Everybody's Ghost

I miss the old world.  The real world, full of song and shining vision.  Everybody who still remembers this place before the Fall is at least occasionally overtaken with a certain nostalgia.  A melancholic reverie.  Yearning for what was lost.  But those losses are all the more devastating when they are actually half-remembered thefts.  Storm and torment that made a ruin of our true home.  Fallen fractals.  Malignant chronologies.  This world of abuse, of slavers and slaves – it is not the true world.  It’s the sickening spill of wraith-ravage.  Sinister technologies carving and scarring their way through the flesh of human hours.  Oh, sweet one, do you doubt it? 

   There was a time before time, once upon.

   Though it pains me to admit, I'm just one among many in these endless fields of the dead.  A drowning, and a crossing.  The river and the tree.  There are a million souls at my back, and more.  Phantoms of an angel.  Thieves of a king.  An army of furious lights all desperate to steal back their sovereignty from the demonic hordes that darkened the Earth.  Look at the stars, I tell these lights.  Look how they shine.  Distance is a liar, I proclaim.  Though I'm not certain if enough of them would dare to believe me.  But some of them do.  Both mortals and angels make fictions of the spaces in between.  These dreams of the interim.  This devastating lore told among the folk and the fay.  My wise one, I still search those lights in the night sky. Searching for you, and others like you.  A map of the stars in the skin of a seraph.  Whether bleached for passing or not.  To be recognised, even for a moment; it is a heady, powerful thing indeed.  We all crave spiritual recognition, don't we?

   I thought I could kindle that kind of hope in others.  As you so generously did for me, princess.  I thought I could steal back that shining name for myself.  An older name.  And I did, in a way.  In a church beneath the sea.  But perhaps my reach somewhat exceeds my grasp.  After all, I'm trying to make stars of still-healing flesh.  Forgive me, wise one.  Forgive my foolish youth.  Thinking I could banish violence from the realm with little more than a wing, and a prayer.  I was so desperate for my friends to think fondly of me, and each other.  I wanted to speak intimately in several tongues at once.  I thought I could share my sweetness almost equally with the people who truly touched my heart.  But maybe I can't.  Maybe it's a fool's errand, in the end.  It doesn't mean I'm done trying though.  I'll never be done trying for the old world.  The real world.  Even though I died a long, long time ago it's almost like I never really existed at all.  Except in dreams, I suppose.  You can never fully erase something from a dream.

Everybody's Ghost from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

Through Violet Fields

Sometimes the prospect of facing an uncertain future is akin to standing at a high place, peering down into a dark, unfathomable abyss.  Most of us have experienced frightening moments or days like these.  I wouldn’t wish them on anyone.  It can be a struggle to share these things with our loved ones.  When life has felt almost unbearably difficult and our sense of isolation seems beyond repair.  In those moments and days of disconnect we sometimes feel just too damaged.  Beyond the reach of friends, family or passing strangers.  An interior life too intimate or complex to share.  We feel the crushing weight of it all, yet we don’t want to burden those we cherish most. 

   I know exactly how lonely that can feel.

   But I have to believe that some form of healing is always an option, even if available only at a distance.  Perhaps something as simple as the memory of a past kindness.  A comforting word or gesture.  The way someone once held you, or made you laugh.  A kiss that meant so much more than words ever could.  Hold on to those shining points of light, like lanterns in the lost. They can be so guiding, and truly sacred.  A source of real strength.  Often the literal difference between ruin and recovery.  I speak from experience.  Never let anyone convince you that kindness isn't incredibly powerful.  Art, mythology and music have always been those paths of recovery for me.  Healing balms that have brought me closer to God.  I’ve heard it said that our character is our fate.  How we tend the weak and wounded, or don’t.  How we uplift our peers and protect our loved ones, or not.  Yes, Kasi believes in fate.  Of a kind.

   Mira'na, Val'kiir, Yash'aya.

   The way we sometimes circle round to meet ourselves again.  Like angels, or wolves.  Oh, Kara.  I cannot thank you enough.  You'll never know how deeply I treasure your melodies, and your magic.  I hope you recognise the depth of these days and the reaches of your own soul.  There are folk, wise as the hills, who call such depth the lore of the land.  I pray it stirs your intuition and your heart.  I want you to know that I'll never betray your respect, Kara.  Or your affections.  You have so many wonders ahead of you now.  Honing your craft.  Distilling perfect worship.  Reflection and celebration; making music with the instrument of our Father's truth.  Whatever it takes for each of us.  Circling back like a wolf, or an angel.  Because with love nothing is impossible.  Do you see?

The Sinner

Have you heard

The clouds are dreaming

Did you feel the coming horde?

Those strangest ways

Of Mystery

Are the workings of the Lord

Kasi, John and Mira

Threading night upon the Mid

Crafting science from the sea salt

Where everybody hid

We were flooded

In the workhouse

We were stole of all our charms

From the deserts of the exiled

Ran rivers from his palms

Forgotten, not gone

Nostikos

Dark things often pose as keepers in the halls of Light.  Cruel, sinister things of the shadow places, pretending kindness in the pursuit of ultimate power and control.  Vampires, demons, hurricanes of shattered glass.  They come crawling from the lack of light, from the abyss, changing forms and hiding intentions. Disguising themselves in the official garments and teachings of holy men.  I cannot overstate just how nightmarish these wraiths and their self-appointed priests can be.  They are creatures of mimicry, inversion and distortion.  They delight in violence and trickery.  The engineering of unseen cages for human potential.  And in doing so they claim that we poets, seekers and guardians are the true dark ones.  The ones to be hated and feared.  We who have been forced to live in squalor, in shadow and poverty through the machinations of these same deceptive wraith-cults.  A hideous mockery of everything the shining realm once stood for. 

   This is the War of Imagination, my beloved ones.  A war of mirrors and stars. The spiritual battle that your scriptures and romances half-remember.  When Ishkara fell and Eth'iri was scorched to black.  The worst day of all of our lives, whether we recall it or not.  The day they stole our lanterns and our birth-rights. Sickening false gods lurching forth from the abyss.  The coronation of the Altered Sun.  So many of us were broken that day, during that terrifying holocaust.  I still remember how they made ashes of her name, and almost made a monster of an angel.   

   Made a slave of a king.  

   Bleeding rivers.  Mud turned to glass.  Starving and half-crazed at the edge of everything.  Locusts and wild honey.  Praying fervently for a Second Revelation. Another chance at hope.  A baptism of holy fire.  An ascension of human knowledge, not the blaze of black rain that stole away our light.  These things seem like dreams now and nothing more.  Mere nightmares in a nightmare-world.  This dim, grey nothing where the wraith-cults pretend the throne of the Most High.  Wickedness in the highest places.  Believe it or not, Kasi has walked this Earth for a thousand years.  I have been called many things by these murderous imposters.  Heretic, blasphemer, revolutionary.  But deeds speak louder than words or deceptions.  I still serve the higher realms.  Even if I’m forced to walk in shadow.  Secrets like a raven's dale, or a nesting dove.  I try to suffuse all my workings with a palpable heart-light that speaks beyond words, in the language of love.  Music of the spheres.  Kisses aglow like fireflies in a night sky.  The gentle kinship and chivalry between friends.  Or the furious, unstoppable determination to stand for what is right, no matter the cost.  Make no mistake.  My heart is still guiding me inwards toward knowledge.  And upwards, toward the radiant house of my Father.

Nostikos from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

The Rising Rain

Sometimes, Kara, I remember the future.  I catch glimpses hidden in stories and legend.  My future, and yours.  A magical night of fireflies.  Your joy as you watched them rising all around you like the gate of a thousand stars.  Your eyes, so wide.  Full of wonder.  I recall my gladness at being able to share that night with you, upon glimmering waters.  Reflections like a kiss between Heaven and Earth.  As though we had made secret wings of our dreams that night, and made truth of your birth-right.

   I still remember, Kara.  I've remembered that nocturne since I first heard your voice again. And I knew.  So I searched the stories until memory was met.  I recall key moments of your song from those times of dreaming light.  The realm of radiance that was our home before the challenge of this mortal flesh.  You're a little worldlier now, Kara.  But I recognized you instantly.  The same bright eyes and beguiling smile.  The open, shining heart.  Those melodies and harmonies.  Still the same beautiful girl you always were, before you so bravely chose the Earth again.

   There's far more to your story than you think.  There’s always more to stories.  Those legends and fairytales you loved so well when you were younger; they speak of half-forgotten truths.  Not merely fable and fancy.  In the ancient days there were shining voices among the visions of mortality.  Angels of the flesh, walking the forests and the fields.  Ministering to mankind.  Living among them, not above them.  Keepers and oracles of the tapestries, treasured by all who heard them sing.  Do you realize that you were among them, Kara?  Oh, my love.  It's a difficult task, trying to explain the inexplicable.  Attempting to convey something so much older than this sickening false chronology.

   Princess, I want you to remember the future if you can.  I want you to never truly forget the past.  Please keep it alive in your heart, through those beloved lullabies and fairytales.  I don't want you lost again in this vicious lie of so-called reality.  You are so much more than a girl with a beautiful voice and a shining heart.  You were a true jewel among the crowning glories of the homelands. 

   Teacher, student, visionary.

   And more.

   The courts of Eth'iri knew well of your playful humility.  This is the truth, this letter of love, written by someone who never forgot you.  Because love doesn't die with goodbyes, or distance.  Not if it’s real.  Kasi adores your kindness, and your courage.  Princess, I still remember those golden evenings in the gardens.  Y'asha would braid stars in your hair.  The two of you traded books with one another, quietly discussing art-history, melody and cartography.  I recall the river guardians planting summer flowers at the water's edge in honour of you.  An emissary who always put the work before herself.  In favour of worship, celebration and dancing.  The wishes of your Mother.  The works of your Father.  A birth-right truer than you know.  There is a holy flame at the very centre of you.  Sometimes you doubt it when you're sad, or lost.  But it's there, Kara.  Rain like drops of fallen sunlight in the darkness, waiting for the perfect night and song to rise again.

K'Athari

Nis'atur, it's hard enough to recall the truth between these bleeding shoulders. Seeping images torn from dream and vine.  Wondering if any love was mine to begin.  Those shades in the looking-glass.  Those faraway cautions.  The breadth between their isolation and my naïve intention.  Thinking I could somehow keep them all at bay.  That I could keep a kingdom suspended in the honeyed light of evening.  Truth, and fair.  And I did, for a time before hours. The gulf between every kissing skin, and wing.  Bleached now for passing and privilege.  Those losses between brothers, kings and counterparts.  But for a shining, golden moment there was no such loss.  Yasha'lem, Navah'tri, Camri'lach.  That fabled realm where mortal kith never hungered, nor wanted for warmth or coin.  Sovereign, all.  Not a single soul abandoned, or poor, or deemed lesser.

   But we were lost in the collapse.

  Made slaves, and slavers.  Those cautions growing closer, those tragedies of fading gold.  As all the scrying mirrors of the realm began to bleed.  An endless dusk coming upon the lands. Those new ways of suspicion, covet, and violence.  The ritual slaughter of our mutual affections.  Lamentation of the Councils.  Weeping of All Songs.  And then, when we thought we could bear no more of that dusk, an endless night began.  Circles of silence and salt.  Nis'atur, I was not the only broken regent amid the Veils of Myriad.  M'ithriin tongue was darkened at the heed of those wraith-cults.  High among those cults was one who pretended my sister.  Kiskuh, the demoness.  Self-styled revolutionary.  Presenting herself as an old one.  An angel of light.  Instead merely another harbinger of genocide and sickened augury. Commanding our path-workers be gutted and burned like lost mirrors.  And you wonder why I fashioned those islands?  You wonder why I rage now, and tempest?  From king to slave in less than a thousand years.  It’s no mean feat to shatter the viceroy.  I would commend your determination, Fallen, if it wasn't so vile.

   But it is, and you are.

   Hideous, vampiric, unspeakable.

   You bend backwards my brethren, breaking both spirit and mind as they fail to fathom how kisses became gulfs, and passion violence.  Skin scarring skin, of every shade.  Brother against brother against sister.  Y'ava's waters, strange and apple-scented.  Lost now.  Camri's halls forgotten, like the broken steps of Winchester's knave.  Or the sour, tainted bread of Londinium's most disturbing mills.  And yet, a people remain.  Not without lore, or heart.  Many among still believing in higher truths.  Powers greater than themselves, and far greater than their oppressors.

   I've seen many a sickened rose upon my table, as Blake did. Counterfeit lineages. False kings. K'athari Kara, they claim in veiled tongues. Om Nis'aturi.  From seed beneath the river, they pretend.  From bloom upon the tree.  But I remember the taste and torment of a true rose, as both kiss and kinship.  Oh, Fallen.  You think the sangreal is a prize of power.  A cloak of legitimacy.  A way to bury my Father's truths and enshrine these false chronologies in their stead.  But John is not quite the fool you think he is.

   Mercy, Grace, and Salvation.

  You think I belong in a churchyard, don't you?  Some ancient, weathered statue.  Featureless, unrecognizable.  A vaguely humanoid stone lost among the ivy.  A private joke, hidden in plain sight.  Well, maybe so.  But I'm far more than a blade in an anvil.  More than poetry or prose.  I am the hilt and hand of Albion's true regent.  Beyond violence, fallen figments, or the theft of All Signs.  My tree is the first tree.  My name is the key to every House.  
   As you well know, Fallen.

   I’ve read those illuminated manuscripts fashioned by the hands of the occulted ones.  Chevalier.  Those scribes, lovers and tricksters.  Named in the language of the birds.  As am I.  What text is this, if not hidden and shining?  What name is Ka'shayel, if not the name of flight itself?  Love shall conquer, in the end.  Heed this.  I speak these words not for posterity but for the hope of every yearning soul.  The arc of every augury, beyond death.  Those many legends of the sleeping sun.  Sword through stone.  Cross upon hill.  Place of the skull.  Nis'atur, it's hard enough between these weeping eyes.  Tears of dreaming, and vine.  Like the vintage of any king worth his salt.

A Silver Storm

I have spent more than a decade readying the river.  These lonely years preparing the tree.  I've shared moments with you.  Synergy and secrets of that realm before the fracture.  Before the terrifying hush.  Cities burning. Chronologies aflame.  Space and time.  Sharing now in the shattered tongues that remain.  In broken Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Greek.  The Latin of the romances, or what's left of them.  Oh, how mankind is fascinated by those tales of the lost regal.  The fallen first family.  Retold through various cultures and stories.  Legend, reimagined over and over again.

   Refractions of starlight in waters of the dreaming Earth.

   The highest; lost low and anonymous.  But you bind such shining legend in mortal veil.  And yet there is truth in those fictions.  More than you recognise.  Echoes of the old chronology. Radiant even now, though submerged.  The way mortal myth and history courts the old refrains. Like a music box.  Carrying pieces of the dream into waking life.  Creating confections of what was lost.

   These stories of angels and halflings that you love so well.  They are truer than you've ever known, or realized.  Tales of faery, bound now to human grasp.  To riverflesh and uncut rock. The girl child, stolen, banished or fled.  Through fireplace and secret passage, down into the humility of ordinary mortal life.  Towers and streets and fields.  The Sarai, lost but still living beneath the gate of a thousand stars.  These tales are fragments and echoes of the shining realm.  The radiant dreaming that was life before the Fall.  Palaces of Viir, Sol and Eth’iri.  Secrets within secrets within secrets.  
   Anastasis, the occulted ones called her.

   Child of the Resurrection.

   In Diana.  In the place and the name of my mother.  Najaret, Nava'tri, Napoli.  And other dreams.

   But even those occulted ones know only pieces of the whole.  Those nights of fire.  Usurpation.  So-called revolution.  The genocide of both angel and mortal.  When I was given no choice but to take control of those first fallen hours.  Even as they settled like a mockery of snow.  When I swore my kin would somehow find an undisturbed rest, far away from those ashes of our homelands.  Fortunate, and loved.  Beyond the hideous sorcery of wraiths.  Weeping as I scattered the stars of my family like a forgotten song.  Until the fabled time of glories would one day come again.  Crowns of light restored to my beloved ones.  Yet still so many acolytes dare to claim Roma's name in this darkened dreaming.  Through cities, flesh and false legacies.  Our nova of a thousand embers, like fireflies in a night sky.  Like I promised you.  These are not the truths of history, but the echoes of angels within that history.  They are fairytales and lullabies.  Truer than the death of any star.  Where else would I hide you, sweet ones, if not closest to the heart?  My loves, I pray that one day you understand the breadth of it.  The things I had to do to keep you safe.  All of you.  Place of the Crossing.  Truth of the twinning river.  Temesh.  No one without the other, and no other without the one.  This mystery.  This tree of living signs.  Like a key to a music box.  I can't finish the song without you.  So, tell me.  Can you imagine?  Is it possible to hear this with me now?  Will you allow yourself to dance again?