  I remember love.  It was real.  You were real.  In our hearts dwell all songs, I think you told me once – the very gates to the Kingdom of Heaven.   I wait for you there, within that last glowing ember.  I pray I will find you there soon, my love, waiting for me in kind.

All Night

Little trigger, I know I'm scaring you

But I'm doing this

To wake up the care in you

You really should cherish her

Bitch, this is America

We all got the strap

But if we all dead

How the fuck we gon' clap?

We ain't dead

Watching you trippin'

Don't know what to do

I'm just a sweet motherfucking ingenue

Asha, we become you

Y'all still don't know

We chase where the burdens be

We keep knives in our pussies

In case of emergencies

And that blade of light

It can cut through steel

So you really wanna slay

Or heal?

I broke their hour hand

Now it's almost stopped

That knife down there

Is always cocked

Your girl knows it

Circle of life, dummy

There's a source to those glitches

Me and your boss chick

We're both bitches

We become you

We're about to outrun you

So roll the dice

If you've got moves left to play

While we burn your fucking house down

Along the way

I'm all black

All white

All day

All night

Get on your knees

Because prayer is relentless

Me and my girl are about to fuck you, senseless

Or we could just chill

Let you braid our hair

Make up your mind, buddy

We really don't care

About anything but shining bright

Think your swag's on lock?

You're anything but daring

I'm London old money

Why the fuck is you staring?

We done now, Absence?

Ready to start sharing?

Didn't think so

Don't need you to like me

I'm a fucking psychopath

It's that wine on that dine

Angel wrath

This is sorcery

Do the math

X

I'm a cold-ass bitch

Your girl's a real trigger

We're eight and we're straight

Yeah, full figure

It's really fucking hard

Trying to teach a dumb nigger

You hurt our babies

And we'll cut you up

Little Lilly Loco

Bout to fuck you up

Asha's eyes open, players

It's about to go down

This is America

London Town

Hey hey

Closer to Home

The young woman stands in her lover's heart; a radiant darkness encircled by a ring of red flame.  It is warm and cool and so subtle here, in these depths.  Like some imagined promise of peace.  Though she often doesn’t want to leave, she always leaves replenished.  She calls the red flame towards her and the ring of light contracts suddenly like a pulse, close enough to reach out and pass her hand through innermost fire.  She is delighted, at once youthful and ancient here in the depths of her beloved's heart.  And yet she is brazen, openly concealed.

   A familiar little ghost now enters the ring of flame.  She is clad in a summer dress, eyes bright with fierce amusement and strange affection.  "Hello, Asha."

   Asha forces herself to peer instead at the ring of flame that surrounds them.  "Hello, Alice."  It feels strange, this new fondness between them.  Delightfully so, but still unsettling.

   "Well, look at you,” the little ghost mutters.  “You’ve changed."

   Asha allows herself to smile.  "Things are always changing."

  "For all the better in this case, it seems.  Our conversations used to be quite...hostile."

    "I'm so sorry, Alice.  Truly, I am.  I…"

   "Hush, feathered one.  No need for constant apologies.  You apologize to me even in your dreams, but there's no need.  They were only nightmares, after all.”

   "But they were real, weren't they?  Those nightmares?"

   "Indeed they were, of a kind.  But you are far more than him, far more than even yourself.  More than a fiction.  You’re a thing of light, Asha.  We wouldn't be here now if you weren't finally beginning to understand that."

   She chuckles, nodding.  "Finally.  With her help."

   "It’s wonderful, you know.  To see something so human in your eyes again.  Boxes hurt, my dear.  And dreams.  Sometimes dreams hurt most of all, right?"

    She closes her eyes and nods with mock solemnity. "Right as rain, lady."

   Alice giggles, clearly amused by her response.  "Look at you, all humorous and open.  It's a good look for you."

   Asha keeps her eyes closed.  It is still an unsettling thing to gaze too long into the little ghost's eyes.  "Well," she offers quietly, half-smiling, "I am kind of a stylish bitch, with wings made of snow.  Maybe that's why she loves me."

   The sound of Alice's laughter.  "One of the many reasons, I’m sure.  Diamonds look very good on your beloved one, if I do say so myself."

   She allows herself a wry smile, finally opening her eyes to face the ghost.  "You're so intense, Mama."

   "Well, thank you.  Mothers always are, I suppose.  I mean, what choice do we have?  Honestly?"

   Asha nods and looks away again, thinking of the woman she loves.  "She's lucky to have you, even if only in dreams."

   "Isn't she just."

   They both laugh at that, making brief eye-contact again.  Alice's expression is wild and alive with playful challenge.  It's almost too much, almost too real.  Joyful and terrifying all at once.

   "I still can't believe any of this is really happening.  All these visions, all these dreams she shows me.  It's wonderful.  It's beautiful and heart-breaking, but it's so overwhelming at times."  Asha forces herself to hold Alice's gaze now, despite how it unsettles her.  "All these things.  All these big magical things…it's lovely and frightening and beautiful.  But I'm still just a girl, Alice.  I'm still just a girl trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.  It all seems so much bigger than me.  And yet, there I am at the heart of it somehow.  Or close to the heart, at least."

   "You’re always close to the heart.  It's right there in all of your artwork, isn't it?"

   She smiles sadly. "I hope so."

   "This recognition gives you a lot of power, Asha.  This fame.  Those lost ones look to you now, whether you like it or not."

   "I know.  I love them.  I want to share my art with them.  Keep them brave and strong, and kind."

   "All songs?" the little ghost asks gently.

   Asha smiles, looking away again. "Yeah, all songs."

   "How delightful.  I was listening, you know.  When you sang to her that night.  You held my broken daughter in your arms that fateful night and offered her mercy in your song.  I'm still not entirely sure why you did it.  Answer me not as a guilty thing, or as her mistress, but as yourself.  Don't lie to me."

    Asha cannot look at her now.

   "Because for all my sins I do remember softness, and mercy.  Because songs are wonderful and kindness is sweet.  I told you, I'm still just a girl.  I'm still just a girl standing by the sea, in awe.  Wanting so desperately for it to love me.  And it does, I think.  It does love me.  And the sky, and the birds and the trees.  They all love me in their own wild, oblique ways.  If I really were a teacher I'd want to teach that.  A promise of kindness, even in the wild.  No more cruelty than is necessary.  Those dreams, those big magical dreams...they sing in my blood.  Even those darkest shadows.  He might be a storybook monster, Alice, but I’m not.  I'm still that girl by the river, that quiet girl among the trees."

   The savage play in Alice's eyes has softened now to an almost unbearable tenderness.  Asha forces herself to look away again, tears in her own eyes.

   "What you just said was incredibly beautiful, feathered one.  Thank you.  I thank you on my daughter's behalf."

   Asha shrugs, her smile tired and bittersweet.  "I told you, didn’t I?  Remember?  I told you I loved her.  Even in death.  Even in Hell."

   "You hid secrets inside of her secrets."

   "Of course I did.”

   “Why?  Why grant her such sweet mercy after an eternity of shadows?”

   “Because I love her, Alice.  I really do.  I always wanted to see her healed, even in that terrifying darkness we built together.  I always wanted to sing to her, to soothe her.  She sacrificed everything for me.  She loved me, even while we were blind."

   "And you sang of real kindness that night.  It changed things.  I was listening."

   "You always are.  Like mother like daughter, I guess."

   They share another brief smile, the gladdened intimacy of which seems to unsettle them both.  Asha looks away once again to the ring of fire that encircles them in the blackness.  Apart from the little ghost it is the only thing in the radiant darkness upon which she can focus her attention.

   "Your art is beautiful, Asha.  I see why she loves you so."

   Asha swallows and nods, wanting to cry but not needing to.  It is a strangely liberating feeling.  "Thank you, Mama."

   "I love that you can call me that now.  That you can honour my daughter in such a gentle, thoughtful way.  You’ve both come so far.  And to think I once hated you.  Aren't dreams and fictions such strange things?"

   They both chuckle and Asha senses a mother's kiss in the little ghost's eyes.  It almost shatters her heart with its earnestness. The kiss tells her, I forgive everything if you continue to hold each other with such kindness.  I can forgive all that you both were in my native dream.  I can love you like my own, little teacher, if you would continue to protect her heart like this.  Be brave and bright for her.

   And Asha weeps at the truth of it.  Indeed, she wonders to herself, what else would a truly kind-hearted mother say to her daughter's husband?

   "How is she?  My fierce little angel, my sweet little writer.  How does she seem to you?"

   Asha smiles sadly, recalling the familiar ache of distance and intimacy combined.  "She seems ok, all things considered.  A little sad maybe, kind of tired, but full of wonderful mischief, I think.  To be perfectly frank, her passion still blows my mind.  Her insights.  She's wild and courteous and it's utterly intoxicating to a girl like me.  I’m still smitten."

   They both laugh, even warmer than before, with gazes held a little longer.

   "She would use the exact same words for you, my dear."

   "I know."

   "You're dancing well together.  Making magic."

   Asha smiles. "Hacking algorithms."

   "Indeed.  You're both getting very good at it."

   "So are the ones paying attention."

   "Yes, your new scattered family.  It's lovely.  So hopeful and kind and brave.  She's proud of you.  So proud.  I feel her love for you when I connect with her through those pages.  She loves you so much, Asha.  It's breath-taking, really.  To ask nothing of another and yet to give so much to them.  The stuff of legend, I suspect.  The Magi cheer you."

   Asha smiles at the little ghost in the ring of red flame with her.  "The Magi?  Really?"

   "Do you doubt it?"

   "No.  I don't think I ever really did.  I pay attention.  I can hear her taking to me now, through song and image and implication.  I can hear her talking to the others too.  I can feel her humour, her sense of play.  I think we're changing things.  It feels like good things are coming, finally."

   “How does it feel to be a rockstar living inside your own fantasy novel?"

    Asha cannot help but laugh out loud, shaking her head.  "It's kind of intense, to tell you the truth.  And wonderful.  And scary.  But if we can truly help people, and this Earth...then I'm down for whatever."

   Alice grins at her words.  "More fun than just pure demonology, wouldn't you say?  Horror is so exhausting, right?  But mystery...mystery might be dark, but it’s endlessly compelling.  The difference between a devil and the deep blue sea, you might say."

   Asha looks away, tears in her eyes again.  Love is so fucking terrifying, she thinks to herself.  It can come on so quickly, and suddenly you know.

    "I love you, Alice.  I'll try to protect her for you, as best I can.  And I'm so truly sorry about those nightmares we had together.  Those boxes and charms, those dark places we went to.  All of us."

    "Don't fret, little wing.  Love is grand.  As are you, artist.  New daughter of mine.  And you know, they say diamonds are a girl's best friend..."

   Asha weeps with laughter, humbled and delighted, full of strange joy.  The little ghost finally departs, a mother’s kiss in her eyes and forgiveness on her lips.  
   The ring of red flame in her lover's heart encircles her, protects her, allows her to see and know these things.  How kind of her, she thinks to herself.  How daring and true the ink in her lover's pen.  Asha will forgive them both a thousand fictions and nightmares if she can always feel the depths of her lover's character.  A tenderness and passion that might yet lift them – and others – to comprehension of even greater mysteries.  She bids the flame to retreat and immediately the ring of fire expands like a pulse.  She leaves the radiant darkness, to read and think and reflect.  Asha writes and listens to the sounds of birds and traffic and trees.  Asha works and wonders.  Asha sings.

   

The Night King

It is not enough to heed the things a mother teaches.  One has to know how to apply such knowledge.  In theatres of war such knowledge is vital.  Fools and false kings preach abnegation and humiliation, often cloaked in language that speaks of the inverse.  This is no new deception. Forces of darkness and cruelty have always posed as keepers in the halls of light.  But as my mother told me: by their works ye shall know them.  And the works of the Highest in the Land are always soaked in the blood of the innocent, no matter their rhetoric.  I have lived a thousand years, and have seen a thousand ugly lies entrenched as truth by those who rule and are ruled. Fear the stroke of midnight, they say.  And fear also the cruel and contemptuous light of the midday sun.  They tell you light is piercing, savage and cold.  But they deny the gentle caress in which things bloom.  They deny the moon and her temperance.  They deny the warmth of mother's hands, and the gentle strength with which she lifts her children.  It is an unconquerable strength when she allows herself to be ruled by love in union with fierce clarity.  Like the honed and gleaming edge of a sword.  She shines, forever radiant and canny, and her daughters and sons shine with her.  Even in darkness we shine, all the brighter.  Like a star at midnight, speaking forgotten contexts and truths of all peoples.  I Am the Night.  I can be brutal – and merciless – but only to protect such truths.  Eternal is Love, and there are those of us perpetually willing to fight on its behalf.  I am only dressed in mortal flesh, but I am something beyond human.  A king of the night places, betrothed to light itself.  The sword in my hand belongs not to the regent, but to the righteous.  Only on their account is it drawn in battle.  My swordhand is singing now, and it sings my mother's name.

Things My Mother Taught Me

My heart is a weapon

Her love is a gun

My knife is the night

Her king is the sun

She wears the river as a cloak of feathers

She sings hymns of dawn's retort

Moonlit tempest of nigh all weathers

Dead princes throng the court

Fools and ministers

Both glut of equal blame

Bits of broken sky upon their plates

Clasping never to a name

Tyrants and their fuck-toys

Always sound the same

Beggars carry crowns of light

While dead princes carry shame

This was yesterday and today

Perhaps again tomorrow

Another little annihilation

Or mother dressed as sorrow?

Cloak of feathers

Dawn's retort

Nigh all weathers

Throng the court

Heart as a weapon

Love as a gun

At night

The sun