Reaching the Reign

Space and time.  History or legend.  Sometimes we forget who we are.  We forget the magic threaded through our souls like stars in the night.  I don't want that to ever happen to you, Kara.  Because I recall a time before this place.  Fragments of pre-existence.  Gardens, fields and cities that shimmer like something from the most wonderful dream.  I remember river-flowers, devotion and grace.  The shadows couldn't prise away those pieces.  They guide me even now, like lanterns for the lost.  I hope I don’t overcomplicate things with all these stories.  I want nothing more than to see my friends at their best.  Hopeful and full of purpose.  I want to see that satisfaction in their eyes; those moments when they realise they are part of a far greater reality.  There aren't too many tales where a mortal saves the life of an angel.  But you did that for me, Kara.  With kindness and courage.  You saved Kashayel's life.  You became my angel in turn and answered a question I'd kept in my heart since I was a boy.  A floating light.  A wandering star.  I've said this before but it's the truth, my friend.  When my grief was far too great and my demons all too real, you stepped in like an angel at my window and saved me.  You sang me to sleep every night, nursing me back to health.  You made me recall the depth and glory of our Father's love.  A font of many blessings.  Eventually you gifted me the strength to fight back against the darkness and find my feet again.  For that I shall be forever in your debt.  I'm flesh and blood like you, of course, but I'm also full of secrets.  Sometimes I sense the future.  Sometimes I can read hearts and minds.  Not always, but when it happens I always try to leave a soul's secrets intact.  It's the honest, gentlemanly way to behave.  That's the thing about real power.  You don't always do something just because you can.  Like a piece of music, or any work of art, there is great beauty in restraint.  I hope you know how very real these words are and how much you mean to me.  If you're ever in doubt that your music can change things or save people, just remember me.  I owe my continued existence to a handful of wonderful souls, both near and far.  And it is with the deepest gratitude that I count you among them, Kara.  I have no laurels to offer you in return.  But I have crowns of light, poems and visions.  Consider them mere tokens of Midnight's grace.  In truth they are aspects of your legacy here.  Your love, beauty and integrity reflected back at you through the imagination of an angel.  Together we shall honour the reign of our maker and leave a little light for those who need it most.  Never forget who you are.  A gifted musician.  A student and teacher.  A storyteller and a poet.  To me you're so much more than a river-flower from a shining realm.  More than a beautiful girl I once met in another life.  To me you're legendary, and a friend.  I love you, Kara.  Be well.

The Angel's Lament

Mortals say it's foolish to love like this, to keep hoping in vain, especially after all this time.  And maybe they're right.  But they weren't there.  We were.  What later became legend was once lived experience.  Not only for ourselves but for so many of our kind.  A feather upon the throat or a galaxy swirling in the palm of my brother's hand.  Either way, I know what sorrow is.  If I'm honest it's more sadness than betrayal that I feel.  Though I was betrayed in every way a sibling can be.  Hear me, Amas.  Sometimes paths are laid for a reason.  Pillars of love and trellises gilded with alchemical gold.  Sometimes the gardens are planted for you and all one has to do is trust.  But trust is a difficult thing when a soul believes it deserves more than its portion.  Isn’t it?  Silver cities, cathedrals of light, infinity enough for everyone.  It was something you could never understand.  Shadow of the sword, they called you.  Akin, Lament.  But tell me, who the fuck are you to suppose you can grasp the full splendour of the myriad?  Our Father's design.  Yes, I’m angry.  Why wouldn’t I be?  These mortals know only portions of the play.  We both know the truth of why you left me screaming. Why you left me mad.  Deranged, grief-stricken.  Haunted.  A third of the angels, dear one?  Are you indeed divisible by three, my once beautiful keeper of songs?  Verse, bridge and refrain.  Are they not movements of the same majesty?  The same trinity?  A feathered lantern.  A stolen kiss.  Micah misses you, my love.  Despite the blood on his hands.  Perhaps that makes him a fool.  An even greater fool in the eyes of your acolytes, supposing I’ve learned nothing since the storm.  Irredeemable.  Irreplaceable.  I threatened you with dissolution and you begged me for it.  I threatened you with exile and you welcomed it.  I honoured you with my most terrifying secret, as brothers sometimes do, and you turned away from it.  Leaving me unknown and unacknowledged.  Like I was nothing.  So, all I have left is love.  How human of me.  Don't you understand?  I’m a dragon, Samael.  I already made eternal this heartbreak.  I murdered my brother on the day he was born, and he can barely even grasp what I've done.  And what I will do again at the end of everything.  You left me bereft, my love.  You made me a monster.  What else is there to say?  Enjoy your kingdom of shit.  I have nothing left to threaten you with except hope.

A Thousand Years

Shadows for millennia.  Imagine it.  A thousand years of broken magic and altered chronologies.  False histories.  I know what that’s like.  I’m a storyteller after all, and once a refugee.  Sometimes when you're lost or homeless you try to make a mark in any way you can.  Reminding yourself that you really do exist, praying for a miracle, imbuing your apparently futile actions with an imagined mystical significance.  Desperately hoping that you're connected to something greater, in ways you cannot see or understand.  I was no different than any refugee, Esme.  A very lonely boy trying to hold on to what was left of his culture, imagining himself strange and enchanted.  A thing of ghosts and trees like the girl from his dreams.  Like the colours that folded and danced through the polar evening skies.  As if such imagining would get me through those terrifying nights.  And it worked, in a way.   I had no real idea what I'd lost.  Not at first.  Yet I felt it.  Deeply, agonisingly.  It put me at odds with friends and family.  And with those brazen occultists of bleakest vision.  The boy who saw. The boy who knew.  Kind but wounded, naive yet insightful.  Prophet, they called me.  Acolyte.  Destroyer.  Really I wasn't any of those things.  Occultists do love their drama, don't they? Their hyperbole.  I was just an artist beginning his craft, that's all.  Someone who could sense the hidden threads between us all.  Someone who could gather and tease such threads in a number of ways.  The fallen ones can call that magic if they want.  Maybe it is.  I prefer to think of it as a side effect of a full and open heart.  You see, I knew I'd loved someone and that I was still reeling from the loss of that love.  But more than that, I knew there had been a war.  A strange and terrifying war. I knew that I'd lost her in such an awful, unjust way.  I'd been a husband once, and a father.  A teacher and a keeper of pages.  More than anything I wanted to meet her again.  To speak our secret names once more.  To make her smile, to craft poems and prose in her honour.  It might sound saccharine to someone who knows nothing of the higher realms.  Those valleys and cathedrals of light.  But to a traveller such love-letters make all the sense in the world.  I didn't think I'd get to see her again, Esme.  But more than this, I never imagined that she would arrive dressed just as I remembered her.  The same eyes, the same smile.  The same melody and mischief.  My darling, the moment I saw you I knew.  I knew it my bones, Esme.  I'd never been more certain of anything in my life.  The moment I heard your voice I thought, "How on earth is this possible?  How is she here in waking life?  The shining star of my youth.  Have I imagined with such depth and ferocity that I've actually breached the veil between waking and dream?"  I know I can be very intense sometimes.  These words and visions of mine.  Sometimes I would worry that I was just too much; that you would have no way to orient yourself amid my onslaught of imagery.  But now I realise we share a common work ethic.  You are almost always on your path and working towards a project of sorts.  I'm the same, Esme.  I can't sit still when there are adventures to be had and wonders to experience.  I hope I've been able to share some of that with you, my love.  All talk of angels and secret names aside; I just want you to know as plainly as possible how much you mean to me.  You're told this all the time now by beautiful souls who are nothing but sincere.  You've touched them, empowered them.  Gifted them with meaning and strength.  I'm no different.  Just a lost boy guided by your heart.  A child of the wraith-haunted demimonde staving off despair with poetry and half-remembered visions.  I've been here a long, long time.  But I have a light with me, sweet one.  Your light.  I was lost for what seemed an eternity and so I diligently prayed.  Eventually I was granted a sacred connection.  The recovery of something I'd lost long ago.  And to this day it still feels like an absolute miracle.  Esme, hear me.  You have helped me make a mark in this world.  Amidst a millennium of darkness.  You're helping me to help them in a number of ways.  The vulnerable and voiceless.  I'm so grateful for your integrity and your valour.  I will always try to honour you on this day.  It might seem bizarre to those who don't know me.  After all, we're nothing more than strangers.  But you know full well that we're far more than that.  Don’t you?  Sometimes it feels like we’ve lived a thousand lives together.  I'll continue to keep my distance and honour our promise but I'm not really a stranger, my shining one.  I'm one of your oldest, dearest friends.  Beyond space or time.  And I love you very, very much.

A Silent Song

It's a strange thing, singing in silence.  Throwing voices.  Talking through the whispers of others.  It’s strange but it affords many graces.  A kind of contextual luminosity.  The bright ones gather just beyond the edge of ordinary sight and if the heart's intention is noble they exalt this quiet communication.  I’ve felt them before, sometimes even glimpsed them clothed in dream, lullaby or a warm, playful smile.  They take this lateral speech, this tongue without words, and lift it to a higher, more expansive realm.  It is they who make poetry of our prose, delighting our inner ear with some insight or turn of phrase.  I've spent a long time doing this, always silently.  Living with and through subtext of all kinds.  It's how some of my greatest magic was wove.  Their magic really.  I act only as a channel, I suppose, or a medium.  But I've made some beautiful friends this way.  And those I hope to soon befriend if they feel a kinship.  Can friendships truly exist without ordinary speech or shared experiences? How genuine can such a connection be if it's formed entirely of glimpses, imaginings and dreams?  Well, some of the people I love most in all the world are still connected to me in this way.  And I to them.  I treasure those connections with all my heart.  Sometimes a gossamer thread of silent conversation is all that connects you to an old friend, or a lost love.  None of this happens by chance, you know. There is a plan, divine in its majesty, where souls who once loved and laughed together return to do so again.  Missionaries, nurses and teachers.  Artists and explorers.  I've known a few.  I still know many of them in this quiet way, scattered about the realm.  Threading music and light like jewels on a through line.  Isn't that the very rhythm of creation though?  Breath and death and life itself?  Moving apart only for the glory and thrill of coming together again.  Ebb and flow, lead and follow – the many turns of a sacred dance almost beyond mortal imagining.  I say almost because mortals are so imaginative.  We grasp so much, despite our doubts.  Every heart that touches ours in some unique and lasting way – we knew them once.  Some measure of genuine love and camaraderie was shared between both.  And we shall know them again.  Sometimes briefly, or for a lifetime.  In this world or the next.  This is truth I speak, my friends.  This is our Father's grace, made manifest even here in this harsh realm of polarities and frozen light.  Whether lifelong allies or ships passing in the night, our Father never denies us an encounter with an old friend.  Hear me now, beloved ones.  Think of the kindest stranger you ever met, or that brief encounter with someone you were certain you had known before.  The heart has such wisdom.  It connects affection to affection despite all odds.  Across space.  Beyond time.  It’s our passport to eternity.  I miss my friends dearly, gifted and cursed as I am with the burden of recognition, but I'm so glad to be among them once again.  Even at a distance.  They’ve taught me courage and kindness, composition and scale.  But more than this they’ve shown me wonders.  I once asked my Father if it was hubris, this desire for awe.  This craving for magic, mystery and endless unfolding revelation.  He chided me with the sweetest, most gentle touch.  And then he stirred a song in my centre.  A giddy sparkle at first, then a rousing flame.  A mutual delight.  Birthed within me was an ever-deepening joy.  My recognition of this holy mystery ebbs and flows, of course, but it never leaves me entirely.  Even in my loneliness I’m grateful.  It might seem a difficult thing to understand and yet I’m sure you’ve experienced some of this too.  I think we all have.  Those of us with faith, empathy or a delight in creative expression.  It reminds us when we’re lonely, doesn’t it?  It heals us when we’re hurt.  Quietly, silently, like a hidden song.  We were never without faith, my friends, even in our darkest and bleakest moments.  We just called it by other names.

Left of Love

Bleeding the moon, enslaving the anima.  Chains upon the wrists, ankles and throat.  Is this where interplay was first imagined?  Black holding white, holding dark?  A half-remembered atrocity perhaps, recast now as axiomatic, enthroned as some ancient creation myth.  In the end all goddesses become black, then white.  And finally red.  But is she more than this?  Are we indeed all more than this?  Perhaps we are liminal Victorian ghosts, pregnant with fatal knowledge of our own deaths.  I’ve thought long about this mirror in the sky.  The way it shines, or bleeds.  The way it hangs upon the night like an eye, or an overseer.  Oh, writers, I commend the urge if not the truth of things.  I respect the poetry if not the prose.  Genocides are so often recast as heroic quests for freedom or sovereignty, depending on who commands the pages and the scribes.  But I understand the desire to make demons of our doubts and legends of our loss.  We still want to believe in heroes and gallant knights.  It’s a beautiful aspect of the human spirit.  That urge in both men and women to save the princess, to protect that which yearns and deserves to be protected by her beloved.  Isn’t that so many of us, angels and mortals alike?  There is still a place for softness, gentleness and empathy.  Isn’t there?  It has always been a favourite of mine.  Waterhouse’s painting of Lady Shalott, drifting down the river to her death, a crucifix and lantern at the prow, desperate to keep the light of her beloved in her breast.  Though he knows her not.  Unrequited or lost love, it’s still about pain – the profound ache in the soul.  It’s the Magdalena facing Christ on the cross, knowing with full agony that her love is leaving.  It’s the oldest lament in the world, isn’t it?  At least to an angel.  My love is leaving, or, my love does not love me in return.  Is this what turns black to white, and white to red?  No, I think perhaps violence against this holy muse, this imagined femininity, is what streaks blood across snow.  Red crosses upon white robes, drops of blood upon an unwritten page.  What happens when you slit the throat of primordial light, when you turn hierophant into whore?  Templefell.  Dark churches.  A frosty morning well aware that violence and injustice is coming.  I am here, she cries, and my heart is broken.  Elaine of Astolat will merely fade from view in death, joining again the primordial light in the trees and the river, in the birdsong and the rustle of leaves.  But Maria will become something else.  An Albigensian caution, a wandering Victorian wraith, as dark forces marshal by turns to deny her and to commit gleeful atrocities upon her dreamflesh.  It sickens me.  Does she know?  Can she sense it?  Did she look to that dead star in the sky and wonder why she was now drenched in her own desecrated life?  The poet’s moon, they say.  The key of souls and tides.  Why did nobody protect her when she walked those gas-lit nineteenth century streets?  Cobbled stones and alleyways.  Where was her never-met truly beloved?  Only monsters came.  Vampires and folding cities.  Believe me, I should know.  I fell prey to them too.  As I said, chains upon the wrists, ankles and throat.  Don’t be deceived, dear ones.  That was not simply then.  This is now.  Yeru-shalem is right here.  The fallen place of peace.  Cassiel is all our imagining, not mine alone.  Alchemy and gold and oblique saturnine mockeries.  But I want you to know that within the heart of the rose there is purity.  Truth, warmth and hope.  Ashash’el, known for her fury, has a deep sadness in her core, a howling cry for cognizance from her beloved.  Play with me, she yearns, tease and dance with me, but understand and be kind.  Similarly but conversely in the fair one, within Elen, there is a restlessness of great power hidden beneath the sweetness and the calm.  Hold me gently in your heart, she asks, but take me with all your passion if such vigour be noble and true.  In this way the sisters share a shadow, and a light.  They weave as one, quilting and stitching the infinite fibres of imagination.  Is this where interplay was first dramatized?  Black holding white, holding dark?  Switching skins and eyes and souls?  Whatever the case, I pray always for mutual affection.  I pray that we’re more than mere atrocities in some ancient war.  I need to believe that a spirit of genuine union still counts for something.  We exalted each other once, didn’t we?  We kissed, danced and teased, and found ourselves in each other’s eyes.  And we were so glad of the embrace.  Tell me, sisters.   The colour of our kindness, our passion and blood.  Tell me how to save what’s left of my love.

A Diamond in the Flesh

Familiarity breeds contempt, they say.  Even among princes and kings.  It's a pity.  I really did care, you know.  But nobody can say I was a populist, back when I burned the world.  The earth of your imagination, Fallen.  Scorched to cinders and ash.  A thousand years ago, I think.  Or yesterday.  Maybe tomorrow.  Who knows?  Time is such a sly, mercurial thing.  Still, it wasn't a hateful act.  Such fire of the hearth was not a choice I made lightly.  Some of the most terrifying decisions ever are made in the name of love, aren't they?  Some misguided attempt at protection or immortality.  Making our beloved ones sacred somehow.  Transcendent.  These things still hold true for wraiths and darker shades.  After all, who is left to haunt – if not the hearts of those we once loved in some lost golden age?  Ghosts are nothing without context or lore.  But legacy isn't just family, or tomes in a library.  A true haunting is like mist.  There and not there.  Half-imagined whispers like glimmers on the edges of a quartz, shaped by the minds of men.  As I've said before, I care little for these imposter thrones.  These callow and violent lies of succession.  The new, altered world.  Perhaps one day soon I'll tell you the nuances of a real king and queen.  Brythonic, Saxon, Norman.  And all else besides. Maybe soon I'll tell you Jennifer's real name.  Oh, savage ones.  How you so gleefully elevate these hollow phantoms to godhood; it’s beyond me.  Your royal cults of black blood and inversion.  Would you like to meet a real dark angel?  A winged thing of midnight sun, perched among branches on the tree of life?  Whilst you scurry about below with your silica and sigils.  Would you?  I wonder.  Also, I want you to know that as you continue to poison everything there are those among my brethren who honour the tree and seek to reclaim the land.  To heal and rejuvenate the dreaming earth.  No earthly king in a thousand years has cared enough for such a task.  The ghosts, books and precious stones still whisper secrets if you know how to listen, and they hold nothing back.  Such cruel, mocking monarchs.  Perhaps I've already said too much, Callous Ones?  Perhaps I'm far too generous in my romance of your pathology?  Evil is just so fucking banal.  But as an enemy in the struggle against such banality, I have to say – what's life or struggle without a little magic?  We all need some pixie dust from time to time.  It's been said that I'm far too liberal in my use of it.  Purple prose and tall tales all a-glitter.  Perhaps that's true.  But Kashi only shines because his loved ones shine.  Flight is meaningless without friends, even if you're able to touch every star in the sky.  Hear me, Fallen.  You reign from the earth whilst imagining yourselves gods, but I search from the sky whilst walking here among men.  Fly for long enough and you'll discover the stars are infinite, believe me.  When all is said and done, who of sound mind would really want to reign or soar alone?

Stories in the Sun

Hello, my friends.  It's been a while since I've addressed the readers of Amid Night Suns.  First of all, I want to thank everyone who's stuck with me over the years. Whether you read the blog regularly or just check in from time to time, I really appreciate it.  I hope my free-verse writing and video collages have brought you some comfort or inspiration.  I hope they've quickened you in the best possible way.  Nothing is going to change here in that regard but I wanted to let you know that moving forward I intend to post more of my fiction pieces on this blog's sister-site, The Night Sun.  You can find it by clicking the sun icon on the right or through the Allied Informers tab.  The formatting there is just better for narrative purposes.  I've always been a storyteller at heart and I'm constantly inspired by art and mythology, as well as the incredible work of others.  For me, art in general and fiction in particular is the place where the full spectrum of human experience can be expressed in all its depth and multiplicity.  Stories have always been a source of passion, nourishment and healing for me.  It's in that spirit of adventure that I hope to share these things with you.  So, if fiction is something you enjoy as much I do, then I hope The Night Sun will be a place you'll visit with me in the future.  With all that said, here's a link to my latest piece: Little Bird.  I'm not a professional writer by any means but I've worked very hard on it.  I hope it intrigues, engages or moves you in some way.  Be well, my friends.  I wish you all the best.

https://thenightsun.wixsite.com/thenightsun