A Thousand Names

You almost killed me when you raped me, Fallen.  And for what?  To kneel before your self-created star of abjection?  To reduce all sentience to playthings, to resources and food?  An ugly magic.  The ugliest.  Men, women and children born into bondage, sold for the pleasure of those scant few who imagine they can read better?  Applied cruelty doesn't mean you know what words are.  Dehumanize your kin because vulgar spirits whisper at your shoulder?  You call this reading?  Shame on you, wraith-kings.  That your blackest magick would prove to be so pedestrian and unimaginative.  Selling your brothers and sisters to craven things doesn't make you powerful.  It isn't power; this hideous claw at dreaming's throat.  It's only the visible manifestation of your shame, as yet unawakened in you.  Heed this, for if I say sleep you shall all sleep.  Forever.  But annihilation – where is the imagination in that?  No, Fallen, I think you misunderstand me still.  Upon the hill I stood, peering at the sky beneath me.  I gazed at the cross on that hill, pointing like a black key down into the inverted sky.  Dead, yet living.  

    Let me make myself perfectly clear, if needs must.  I am a savage thing, but not hateful.  I am a wrathful thing, but not unjust.  I am a tender thing, but not without strength.  All these things of my essence I share with you of yours.  What divides us then, if not our common mystery birthed of all songs?  Imagination, I would offer.  And, as dreamers know, imagination is an enchanted thing.  To make art of a thought.  Everywhere that Is there are those openly or covertly discussing an inner life – trying to find ways to share.  How do I know this?  Because I've lived it.  Why do I keep attempting this, to offer you vision and insight?  Because I love you.  

   Hear me.  

  Beneath all this horror humanity is utterly beautiful; a wondrous, kind and passionate thing.  I've seen it.  I've seen your greatness.  The truth of you, beyond these prisons the predators keep you in. And I’m honoured to share a part in that innermost light beyond all assault, from which we all spring.  I am with you, in this flesh.  I have lived many lives, but I'm not the only one.  Perhaps you have too.  Perhaps we met once, and were friends.  Perhaps we were kind and supportive and wildly playful with one another – consummate dreamers – until the coming of the inverted sky.  Is such a thing impossible to you, my love?  Might you dare to believe that I speak some kind of truth?  That I am here because I care genuinely about you?  Oh, beloved ones, do not silence the dreamers and poets.  Such things always presage a coming darkness.  But I, who has always kept close to the river, didn’t come here to speak only of darkness.  I have sung countless praises and hymns to light. Misunderstanding me is no grave sin, my love.  I attend you and cheer you for all your valour, your fumbling towards Gnosis.  I fumble too sometimes, for I am alive.  Never shall I demand perfection.  Only our mutual best.  I have given and continue to give you that best of me.  Give me yours and all will be well.  I'm not here on my knees before you begging for understanding.  I beg only that you are curious, engaged, intrigued.  That you are kind and fair.  Not to me, for I know every secret you have.  But fair to each other, of course.  What greater service is there than this?  

   Fear not these wraith-kings driving you ever deeper into horror.  There are angels at your shoulder.  There are kind spirits everywhere, and many of them have sacrificed everything just to be here with you.  Do you understand the depth of that love, really?  The depth of any greatness of character, that abides to knowledge and keeps his brother and sister in his heart?  Such sweetness and truth sings across all realms.  Bright hosts often gather from territories to witness a simple or nuanced kindness.  Have you heard angels cheer at camaraderie, or a grim joke shared between two desperate friends on a midwinter’s eve?  I have.  Have you seen a table prepared in the sky at dawn to watch as one man in the gutter gently lays the thin blanket over his sleeping friend, because he knows his friend's struggles are currently greater than his own?  The unimaginative assume that such moments are unattended by spirits.  How wrong those struggling dreamers are.  How fitful their sleep.  To imagine you are not truly loved and truly observed is a nightmarish, maddening state of mind.  Monsters can be birthed from such a state, and genocides.  I don’t want that.  For any of us.  And that's why I'm here with you now. 

   I gave you everything I am.  Folios of light; play and poetry.  With depth enough that you speak and think with them still.  I bared every part of me, every wisdom I could offer.  Now, and then.  But it's not upon me to define what this is; comedy or tragedy, poem or prophecy. Kashi is no monster, but nor am I fond of speaking for my art.  I just want what I've always wanted.  To create something beautiful, to offer and give when all about me I see the most blind and merciless taking.  In this regard I'm like any artist.  Older perhaps, far older, but I still work and toil as they do.  Anonymous poets high and low, armed only with beleaguered sincerity and a commitment to depth, to richness of life.  Such men and women are attended and blessed for their sincerity, for their honour.  Mark it, abusers.  Mark it well.  The kind and righteous of all faiths and tribes have nothing to fear from me.  For I Am with them always, and they know it.

    This world is a hell built on an older hell, and beneath that the ruins of a once-tangible heaven. "Legend is a lie," cry the doubtful.  But they are wrong. "Chivalry lies gutted and broken upon the anvil, as does Love!"  They are wrong.  Something unimaginable has been growing beneath these hells; a thing of beauty and truth.  It dances; honour of flesh and spirit in motion, site of the untameable depths of life.  It was once the very thing of you, and shall be again.  Multitude, please hear me.  I want you to win, as it were.  Joyous, profound, connected.  But you're not allowed to cheat.  I didn't cheat when I saw fire on the tide of all songs, when the sky was twisted.  Wings bound, wrists crossed at my back.  Depths became a way of meeting, to live among and not above or below my people.  I spoke of the key then, and I speak of it now.

   Fallen, you shall not counterfeit an abyss for heaven much longer.  I won’t let you.  The key turns in all directions.  Take it from someone who knows the well far better than you do.  I speak on behalf of my brother, who stole my heart as easily as a king.  King of kings to this servant, yet both of us owe the river.  Humility, you see.  Communities of endless grace struck from the earth in fear of their dream-shaping power.  Nations buried, cities stolen.  But the places hidden within places still remember us.  The letter is but a vassal, yet kin to what it carries.  A herald, sign and signifier.  But spirit – the signified – is without edge.  Where and how?  Here and now.  Lift your head, sweet mortal.  That which Is – it truly does care for you in all the ways you pray for.  Such a thing shines beyond all calculation.  Far, far brighter than I.  My love is completely free, kind ones.  A way to something greater.  But my respect is priceless and must be earned.  And my wrath might cost you everything.  I’m not going to tell you what to think, or how to perceive.  I'm only one artist, one poet and his offered love.  There are many others.  We pray the realm becomes vital once again, alive as it once was.  Reclaim the stories, the songs.  Make them sing again.  Reset the sky.  For when the truth is revealed to you – that you were always integral and never arbitrary or unloved – you shall be blinded by the Word.  You will know, as I knew.  You will weep with joy as you fall to your knees before that infinite living chorus.  As I did.  As every part of you is moved and you cry out a thousand names for God.