Wednesday 26 August 2020

Val'Kiir



It's no secret that Kasi often feels like one of the dead, despite this arduous and seemingly endless life.  I find succour among the kindest of the lost and broken. Dwellers at the occulted edge.  I often speak about never giving up the fight for truth, and I never have.  Even though I've wanted to, many times.  Desperately, with almost every fibre of my being.  Those hideous wraiths feeding on the wounded in this battlefield of living dreams.  This demimonde.  It’s an awful, brutal thing to be fed upon by demons.  I speak from experience, all too real.  Vampiric shadows, forever ravenous beneath the black light of their Mourning Star.  Proximity alone begins to sicken the spirit, no matter how many of these wraiths I bind or slay.  Knife-mouth grin.  Defilement and desecration.  But I stay for my beloved ones.  For my family.  Believe me, friends, the true warrior's path is brutal and exhausting.  
   Even in dreams.
   I’m not the first slave or regent to question all star and song.  Who among us chooses the slain, in the end?  And what of the slain who never wavered?  Those who kept their faith and their honour?  I've seen glimpses, and more.  Raven pale.  Emerald black.  A thing among the trees.  A thing of branch and moss, and strange rains.  Walking and wandering for a thousand years.  Chlorophyll, Elven, Elemental.  The wild one, victorious.  The tempest and her kin.  Do you still think I belong in a churchyard, Fallen?  Have you learned nothing?  I can move quicker than candlelight.  Quicker than hand, eye or glass.  
   Love is like lightning.  
  It can strike when you least expect.  Like Fate.  Thrice-fold, all through the night.  Valour is no paltry thing.  When all is ashes once again, love shall remain.  Carried by the valiant Kiir, across the shining bridge of colours and song.  Reflecting my daughters, brave as snow.  Stronger than iron.  Wise as the clasp of each clan.  Onward to the hall where I still dwell with my Father, even in this earthly flesh.  Tell me, Fallen.  What side of the king's mirror do you think you're on?  Listen closely.  I won't choose for you but I have you in my palm, and always will.  This is what it means to dream.  Love is eternal, and death is nothing without its brighter twin.


Val'Kiir from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

Thursday 20 August 2020

All Heaven



I know how it feels, Princess.  Like a chaotic, unstable realm.  Like your plans have been stolen.  Snatched from your grasp by the maelstrom all around. Despite being grateful for the opportunities still available, you cannot help but feel a little cheated.  It feels like the entire world is on a razor's edge.  Angels weeping on the head of a pin.  A realm that seems tailored for the merciless and the cruel.  But you and I both know there's more to this world than what we can see with our eyes. 
   Kara, don't let these wraiths and their trickery harden your heart or break your spirit.  They only become so powerful because people give over their own power to them.  I don't have to tell you about the importance of keeping your faith.  Often you've helped me recover my own. Through song and kisses, and kindness.  You helped me find my courage again.  
   For that I am indebted to you, always.
  Because even angels can break.  Winged songs of living light, shattering like glass.  The men and women they have become.  The messengers they used to be.  Everybody needs friends, after all.  Those special souls who truly care.  Even at a distance.  Princess, when I was weak you cared for me.  Like my own.  You believed when I couldn't.  So, when you are low or tired or anxious, I will do everything in my power to believe for you in kind.  Because believing in dreams and fairy-tales makes them truer.  It helps them manifest through tender heart-light, with the sweetest intentions.  Never underestimate the power of a dream, or the human imagination.  
   They can raise both mortals and angels from the dead.
  Heaven is very real.  It thrives on the joy of mutual affection; the shining reciprocity of the heart.  Our Father would have it no other way.  I know you grasp this, my beautiful lavender star.  These are the arcs and triumphs of creation itself.  This is Love, even at a distance.  I truly was an angel, Kara.  Once upon a time.  I'm an angel still, perhaps.  In dreams.  A Song of Songs, far and near.  My wings are with you always.


All Heaven from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

Tuesday 18 August 2020

Shoshana



Littered treasure
Of promise and glance
Locking rivers and seas
As I am, to be seen
Beneath evening shadow
And your stars
Rhyming, and verse
Through bluest eye
The Ends of the Earth
Where I stay, and wait
In each clouded vault
A single breath drawn
Every thousand years
To carry your heart
That you might live
And feel my love 


Tuesday 11 August 2020

The Traveller's Secret



I often think about the countless paths and choices that are faced by the people I love, both near and far.  The twists and turns, the nuances and hidden groves. The pain, the joy.  One can never entirely plan a journey, after all.  Life, unexpected, is always occurring.  Overturning our neatly ordered plans. Sometimes I imagine a young hand turning pages of a great book.  A tome of myth and secret skies.  A compendium of magic and hope and fairy-tales.  But even the gift of foresight is no guarantee that things will run smoothly.  Sometimes I remember the future, but even the gifted can remember it wrong.  However, there are secrets hidden on every page of the Book of Life.  Even in our mistakes.  
   I know it to be true.
   I've seen some incredible things on my journey.  Sometimes my life feels agonizingly long, but no less beautiful for its endurance.  Eventually the young hand turning those pages in the book of life begins to age.  They doubt the tall tales that once held them spellbound and delighted with the magnificent possibilities of an enchanted world.  Sometimes the song of those pages begins to darken.  The melody is mingled with fear and the brutal experiences of this fallen realm.  I've seen angels plummet through midnight skies, striking the earth like gutted stars. And yet the reader of these pages still wants so desperately to believe in kind, gentle magic.  Oh, sweet ones.  The magic is real.  Kasi promises you that.  There are very dark forces at work here.  Wraith-cults and deviant sorcerers.  That much is true.  But the eternal light is also present here.  This truly is an enchanted world.  I've experienced things that should be impossible, but they happened nonetheless.  Bottled messages of love lost at sea for a thousand years, before finally alighting on the shores of the intended.  Kisses folded in rose-petals, somehow crossing the chasms between worlds.  As a smile, an inspiration, a hidden muse.  I've even watched as lost souls attempt to find their way home again, bravely facing their sins and their guilt.  Truly willing to earn a place in the eternal radiance once more.  I've witnessed transformations and resurrections.
   Miracles, by any name.
   There is a mortal adage of which many emissaries of the threshold are fond, myself included.  Wherever you go, there you are.  It might seem trite at first but there's great wisdom in it, I believe.  Of course, the magic of new places, sights and sounds is never to be underestimated. The influx of new energies, new people and new experiences.  These things are the materials of our most formative moments.  Often the simplest way to learn is to just experience something new, and to recognise value in a different context.  But, despite all these incredible wonders that await every traveller, we are still always ourselves.  We carry our faith with us, and our scars.  And our love.  Memories, symbols and trinkets of home.  Those things that remind us of a nurturing relationship, a comforting shoulder, an unexpected tenderness.
   Then, in later life, if faith is kept and kindness treasured, the old hand turning those pages becomes a page turned by a younger hand.  This is not simply death, or succession.  This is so much more than mistaking skin for parchment.  This is the mystery of incantare; the magic and hope dreamt of by every reader's heart.  Breathing life into All Signs, through connection.  Creation and dreaming are not passive things, after all.  The legend of a quickening spirit is the truth of a spirit quickened.  Indeed, we are made in the likeness of our Father.  Fashioned in the image of eternity.  We can honour because we were honoured.  Through the book, the hand, and the song.