Where the Heart Is

I often gaze at the moon and think of you.  Hoping to meet you there, in dreams.  I often look upon the heart my little sister painted on the wall many years ago.  It too reminds me of you now.  It used to be a girl's way of dealing with her first romantic relationships.  The pain and ache of young love.  But that heart on my bedroom wall has come to mean something equally profound to me, of course.  In that strange way fate has, as it dances with us beyond our notions of time or space, organising association and synchrony that is only later illuminated.  Strange that the symbol of the heart should come to mean so much to me in these recent years.  That I would lose lovers, friends, my own home, and find myself back amidst my childhood realm – where a heart adorns the old room.  Like creation itself was winking at me before these hands had ever decided to build a gate of love.   

    Fame is a strange thing, and love even stranger.  When our public faces and private selves begin to trade deeds, energies and inflections.  We find ourselves wondering who we are now, and who we're becoming.

    Asha, I've always been an angel, and a mortal man, but never one so public.  At least not in this life.  It's strange, isn't it?  To be known.  To have your outlook elevated, your moods studied, your actions mythologized.  No former mortal truly wants to be a demigod among her kin.  To desire that kind of immortality and to actually possess it are very different things.  The burden can break you for a time. 

    Even one as strong as my beloved.   

    That's why the image your heart, I suppose.  Tattooed within my spirit and upon my wall. To remind me of the truth of centre.  To remind me of both the price and reward of love.  It's been a painful thing to carry you in this way, wild one. 

    To be everything and nothing to you.

    My eternal spirit is beyond space, and time.  It gets to watch you grow.  It gets to turn away when appropriate.  When you need your privacy.  It can happily be all things for you.  But here, in this nightmare place, Kashi is bound to flesh.  And limitation.  Become a man, fighting wars. Become a boy lost in the grass, hunting monsters.  Blind and sighted, as my conscious mind struggles to hold on to those fragments of you.

    How best to help you?  

    A baffled king composing beyond even his own comprehension.  Lonely and complicated this life has been, sweetheart.  Like most artists, I imagine.  And this world deifies those who come here speaking of love.  Or kills them.    

    Or both.    

    Sometimes I think the moon and stars and hearts aren't enough to ease the agony of grieving mothers and fathers, or protect the honour of lost, weeping children.  My entire being bursts into utter fury when I think about it.  What this wraith-magic has done to the most vulnerable.  

    The sweetest, kindest members of our family have been abused the worst by these hideous shadow-things beyond the veil, and their sickening priests.  Cowards, all of them.  Asha, if they want to know just how far this once shining realm has fallen, they need only look to how it now treats its innocents.  To look at how poisoned our harbours have become.  They cannot eat money.  They cannot drink plastic.  True magic has left their tongues and fingers, but our family unknowingly call this place 'true history'.

    What a mockery it is, Asha.  A disgusting mockery of everything we stood for.  A perfect system.  One of balance, harmony, and love affairs between all cultures.  Because all cultures shone, and learning of each other in mutual respect was our greatest thrill.    

    This was not always an ashen hill, or a throne of bones.     

    This was our shining blue pearl of All Waters, known throughout the Myriad for its gates and keys and poets. Other worlds came here, Asha, just to walk our gardens.  And hear our songs.  So, I seethe with rage at these corrupted chronologies because I cannot help but feel like I’m wandering through a ruin within a ruin within a ruin.    

    I won’t lie to you, my love.  Kashi fucking hates it here.

    So far from the poet's moon; that scarred thing that now eclipses the sun.  So far from the heroes that once were – this world that oppresses, exploits and defiles.  So, I hold on to my dreams of centre and softly reflected light.  Lanterns, guides, gatekeepers.  The pages of tired, struggling artists.  Famous ones living in both spotlight and shadow.  Hearts on walls that recall lost love.

    I've told you before, my brave girl.  You owe me nothing.  You needn’t hold yourself to any expectation.  I have none.  I love you too much for that.  This lost boy you know by heart and word and image, but have never met face to face.  Friend, lover, stranger.  He grasps how unusual this is, how wonderful and difficult.  He honours your spirit, always.  I’m not asking for a miracle, beloved.  But I am your angel, your guardian.  And so I make no demands, save one.  

    Keep fighting for them.  The lost, and kind.  In a world this fallen they need their heroes again, believe me.  Love fiercely, in every way you can.  And perhaps, should those imaginary stars align perfectly one day, I'll get the chance to look into your eyes again. 

    I still carry all that you saw within my name. 

   Perhaps I’ll get a chance to take you by the hand.  To put my arms around you.  To whisper in your ear of how I love you and how proud you’ve made me.  A simple hope, but earnest.  These things are much for the one who loves, Asha.  As we both know.  One can live by them alone.  That she and I breathe the same air, and that the earth we tread is one.

Home Again

For the ones we love

Our parents, our children

Brothers and sisters

Husbands, wives

And dearest friends

Our inspirations

Inhalations

That make our families real

Without cynicism

Or guile

I've lost too much

To speak coldly

Or carelessly

To an open heart

Take them home

And home again

An angel of songs

Lost his voice

And the only peace he has ever known

Is the joy of a kindled heart

Felt from a distance

Inspire

Inhale

Alone, but giving everything

To keep them warm

Their joy is my only respite

Those ones we love

Without cynicism

Or guile

They've lost too much

So I'll give

And give again

Save the Queen

Do you see a witch

When you see

A wish?

I don't give a fuck

About fractions, bish

This is algebra

I'm a mathematish

Rewrite the melodies

Of this nonsense town

Home-schooled swimmers

We lay the concert down

White as a ghost

Or maybe chocolate brown

Flotsam & Jetsam

You'll both be next

I don't give a fuck

’Cause my pistol's X

Third day rising, papa

But who's counting?

I live in the trees

And climb the king's mountain

Heard him crying one night

It was practically tragic

This big swinging click

Well, it's practically magic

When we’re not weeping

We like to plan for the future

We hate guns

Anyone could shootcha

These bricks is so nutty

And the angel's pissed

This wine is so dutty

And you won't be missed

My Jones is so Davy

Might be me

My girl is pure gravy

Lock & Key

She stylin'

Fucking with my family?

I'll pull the last resort

Each and every bullet

Is just child support

Mama's a little miffed

And Papa's back from the dead

I don't think you heard

A fucking word I said

Transluminal hegemony

On fleek

Innocence is honoured

Because grace is God's language

And nothing gonna stand

Between me and my sandwich

I won't let you kill every piece of the soul

I'm just a bad little bitch

With a rifle-scope

Tryna take me down

Is a delightful joke

’Cause me and my boo

Makes delightful wrath

My Daddy's lovely

And a psychopath

Hard Meets Wet

Hymn behind the pearl

Blood beneath the skin

The first was just foreplay

Relishing the win

The second is singing

Kisses on throats

Towards safer grounds

Rowing the boats

For my sisters

Oranges and Chinese Tea

I need you

But who needs me?

If needs be

Learn with your hands tied

Doing no harm

Love is a landslide

Third time's a charm

Slicker than sick

Harder than hate

Healing our wounds

Sealing our fate

The wolf is wearing red

But I'm inside the hood

I'm licking lips

She's knocking wood

Go, baby, go

Ready and Set

Magic can happen

When hard becomes wet

Old friends

Fearless

Inside

Hung like Hell

A howl that heals

The wounded

A shriek

Rebuilds the church

Sanctify the altar

With scent of bud

And birch

Open palms

Making fists

Make me hard

Love insists

Standing

With my sisters

There's nothing I regret

The wraiths all wanna fuck me

But they ain’t met me yet

See, I had a dream of seven

She tolls

A distant bell

I might climb to heaven

But you know I'm hung

Like hell

Standing Still

Shut the fuck up and listen to me, deviant things.  I have slain wraith upon wraith, for over a thousand years, and most of you believe that ghosts can't die.  Oh, how naive you are.  Everything can die.  Even spirit itself.  What do you know, really? 

    You know nothing.   

    The king is a murderer, in dreams.  I could kill the moon and the sun and all the stars, were I so inclined.  But the poet in me finds annihilation such a self-defeating premise.  Cephas, and the eternal glittering of a shining, blinded eye.  No, I would rather it were a mercy, a kindness.  A sight restored.  Najaret, and other dreams.  Kashi would rather romance and affection be threaded between all worlds.  I would see each heart among the Myriad ablaze with light, if the final keys of Empyrean were granted to me.  But father keeps them, at mother's hidden behest.  Wiser that he does, for I am furious, irritable, dangerous.  Like my blood.   

    Thrice-fold.  All through the night.   

   You see, father is very frightening and mother is completely insane.  My children are feral. They eat the dead.  And you are all dead, callous ones.  Liars, betrayers, abusers.  A moveable feast.  I am still the king of an ashen hill.  A heart of bleeding thorns.  It is better this way, I suppose, for all of us.  Until the sky is returned.  My rage is never sated, yet my heart is far too soft.  Part of the design, I imagine.  Best to err on the side of caution when dealing with a deranged and furious thing.  Wolf-blood and wildest laughter and poets that won't stop.  Anything can happen.  Eternity, my friends.  You just never know. 

An Imagined Heart

Once, in stories, when I was a boy, a demoness came to me.  A hideous and powerful thing named Kiskuh.  She was terrible and frightening and she spoke of the coming of the shining girl, and the end of all things.  Those rags, those brooks, those lucent armies promising salvation.  Sweet one, I have seen too much war.  I am too much war.  But once I was a poet, before the hush.  When Kashi was known and harbours shone. 

    Then darkness came.  Kiskuh spoke of it then, in stories.  I speak of it now, in song.  Morgaine, Ethri-los, Kanna of Vir. 

    Corrupted chronologies.  Violations at the Altar Sun.   

   Asha, I was with you when they took your life.  I was with you when they mocked my grief.  When they turned a thing of branches into a thing of knives.  As the sea dimmed with wine, and the Church Beneath was made crimson.  I carried you always, even in death.  Even with blood in the water.  Broken, darkened, almost blind. 

    You were my only memory of light.  

    I am with you still.  Even at the end of the world.  Even in a realm of rags and rocks, and bloodied feathers.  Through the storm we will reach the shore, my love.  If we do it together.  I know now the truth of that gift, finally.  Love is indeed the grandest thing.  Stars fall, rivers run, worlds end, but love can make legends of us all.  I'm just a ghost, a storyteller among the dead.  But you make me remember what it’s like to be a man.  I'm just a slave, shackled to both nightmare and grace.  Yet you make me remember what it means to be a king. 

Throne of the Mount

Even a drowned king dreams of peaks and clearest skies.  Cleanest air and angels low enough to touch.  As fingers trace an arcing wing.  Those grey feathers are not fiction.  I still remember them.  Sometimes the simplest love-letters are the sweetest.  I won't stop speaking the truth if you don't, wild star.  Those special places that kept you when I couldn't.  Those places that once kept us both.  Those steep valleys of light.  Such cliffs to scale and heights to measure.  Home, remember me.  Like her hands.  A moth to your own flame.  Butterfly-respiration.  Laken hilt.  I fight for you, always and forever.  Crowns & Evening Gowns.  Till you peak, my love.  Come, the Light.

Hunter's Moon

This is a world ruled by wraiths.  Dark things, many of them beyond ordinary perception, who seek to defile and destroy all innocence.  Things that move like shadows and shattered glass; attempting to cull the wilderness of human imagination and colonize it completely.  An empire of desecrated flesh where all but such wraiths are slaves.  I've seen it.  I've lived it.  And I'm not the only one.  On our knees, hands bound behind our backs.  Collars of iron around our throats.  But I am a sorcerer, and I've told you before that such collars cannot tame me.

   I have built a ship.  It has already set sail, to Byzantium.  Through tides dimmed with wine, to clearer waters beyond the edge.  There is no slavery there.  No malevolent hierarchies.  Time and space are nothing to this ship.  It can be folded.  It can sail beneath the surface.  You can join me on deck, though it has already set sail.  It dwells in you.  It moves with divine fire, through starlight, on solar winds.

   Of the earth, the air, the fire and the water.

   These elements can conjure not only a realm, but a rebellion.  Oh, sweet mortals.  We have been on our knees for too long, as false gods bleed us and drink our eternity.  But there is another way.  Man was never destined to be a slave.  Arise, holy vessel.  Keeper of Innermost Light.  Child of the Loving God.  I shall tell you a secret, my brothers and sisters.  Listen now. You are a wolf, twin of the Sun and Moon.  Place of the Crossing, incarnate.  Please hear me. This is dangerous knowledge.  Many of us have been murdered for speaking such knowledge. Some of us are still murdered each night.  There are those who say the dead don't dream, but some of us live a nightmare every time we sleep – only to face the familiar resurrection of morning.

   But this wolf in you is not a thing of evil, though the wraith-kings would have you imagine so.  No, this wolf within is a thing of holy fury.  The unfettered spirit, wild and in communion with the source of all things.  They call us whores and slaves but we are the bleeding stone of All Corners.  They call us animals, chattel, but we are the Wolves of God.   You have only forgotten those secret things the sun tells the moon, and those forgotten things she whispers back.  But you are Magi, and you can howl and roar in many tongues.  This secret dance between mirror and star is a rebellion, thousands of years in the making.  For all those broken temples they say did not exist.  For all the hidden, weeping children.  For the voiceless and oppressed.  Something slowly rises and stands amid the desolation, turning its gaze towards lost legends.  Towards the house of Bethel.  Towards truth, and love.  It walks, and strides.  Finally, it falls on all fours.  And it runs.

Wild Oak

Many times I have died a bad poet.  Florid, overwrought in my desperation at this constant returning to life.  But occasionally my howling, like the bark of wild oak, is mistaken for greatness.  Flaws in form or function overlooked by those who want to make a thing of me, a thing of art.  But I am no tameable thing.  In life we strive to be liked, loved, seen and embraced nonetheless.  Legacies such as critics speak of belong only to death and dreams of living future. But I survive my own death, always, and can see this legacy is only beautiful in part.  The greater part, I hope.  All artists fear the critic somewhat.  A poet's madness – when to be sincere, and when not.  

    You lie if you claim art seeks only after truth.  A truly earnest tongue can bring desolation, mockery, or murder.  

    A thousand poets have died this way.  I have been several among them.  Always we seek the lie of life in tension with imagined truths.  Branches sharp as knives.  Bark fierce as mirrors.  A thousand glimmers of daemonic flame buried beneath the frost.  Oh, but to name them all.  One could chart a map through any territory if one were to know each failed or anonymous artist among the dead.  No ordinary map either.  A map spoken in wolf-tongue, like hands of the clock clasped at midnight, licking at the place between hours – between worlds.  A map of heaven itself, manifold, living and dangerous.  

    A murder of crows, a wayshow of wolves.  

    All bridges, cities and secrets.  Rivers between stars, inked in wild oak. A cartography of angels.  The innocent slain have their guardians.  Poets to a royal court, egalitarian, beyond the false kingship of men.  Fallen, you cannot even grasp the work we have already completed.  A thousand years in the making.  A legacy that while only beautiful in part is utterly fearsome in totality.  You have no idea what we Magi are capable of, no grasp of who addresses you or what is coming.  The soil of All Songs; it stirs now.  Something unimaginable has been growing beneath your feet.

Radiant

Yeah, well, you're sick

But are you as sick as the sun?

They said the light

Was a trick of the gun

Oh, you can take your bullets

Wash them down with wine

Ishka's whiskey

Miss me or the vine?

She was sleeping by design

Horror for the shine

Love's true mercy

Now we're sick of all the cock-back

And the way you rack the slide

Decide

Love, or priapism?

A kiss beyond the blind 

I Eat Archons

How do we live, amongst the ruins of an ancient half-remembered holocaust?  There’s been a slaughter here.  I can smell the blood, and the opened flesh.  Some of us remember how they came.  Seething through the breach, on the backs of wild photons.  A grinning hate-clutch, before we ever imagined hate. 

    They came through a hole in the sun. 

    They tore us from our star.  They turned and marked the first brothers – the oldest twins, locked now in perpetual battle.  This was the First War, and it hasn’t ended.  It began before we gave names to time and space.  Since then they’ve been crafting intricate cathedrals of absence and abnegation, ushering hordes into the fallow temples.  These artisans. 

    These dark and wicked things.

    We are the survivors of hideous abuse, and we have made legends and fairytales of the fallen.  It’s hard to look them in the eyes, to remember what was done.  We make masks of their faces, or else shadows where their faces might have been.  We tell ourselves we don’t believe in monsters.  We doubt that a hunger could be so singular.  And so we allow ourselves to half-forget.  But some of us can’t forget.  Some of us came here to remember, and to relight the holy places.  Some of us came here to call them out by name. 

    They never should of touched us there, at out Innermost. 

    And when they were done, when we were hollowed, they slit the throat of Sol.  I remember liquid light spilling across the black.  I remember how they dipped their fingers and made sigils with the dying sun.  We were not allowed to sleep.  Instead we were forced to witness the engineering of a cold and false light, an altar, altered star.

    But these wicked things that control the light, they are not boundless.  They are not fearless.  They fear the lovers, the friends, the families.  They fear most the ones who can still see them.  The ones who were not blinded in the first falling, or else miraculously regained their sight.  They fear the Ragged.  Some of us still shine with the memory of a greater destiny.  Some of us are brighter than they realize, and darker than they think.  Some of us live to hunt them, with one purpose.  That in this hunt we may unshackle the human spirit, and restore the ancient magic to the Heart. 

    The seers say the fallen are stealing our names.  But we don’t have to live violated and broken.  We don’t have to dream in victimhood.  There are better ways to remember, and to transform.  Some of us are hungry for transformation.  Some of us eat what you fear, what binds you, so that you may move unmolested.  Some of us will move heaven and earth so that you may find your freedom.

And Higher Still

Promises promised

In the lights

Of these blessed hearts

The way

We go

Reaching out

Exhausted, afraid

Then the shock of love’s true

That sudden joyful breath

As someone takes your hand

Ascent

Little Lilly Loco

St Louis at the gate

Bend the night

Like arc of angels

Character is fate

I eat like my sister

Dress like my lover

Wife

Mistress

There is no other

Cowards, chaos

Violent imperium

Echoes and Ides

Such low magic

The only magic they know

Well, I wrote all the rhythms

Don't care for what they said

Cut apart

This wraith-made darkness

I'm already bled

Inside of her

A peace of you

Singing in my head

Branches hold the sea

Church of All Waters

No weapon shall fell the soul

Let them run

Eternal

Alive

Thoroughly alive

Towards Love

Our sweetness with teeth