The Highgate

The kiss was bled upon the tree, chained to stone upon the altar of a huntress.  We heralds fared little better.  A temple was built upon my back in this city of dreams.  Fires of Twelve, Minotaurs, Labyrinths of Light beneath the city.  The rats and regents still remember.  Rings and antlers upon the cloaked ones who guard the thresholds.  But many of these gates are far too old, older than violence, and remain unmanaged.  These wild rifts in the city can sometimes feel like the only hope for occulted ones, for prisoners like my kind.  I remember the first Londinium and imagine the last.  Children safe and happy, the poor fed and hopeful, the lost found and home again.  Via Dolorosa, tears like fire, a Jeru hush as the city folds.  The House of Clavis is open now.

I've held the hands of sleeping kings

I dance with Dead and Fae

I know exactly where you've been

And what you have to say

For I am both John and Jack

And can kill you with a kiss

I can ride the dragon's back

My dear, I never miss

I have spent an eternity with my face tilted towards the light, as feathers run red.  I come and go and come again, always.  So, Absence Brethren, ask yourselves – would you ever really want to meet an angel?  Yet still I hear the silent shriek of voiceless, the innocent slain.  This hell is not my work.  It is yours.  I only seize the guilty, I only reap the vile.  It is as the Innermost wills it.  We reject your desecration, your glamours and genocides.  We remember the place of peace, as it was in the First Dreaming.  We pray for an unmolested future, free of your tyranny.  I am not your god.  I can surround you, evil ones.  I can appear anywhere.  I am in the details.

Oh ye mighty, oh desolate abusers

You still don't understand

We are rising from the soil of the city

We will trade these chains for wings