A Sacred Heart

It used to be everything, the heart.  Brighter than stars.  Older than time.  Larger than life itself.  What happened?  Did we fall of our own volition?  Or were we coerced?  Were we tempted with power in exchange for darkening our own dreaming?  Did wraiths come crawling from broken mirrors, offering up boundlessness for blood?  I know what I believe, because I was there.  And let me tell you, it was a devil's bargain.  A lie.  A demon's notion of freedom and nothing more.  I should know.  I myself was once a demon, and an angel.  I was even once a king.  In stories and legend.  I have many epithets but my true name isn't known here.  However, you can call me Kasi.  It means many things.  Shining One, chief among them.  But I'm not a fallen star.  At least, not entirely.  I like to think of myself as a mediator.  A teacher and a poet. That probably sounds like utter hubris to modern ears; declaring one's depths and antiquity with such boldness.  But we live in a ravaged world where spiteful wraiths attempt daily to tear all agency from the human soul.  From the heart itself.  I for one resist.  As do my brethren.  It isn't hubris to speak the truth.  Even with a poet's tongue.  It isn't a lack of humility.  Anyone who has been hung, raped or burned knows far too much about humility.  And survival.  Oh, we know.  We know the value of things too.  A kiss.  A kind word.  A sense of purpose.  You see, the soul speaks in the language of art.  Symbols and signs, poems and songs.  And art is the oldest magic.  You want to know about true spell-craft?  A sorcerer's greatest weapon?  You need look no further than the innermost.  The holy of holies.  The temple of divine fire.  It exists within each one of us, and dark forces have attempted for aeons to snuff it out.  But an aeon is little more than a single breath to an artist, and still we kindle that fire.  It is our most vital of tasks.  We might tend to other things when needed, of course.  Like exorcism, healing, or slaying monsters – but safeguarding the Innermost Light is paramount.  This is why my name is shining, I suppose.  This is why Varanasi still sings at the shore, in the fictions of that very same light.  They have been singing for a thousand years.  Of Laksmi, mothers old and young.  And of girls without name, lost to both history and legend.  But those singers still moor the boats and weave the baskets like the heart was never lost, or threatened. They tell wondrous tales as if we never fell at all.  They kindle, and warm themselves by the fire upon the waters.  An eternity, a breath, a mirror of unbroken silver.  Because it truly is everything, the heart.  Brighter than stars.  Older than time.  Larger than life itself.

In New Light

 

It feels like the light is beginning to change.  I'm always aware of the subtle shifts but I'm making more of an effort to notice.  To pay closer attention.  Few of us are ever as present as we would like to be.  But in the secret romance of ourselves we're often acutely aware of the fullness; the potentiality and strangeness of each moment.  In art we rise to the changing light.  Life in reflection.  Subtly reordered, remixed and re-written to serve some intangible horizon.  The shifting needle of our inner compass, towards an often-unspoken goal.  I suppose that's because true depth and atmosphere lives not just in the light, but in how we interpret and shape that light.  After all, without the interplay of shadow and light the eye sees nothing.  Without contrast we are blind.  There is a singular practicality to the numinous, when we understand what we’re working with.  It takes courage to see, and kindness to grasp another’s way of seeing – especially when it differs from our own.  But I believe we are souls built for adventure.  Placed here as part of a beautifully intricate design.  Sometimes I wonder, like now, about the hidden glyphs inscribed along the edge of dusk.  Secret writings concealed in the strange corona of a midnight sun.  At first there's a kind of gravitas to the grey skies.  Just before blue begins to haunt the canvas.  And I adore it, the calm of that pre-twilight.  The cusp before the cusp.  As a child I wanted to somehow capture that end of daylight, or else live in the dusk forever.  I'm still like that, I suppose.  Obsessed with the twilit realm.  The in-between.  It's the only place that ever truly felt like home.  Mediums and psychics often talk about the afterlife as place of eternal sun.  A shining realm of vivid beauty, divine grace and collective thought.  I've seen that world.  It isn't vague or insubstantial.  It is breathtaking, and realer than real.  I've seen the shadowlands too.  The dim and dark places created from the collective minds of the distorted, and the damned.  Lost souls.  The corrupted, sadistic ones.  Oh, I've seen that place.  I've felt it.  Avernus is very real.  But there are no children there.  No children in hell.  Not even one.  That knowledge brings me comfort beyond measure.  The sheer grace and wisdom of the light.  The living intelligence that men call God.  He loves us and walks with us every single day.  Friends, I want you to know that it’s only here in this in-between place that children suffer.  Not because of cosmic indifference, but because of the wickedness of men and the wraiths who rule them.  The entities that whisper and possess.  You see, this earthly realm is far darker than the darkest regions of the afterlife.  But not brighter.  What I mean when I say this is that here everything is possible.  Not so on the other side.  Beyond the veil, all things are held in perfect safety.  Clarity, balance.  Resolve.  Grace is given but character is earned, and the other side is forged by the very truth of this character.  Our emotions, thoughts and intent.  I mean to say, you cannot hide who or what you are in the realms beyond death.  In neither the summer-lands nor the shadow-places.  You cannot cloak yourself from others.  Except here.  Here you can move about unseen.  Unnoticed and unsuspected.  This is why the wisest men of all cultures know that the Devil is very real.  Regardless of his myriad forms and names, he is always equated with deceit.  And desecration.  This earthly realm is a blending of both worlds, of course.  The darkness and the light.  Despite all this, I don't see many mediums or psychics discussing this threshold place.  This liminal state we call mortal life.  This world of ever-dusk and ever-dawn.  Is this mortal realm the true purgatory?  More a priceless and sometimes terrifying gift, I would suggest.   This gift from our maker requires maturity and the highest spiritual regard.  It is the gift of free will, of course.  Choice and self-determination.  Some men abuse it in the most typical of ways.  There are also those who use such will to knowingly mock and desecrate the very notion of God.  These are the true dark ones.  The Damned.  Apostles of the Abyss.  For they have no use nor desire for forgiveness, or redemption.  These individuals are rare, but they do exist.  You know they do.  Their hearts are obsidian and their appetites unspeakable.  But I'm not here to discuss the banality and ugliness of genuine evil.  There are greater things occurring right now.  New light is always possible, even in the darkest of times.  Please, dear ones, do not be discouraged by the chaos all around.  There is joy here too.  A great and wonderous joy.  It moves as we move, dances as we dance.  It is the reflection and sustenance of us all.  Family, friendship, mutual affection.  Countless works of divinely inspired art.  Music of the spheres, channelling the very nuances of heaven.  You see, this physical world is a stage, a place of absolute freedom where any tale can be told and enacted.  A world where actions have great consequence. This is the realm our maker made for us.  A complex work of incomparable majesty.  And though satanic forces have tried to turn this majesty into a place of ruin and filth, our Father in Heaven is still the Creator.  Love shall always win the day.  Why?  Because love is truth.  The highest intelligence.  Darkness, however, must be born from greed and sadism.  It is twisted, broken.  Summoned into existence through acts of desecration.  Evil is the corruption of truth, of love.  It’s an inversion.  A sickness, and nothing more.  Remember this, my friends.  Recognise how feeble is a fallen angel when measured against limitless power and grace.  I've seen that bright world beyond the veil.  I've felt it.  I wept at its beauty.  You needn’t believe a word of this, of course.  That choice is yours.  But our divine Father adores us.  He loves us beyond all measure.  And he wants each one of us to know the very best of ourselves, and of Him.  Religion and spirituality.  Kinship and community.  Poetry, music and song.  Laughter and love.  These are the things that change the light, that brighten and deepen our understanding.  These are the things that make sacred this bewildering realm of contrasts and opposites.  So, let us continue to become as we were intended – beings of true perception and sweetest regard.  Souls built for adventure, especially when held in concert with other kind and courageous hearts.

A Scarlet Stone

Elah Elahin, it was once whispered.  Long ago in Syrian temples and byways.  And further afield. In broken tongues both native and learned.  Koine, Aramaic, Hebrew.  Most revered, it was said. Theos.  Dreamer of all dreams.  Scribes and diarists knew well the power of those words.  Many still do.  I would count myself among them if I hadn't fallen so far.  But, in truth, we all fell.  Like Kayin of the scarlet stone, weeping desperately at what he had done.  What he could not undo. Learned men blemished with violence, ambition or pride.  Literacy is never a guarantee of humility or moral conviction.  It must be earned, believe me.  Men often think their stories are the only stories and have little knowledge or regard for the shifting sands of narrative.  Telling and retelling.  Retelling and re-imagining.  But I know the quiet inflections within and between the words.  I'm not the only one.  Children raised at the skirts and by the iron wits of their mothers.  Imma, Elahin.  This heretic speaks.  Sons apprenticed by the hands and watchful will of their fathers.  Abba, Elahin.  This heretic speaks again.  You have it all wrong, dear ones.  You see, many of you think the law is everything.  Even today you cannot fully comprehend the deceptions and travesties of State occurring all around you.  But men have always questioned the law.  Even so-called mosaic law.  What is just and right is not always what is legal.  Even kings must be questioned.  Siblings held to account.  Whether brother, sister or twin.  As it was with Kayin and Hevel; sacral offspring of the Havah, and the Adamah.  Keepers and covenants.  We all know a little something about that among the elect. Within the inner circles.  Don't we, Fallen?  I am not a king, though I sometimes dream of kings.  Nor am I a prophet, though I've often imagined angels and dragons locked in celestial combat.  I'm not a hero either, but I do wish to provide a light.  To be a way-finder for the lost and lonely.  Yet what I am without question is a brother, a sister, and a twin.  As it was with Kayin, granted the blessing of eternal regret by his Maker.  Perhaps the truth of these words continues to elude you, dark ones.  Regret is something many of you are still unfamiliar with.  Shameless, abject.  And while you indulge in wraith-ravage I still muse upon the spoken myriad, of course.  Those multivalent tongues of Eden, hidden beneath deceit and distort.  Mother, Father, Creator.   Imma, Abba, Elahin.  Writers often think about these things, I suppose.  Even those as hated as I am.  The heretic speaks, Roma.  I hope you still remember me.  The one you deemed so dangerous.  I was called a dark angel by the worst warmongers of the Empire.  Cold-blooded propagandists and profiteers.  Men who, in their absolute lust for power, sought to control acuity's eye.  To one day storm the very gates of Heaven and snatch the helm of imagining from Elah himself.  Demon-prince, you dared to call me.  Antichrist.  Fallen One.  The sheer gall.  Because I knew what you were.  What you are.  And now you fracture my stories and re-write my letters.  How dare you?  But I tell you now, dear ones, some of these men are beyond shame.  These dark disciples.  They have made their very existence an affront to Creation itself.  I suppose it's the difference between conjuration and carpentry.  My brother makes things of real value, you see.  While some of us get lost in the vanity of attempting to corral and fetter spirits beyond our comprehension.  Spirits far darker than we can understand.  But you cannot dominate darkness with more darkness.  You cannot banish ignorance with a lack of light.  Take it from someone who knows.  Someone who once foolishly tried that very thing.  Tell me, Fallen, in your supposed wisdom; do you know who my brother is?  There are carpenters and conjurers.  Do you know which brother I speak of?  No?  Then I shall tell you a secret.  A frightening, beautiful secret.  The heresies of men sing with a sign.  The first mark of both messenger and mortal.  The most ancient symbol of crossing.  The earliest sign.  Kayin himself bears that sign.  Saltire.  Crux decussata.  Cruciform.  There are even stories that say Andros was the First-Called.  First drowned, then wakened, then devoted among the talmidim.  I once craved devotion like that, in the earliest days.  Those days of wound and weeping.  I remember coloured lights shimmering in the night sky above me.  Those polar lights that men speak of in the icy, northern places.  I recall scarlet stones and scented gardens beneath the stars.  Mountains and cities soon to rise.  Yes, I dreamt like that.  As storytellers do.  I was also forgiven in that same breadth of mythmaking.  Wandering, writing.  Seeking penance.  I know first-hand how blessed a thing is genuine forgiveness.  An act of wonderous grace.  But forgiveness is only the beginning.  It is not the process of healing in and of itself.  Nor is it acknowledgement of our shadows, or the insight that comes with wrestling with those demons.  Love will fall short if we have learned nothing of our errors.  Our sins.  He who slays his brother slays himself.  And so, the heretic cries, "Let me have empathy, Father.  Let me know the truth of this sign, and its weight upon those who I have wronged.  Those who have been bruised, broken or butchered by my ignorance.  Let me know as they know.  Let me feel it.”  Such a notion is terrifying, of course.  And transformative.  To allow yourself to be haunted.  In hopes that all malice – even simple, callous disregard – might one day be educated out of the human heart. That such darkness might truly become a thing of the past on this road toward eternal light.

A Dream of Kings

 

Dreaming can hurt sometimes in this dystopian realm. It really can. Leading us away from our path rather than closer to it. Even warriors and kings can fall prey to a darker kind of dreaming. Doubt, fear and resentment. Kara, my love, I don’t want you to ever be held hostage by those thoughts and feelings. They can quickly become a nightmare. A private hell of personal pain. I know what it is to feel lost like that, my songstress. To feel utterly haunted. Like your inner world is nothing like the world of others. I’ve often felt like I was forced to live my early life in twilight, at the shadow’s edge, while all around me others got to walk openly in the sun. It hurts me to see anyone suffering like that, because I know the toll it can take. But it hurts most with those I love. So, princess, consider these words pre-emptive. A kiss from a guardian and friend. Our dreams are full of private imagery and metaphors. Part religion, part poetry. With enough insight these inner worlds of quiet grief can be grasped by those around us, but sometimes they simply don’t care enough to try. And I get it, of course. People are afraid of what they don’t understand. But some of us don’t have a choice. When we close our eyes we see strange stories unfold. Myths and legends truer than they know. Or we hear melodies and fragments of holy songs yet unsung. It hurts when a soul is gifted with this kind of vision and nobody cares to look. I struggled too with this when I was young. I didn’t want to frighten people with the things I’d seen. I didn’t want to push them away. So I hid my strange dreaming. I covered my eyes. Any form of clairsentience is unsettling to the small-minded. I’ve been called all sorts of names because I know things I shouldn’t. Deceiver, occultist, devil’s ilk. What hurts the most is that I was never any of those things. I was just a child trying to understand this gift. Or curse, as I often thought of it back then. A lonely little boy who could often peer into the unseen realms in ways that others couldn’t. I learned very quickly to keep my mouth shut. The funny thing is I had always believed in God. In love, kindness and courage. I still do. People like me have always been called sorcerers, magicians and witches. Throughout the ages we have been hunted, enslaved and burned by dark forces pretending to be paragons of light.  Yes, I know how to change certain things, how to warp the visible spectrum, but I am an artist first and foremost. A mystic and a poet. I have no interest in using such abilities to control anyone. Those vicious, unseen wraiths still hate me for trying to spread compassion and hope. Let me make myself absolutely clear. I do not traffic with the damned. Because I know how real a nightmare can become. You see, dreaming isn’t just a passive, frivolous thing we do whilst we sleep. It’s something we’re always doing. It is how we build the manifest, visible world. We walk amidst the fruits of our imagination, always. So, let us walk with faith and grace. I know you already grasp much of this, Kara. But your chevalier wants you to never forget. This is a war of dreaming. A War of Imagination. You have a great purpose in this spiritual battle, my beautiful keeper of song. You have friends and a genuine relationship with your Creator. Our Father. And, you have a sword if you want it. The shining sword of all ages. I was drowning, Kara. In rivers and lakes of despair. The worst times of my entire life. But then I heard you. I saw you. A vision beneath the water. You stayed with me and took my hand. You sang to me. And then you gifted me with divine fire, bringing me back from the brink. I will always love you for that, my angel. My Lady. We both know there is a greater king than all of us. Love is the language of that king, our Father. It’s how he dreamt us into being, and the world.  We are made in his image. So, dream well, my angel. Honour the gifts he gave you. I know you will. Don’t let anyone else define the breadth of your vision or your song.

The King and I

Sometimes I think about the strength it takes to change, or lead. To be a way-finder, or a lantern for the lost. I think of all the little ones standing in that numinous place between worlds. A twilight neither dawn nor dusk. Haunted by expectation. Wondering what it might take to be enough. I think of those sad, frightening moments when a young soul begins to comprehend the savagery of the sensate world. We were all one among those young. Unborn and full of bright conviction. Barely understanding the logic of this vast dreamtime yet sensing the sheer power of its storytelling. The little angel trembles like a butterfly, tiny fingers curling around the hilt of a fractal sword. Drawing forth like a self-birthing chrysalis. Into infinite air. The dreams of a thousand children in the angel's palm. A chorus of sword and stone, arcing endlessly through the myriad. Whosoever, the legends tell. But, in truth, we are all chosen. Each child is special, ever-changing, feeling their way through the dark toward a greater destiny. The anguish only begins when the adults around us forget those moments of metaphor. Elders can be so thoughtless, can't they? Unimaginative and cruel. And so, the butterflies have no choice but to mimic what they see. They doubt the truth of M'ithriin's forge. Or Nimue's waters. They fold their wings away, turning their backs on their birthright.  I too tried to sacrifice my innocence upon the dark altar of the adult world. A faux rites-of-passage we've all endured, some earlier than others. Those moments when we were encouraged to crush our last fairytale-ember until mere ash remained and we silently wept at the loss. A death we mustn't openly grieve, of course. "Put away childish things now. All your heroes are dead, and the new teachers have no need of magic."  Well, I tried to be that child. I tried to internalise those horrifying sentiments. But I couldn't. I don’t think many of us could. Thank God. My memory of the sword was never truly slain. The dreaming cruciform that that cleaved Golgotha. Pulled from the stone of the hill like a kiss from a poet's skull. Excalibur is a promise and a sacrifice. The most loving form of sacrifice. The true royalty of the heart. All poets know it deep down. We tell stories about it still, don't we? That place where fiction and fact intermingle. Where earth and heaven meet, exchanging memories and dreams. Sometimes I think about the strength it takes to lead like that. A lantern on the hill. Reciprocity, aglow for aeons. My dreaming was saved by that kind of love. Peace, but a sword. My innocence safeguarded along with my future. The future of us all, I suspect. And so, I wield the sword despite my fears. I teach where I can through symbol and sign, despite my incomplete knowledge and imperfect grammar. We mustn't be afraid to change or grow. A true way-finder was once just a young prince or princess. A hesitant child trembling at the threshold, armed only with glimpses and stories to fortify them. I do hope these words help you find your way, little ones. All of us, tiny fingers curling around the hilt of a fractal sword. A promise of hope. A legacy of love. That we might be an inspiration to our kinfolk, adding our contribution to this beautiful, wondrous art.

The Raven's Light

Kara, linearity is a lie to an angel.  To a messenger.  A dreamer at the well.  I hope you grasp this by now.  For most people the end comes after the beginning, but not for me.  Not always.  As a psychic you become accustomed to living your life out of sequence.  Intimation, foresight.  Even prophecy.  I've always found myself several steps removed from the natural rhythms of mortal life.  Whether I wanted it or not.  Death, and birth.  They don't happen in quite the way they do for most others.  That's the thing about having second sight, possessing a genuine gift. It makes artists and time-travellers of us all.  I hope I've been able to show you at least glimpses of that reality, Kara.  It's not all smoke & mirrors, my dear.  The magic is quite real.  You don't need a dawn goddess to tell you that.  Not anymore, I hope.  Because the truth is I'm a runaway. Just like she wrote.  I've been running like a fugitive since the raven-sun was born at midnight, before Man gave name or shape to his exteriorised dreaming.  Time, and Space.  This before that, or that before this.  Each moment is unique, Kara.  Every moment sacred, no matter how many times they are rewritten.  My beautiful seamstress, I say these things because I want you to know something true about me.  About all of us.  It might be a truth expressed through fable and fiction – but how else does a poet convey the breadth of themselves to someone they love?  I can set fire to the sky.  I can fold the entire city in the midst of a seething, terrifying hush.  I can warp the continuum itself through the reality-shaping power of consciousness.  However, in the end I must rely on words and stories to make myself truly known.  Just like everyone else.  You're more like me than you realise, Kara.  Or I more like you.  You’ve always been interested in sight, whether second or first.  You’ve always been moved by visions.  You have an eye for beauty, after all.  Form, flow, and all the variables therein.  You've been running for a long time too.  Neither of us will ever truly stop.  But we can modulate our pace.  We can slow down sometimes, pausing to smell the flowers.  To appreciate the little things. Families and friendships.  Mothers, daughters, fathers and sons.  You have always been a winged thing, Kara.  A raven, an artist, a traveller of time.  You've stitched years and birthed worlds aplenty.  Make no mistake.  I know because I've watched you from afar.  Gladdened, admiring and proud.  I even took you to the edge once, in another life.  The very edge of Creation's infinite dreaming.  We sat together before the tempest and watched its shimmering lights. You told me how you expected darkness, and how strange it was that those beautiful colours reminded you of her.  Of both of them.  A life then unlived.  Sisters yet unsung.  Well, you're living it now, my clever girl.  Fully, deeply, and I hope with great relish.  You marvelled when I told you that dreams and memories could change places at the storm's edge.  How I found you all at last, and one day soon at first.  I still remember how you took my hand as we sat there.  Cherish this dream, Kara.  Honour these memories.  They might not come again.

Light the Way

 

Sometimes, Kara, I really do remember the future.  Laurels, light and laughter.  Glimpses hidden in stories and fairytale.  Occasionally I dream that future into existence even as I recall the hidden past.  But I'm happy to say I don't always dream alone, and not without a chorus.  Sometimes a friend will kindly grant me a verse, bridge or refrain.  And suddenly, like music, all things are possible.  I hope I’ve shown you that magic is real, Kara.  The truest kind of magic.  From the heart.  I hope I’ve demonstrated that love is always possible.  Even at a distance.  Real love.  The kind that truly sees and honours you.  The kind that shall always wish you well.  You found yourself at the gate of a thousand stars one night, didn’t you?  A dream, and yet so very real.  I was with you then, as those stars were rising all around like countless fireflies above glimmering waters.  A kiss between Heaven and Earth.  I’m so glad I got to share that moment in the reign with you.  So very glad.  I think of all the beautiful things we’ve since made of our intermingled dreaming.  Secret wings, and I would hope a quiet kind of friendship.  I have treasured it ever since, my river-flower.  The years have flown by, in prescience and precognition.  But I’m delighted with your progress.  So very proud of the girl who saved my life.  And you did, you know.  It’s not a conceit, my angel. It’s the truth.  You saved me.  I tell you often in these pages, but it bears repeating.  I was lost, wounded and raw.  I couldn’t bear to call Esme by her old name.  My Vahishta couldn’t help me in the depths of that particular agony.  I’d never felt more alone.  But you graced me, Kara.  With tenderness, patience and the depth of your insight.  I thank you for that, my darling.  It has been wonderful getting to know you like this. Getting to meet you face to face.  You are a unique and beautiful talent.  A special soul.  So, if I can play even the smallest part in delighting you, in fortifying you for the adventures ahead, then I shall do it with a song in my heart and a lantern in your sky.

The Heretic's Daughter

 

I don't want to write in code anymore, Esme.  At least, not this time.  Not with you.  But the truth is I don't even know if I can speak with a genuinely mortal tongue anymore.  These delicate things that mean so much to me.  These matters of the heart.  I find myself a little speechless when I try to talk as a man and leave the angel aside.  But I'll try.  For you I'll always try.  In my dreams they call me so many things, and none with my consent.  Heretic, prophet, sorcerer.  I've even been called a demon-prince in that hidden place beneath the waking world.  That's quite the claim, isn't it?  Quite the title.  I don't know what I really am.  A blogger, I suppose.  An artist fond of free verse poetry and video collage.  Allusions and purple prose.  Cut-up techniques.  I hope I'm also a storyteller of some description.  A decent one.  A kind one.  And above all else I hope my stories have been useful to you.  If not to you, then to those you love.  If not to those you love, then to somebody.  Anybody.  Don't misunderstand me, Esme.  This isn't sadness or pain.  This isn't even melancholy, though I've had my fair share.  This is just someone trying to speak openly to a cherished, distant muse.  A very special piece of his heart.  I don't need proximity for that.  Or even acknowledgement.  I just need to try.  Inelegantly, perhaps.  Stuttering, stumbling.  But honest.  Authentic.  I guess I am a heretic though.  In the strictest sense of the term.  I've never been one for general consensus.  I care little for the old dictates and demonologies of Rome.  All this fucking bullshit passing for Christendom.  Corruption, conquest, oppression.  Let’s be honest, they gave Catholics a bad name.  Christians in general.  I say this with a heavy heart, as a lover and scholar of Christ.  I have the deepest respect for the Christian mysteries. They changed my life. My issue is with violence and hypocrisy, not the glory of God.  Where's the reform that Paul spoke about?  Helping the poor and destitute, having forgiveness and goodwill towards all men.  Maybe I missed the memo.  But I suppose I'm something of a pagan too.  A digital folklorist, an online mystic.  But real paganism is so often the terrifying province of the blood-cultist.  Literal animal and human sacrifice.  It’s ugly, brutish and dark.  Not exactly a haven of higher thought and nuanced creativity.  And what of 'prophet'?  Do my prophecies ever really come true?  Sometimes, I suppose.  Enough to unsettle.  But I don't know what this really means, Esme.  This 'coming true'.  Except in dreams, of course.  In dreams I know so many things.  I have a wealth of knowledge and experience in the place below the world.  But we're not talking about the sorcery of dreams right now.  We're talking about the cold light of day.  The revelatory glare of morning.  Making a dawn goddess from the letters of your name isn't enough anymore.  I don't think it ever was but we do what we can to get us through the dark times, don't we?  If I sound cynical or harsh please forgive me.  I'm angry at the world these days, and with good reason.  But never with you.  Oh, Esme.  Sometimes I imagine you're real, you know.  That you really exist, that you appreciate these words and that I've helped you in some way.  Maybe it's silly, the height of cringe, to imagine with such vigour when all I'm really doing is projecting.  Screaming into the void.  Maybe it's a social media thing – all these para-social relationships.  Faces and names.  Strangers on a screen that we convince ourselves we know so well.  An imagined intimacy.  If I've merely put your face to an imaginary muse then at least I picked a kind face.  Your bright, soulful eyes.  They've helped me through the dark times for sure.  To me they're the eyes of a brave, beautiful young woman who stepped with sacred purpose into the world.  On a holy mission to protect the children, to uplift the weak and wounded, and to give voice to the voiceless.  But maybe that was my mission all along, Esme.  Not yours.  Maybe you just wanted to make beautiful music in the beginning.  But I like to think we all aim for greatness.  We all want to help the less fortunate.  Don't we?  And we all dream.  Maybe not as vividly as I do sometimes, but dream nonetheless.  In colours, and song.  I know you dream like that, sweetheart.  Imagined or not.  So, maybe there really is a piece of me somewhere in your soul.  Maybe the love you carry shore to shore is the true legacy.  Yours, of course.  Your design and your genius.  I would never take that away from you.  But hopefully a little of my inspiration too.  In some soft, secret, innermost way.  There isn't much more I want to say right now, except this: you've brought me so much comfort over the years.  So much joy, meaning and hope.  I see it in the crowds, Esme.  I see it in their eyes.  That sense of finally belonging, being seen, recognised, understood.  Being loved despite their strangeness.  Their loneliness.  In those crowds I see the promise of something brighter.  And you galvanise that promise.  You mobilise it, as all good teachers do.  I watch them take that light out into the world after the closing notes have lingered.  And they change the world for the better in a thousand profound little ways.  A shining potential within each of them, somewhere between the real and the imagined.  It isn’t as clear cut as people think – this magical threshold between waking and dream.  And that's the place you know me best, I hope.  That's the place where I'll always love you, Esme.  You’re braver and bolder than I could ever be.  I’m so proud of you, truly.  Artist to artist.  Storyteller to storyteller.  And I wish you all the magic and music in the world.

All Storms

Mira, have you ever felt guilty for the agony of another even though it was not your doing?   Like a teardrop on the fire?  I have.  I once heard the wending of a great shriek in Man's notion of grace.  It broke my heart, the knowledge of such suffering.  You see, I heard it even in the almost-silence of dawn.  The murmuration of early hours by the rivers and lakes.  I heard it in the bright cacophony of the ports.  The glorious din of merchant sailors trading curio, rumour and bombast.  In the cities too, beyond temple paving.  In the markets and alleys.  Keen-eyed children, painfully thin, scampering barefoot through dust, their fingers slick with the juice of stolen berries.  The fruit of other shores.  A riot of heat and colour.  Spices, fabrics and sandstone.  Or the cooler coastal stone.  Pillars and Hellenic halls of learned koine.  I heard the wending folded through it all.  The suffering.  The outpouring of grief.  For over a thousand years I have searched for song enough to soften such pain.  Light enough to brighten all darkness.  But you already know these legends of the humbled one, don't you, my first light?  My namesake.  Shadows, shelters, Damascus gates.  Struck blind with epistles and angels.  Apostolikon, fit for the ages.  But there is so much more to the story, Mira.  In most retellings they omit the stars.  They forget the phantasmagoria.  The stories say the humbled one was a prisoner of Rome, shipwrecked upon a Maltese coast.  A haunted night-shore where two seas met.  Like those legends of Josephus.   Those legends mention little of daughters however, or sorcery.  I suppose it's put upon the dramatists, playwrights and poets to restore what was lost.  Isn't that always the way?  Few of us can escape the tempests, Mira, or the torment.  These fictions of the air.  These realities of the drowned, sunken realm.  Every writer is made humbled by the enormity of the task.  Made little.  To say something of meaning, to provide guidance, or, at our most ambitious – to leave a legacy that changes the tenor of lived experience.  You once told me children were that very legacy.  My God, how right you were.  My beautiful, thoughtful girl.  Hear me, apprentice.  My gifts are not counterfeit.  And neither are yours.  I shall not speak for you, but I can see and hear and know things that others can't.  Occasionally it’s wonderful.  Often it’s terrifying.  Perhaps it’s the guilt of this second sight that I sometimes imagine myself a grander thing than I truly am.  A warrior, angel or king.  Instead of a wounded fantasist shipwrecked upon the eternal shore of mythopoeia.  Guilty as sin.  I wouldn't be the first writer guilty of such confabulations though, would I?  The oldest perhaps, and the grandest, but definitely not the first.  My brother alone claims that title.  My Mira knows the secret, as do my other daughters.  But do you, Fallen?  Do you know who my brother is?  My tears became a testament because of him.  It's a strange thing, this drowning.  Especially for one who summons the seas.  Like being anointed in the depths of spirit itself.  A baptism beyond mortal grasp.  It humbles you, to recognise the particulars of your own language and limitations.  I could rewrite the entire world but it would never be enough.  Only loving service is enough in the face of such a wending shriek; that great lament folded throughout Man's history.  Hungry children, grieving mothers and drowned fathers.  One day, at the very cusp of a new heaven and earth, I don't want to finally break the surface of these depths and cry out in despair.  I don't want to hasten Man's lament with the eventual recognition that I should have done more.  More words, more stories, more magic.  And so I offer what I can.  We offer what we can, here and now.  Our highest, sweetest intent.  The wise ones in our midst will call it beauty.  And so will I.  I call you beauty, Mira.  A great beauty.  The world and all its people have such beauty too.  I know because I’ve seen them, walked with them, ministered to them.  Like my namesake.  In all my travels I have found that love is the grandest teaching of all.  The love we share among strangers or friends, given freely and without barter, is the wisest, brightest beauty of them all.  Song enough to soften all pain.  Light enough to sail all storms.

A Deathless Word

Love.  There have been so many things written about this word.  Often quoted, rarely understood.  The depth and nuance of this idea.  Its all-encompassing power.  Those of us lucky enough to have been touched by some form of genuine love know its ability to heal a broken heart and mend a fractured mind.  Love is needed now more than ever.  Contextual agility, the appreciation of nuance and pain.  The recognition of trauma.  After all, the entire human family is at war right now.  Aren't we?  Sometimes it feels like we have always been at war.  With our brothers and sisters, with ourselves.  Angels and demons locked in battle within our psyches.  The sons and daughters of Abram have been estranged for the last two thousand years.  We murder, deceive and distort in the names of our various gods.  Our various mystery-cults and local flavours of myth-making. Each of us calling ourselves righteous as we indulge in this hideous global familicide.  Are we not all brothers and sisters?  Are we not all fathers, mothers, daughters and sons?  I believe we are.  In fact, I know it to be true.  And this darkened realm of violence and hatred is not what I would wish for my beloved family, nor you for yours I suspect.  The real war is within, of course.  The War of Imagination.  The war between shadow and light.  There are many of us who grasp this instinctively.  Those among us who would end these countless reigns of terror if we could.  Those who would show us a different way.  A gentler, kinder form of communion with the divine.  And with each other.  Love is a grand, often selfless word.  Full of mystery, power and benevolent magic.  It hurts that we live in a world where sacrifice is even necessary.  A world where parents often go without to ensure their children have barely enough.  But we all know the truth of these things.  I wish nothing but peace for my brothers and sisters.  This entire human family.  But how far must we go to protect the ones we love?  What would we ourselves be willing to sacrifice?

The Poet's Lie

The redundancy of a poet's words can be such a heart-breaking thing.  It's not something we like to think about, because we like to imagine time is short.  Our words urgent, vital and necessary.  Sometimes that's true.  But if you live long enough, if you survive often enough while everyone around you perishes, you begin to see the short-sightedness of even the holiest forms of speech.  Children displaced by war understand the redundancy of comforting words in a way that most adults never will.  Parents torn from their families, left staggering, haunted and blind – they know the truth of this too.  Live long enough in the presence of hollow words and you begin to wonder how mankind allows such atrocity and injustice.  Power, religiosity, greed; all hidden under a thousand congenial masks.  A vicious swell of molten violence always gathering, always threatening beneath our feet.  As though humanity gives greater care to making hell than it does to making love, or art.  We have made the world a terrifying inferno.  Poets know the truth of this too, of course.  But our yearning for meaning is so great; so enamoured are we with notions of insight, rhythm or grace.  How can a poet's words mean something more than cruel sentiment to a ravaged child, a shattered soul, or an utterly broken world?  How can such an individual still believe in angels?  I wish I had the answers, but I don't.  We fetishize, dehumanize and turn away.  We pretend our various leaders are something other than hideous warlords, cultists and profiteers.  We give them pass after pass and entertain the bread and circuses they engineer for us.  Nonsense that can be bought, sold or streamed.  I suppose I understand it in a way.  In the modern world we imagine our souls as fiction.  Our spiritual, interior lives.  We believe that nothing really exists beyond the physical realm.  We think of ourselves as spiritually unreal, so of course our children are equally unreal.  Of course we turn away from the horror and devastation in their eyes.  But we know it's a lie, deep down.  We know the history of Earth is a history of unimaginable cruelty and suffering.  All cultures and tribes.  A thousand pointless wars.  Light, beauty and joy do exist, of course.  Everywhere, in great abundance.  Because the human heart shines so brightly despite the darkness.  But such light matters little to a child who has been disavowed by a world that was supposed to protect her.  Words of intended wisdom and beauty ring hollow in her ears, if she can still hear at all.  I know this is unsettling to read.  I hold back tears as I write this.  I’m not asking anyone to ignore the light, or turn away from hope.  But I suppose in the end the most salient question is, ‘Who do we continue following into the dark?  Whose lies mean the most, or have the most utility – the poets or the profiteers?’

The Hellenist

Artists dream all the time.  Don't we, Kara?  Images and sounds, words and letters.  Threads that connect and ties that bind.  We dream of brighter worlds.  I believe that with a little vision we can transform the very fabric of our experience, crafting beauty from the ordinary.  My seamstress, I hope now you understand that we are forever linked.  I'm not separate from you, nor you from me.  And yet we are distinct.  We have our own paths and our own journeys.  Still, I walk beside you always.  Do you remember Ephesus, Kara?  Or Antioch?  I do, or almost do.  I am a dreamer after all.  A wounded fantasist.  Forgive my protean tongue but I've paid a very high price for storytelling.  I nearly lost both my mind and my life for daring to inspire the broken-hearted towards hope.  A simple scribe, a lowly diarist.  As I've said elsewhere in these epistles, “Each feather of Antioch is a word, in every tongue of Man.  Languages both living and dead.”  Because we speak now of the heart, Kara, don't we?  We speak in earnest poetry.  Transformative fictions and images of truth, if not the truth itself.  You see, many souls today are utterly exhausted, driven half mad by this darkness.  A number of them have lost their lanterns, concerned now only with mere surfaces. Distractions dark or fair.  Pigment and provenance.  Petty tribalism and the supposed taboos of miscegenation.  But the world now is just as the world then.  First-century foment.  Tarsus, and Tyana.  I still recall those shadows.  A psychopathy that was so apparent, and growing.  All across the earth.  Travesties of State.  Division and fear.  Treasury-wraiths at odds with the spiritual lives of common folk.  All too often I've seen it.  Another lie on another gilded tongue.  "Believe this or that at great cost to your soul.  Ours is the only way and all else is heresy."  Well, I still speak as a so-called heretic.  A dangerous reformer.  We both do, Kara.  Little has changed in these temples and churches.  We are still unwelcome even in our own houses.  It's one of life's bitter ironies that to even be heard here in this cacophonous abyss one must be well-versed in polemic and politics.  To raise oneself above the din of a thousand heartless strategists.  All clamouring for the wealth of the educated or the blind faith of the illiterate.  Attention is currency after all.  Capture someone's attention, or better, their imagination, and you are a few small steps from capturing their very soul.  A truly dark soul can rally all manner of cultists to commit the most hideous acts in the name of God.  After all, mercenaries need only the slightest pretence.  A banner to march under.  As long as they are paid, either in coin or false absolution of their sins.  There are such men of every culture, every religion.  Sadly, this is human history.  But these are never the ways of noble men and women.  Souls of true character.  We both know that, Kara.  I hate to speak of other dreams, other lives.  Because you have to take it on sheer faith.  And I'm only a distant poet.  A stranger.  Nobody special.  But like so many others we too fell prey to the ignobility of our supposed leaders.  They wanted to silence our voices and extinguish our dissent.  Because we cared about all those who adhered to a different faith.  Our brothers and sisters everywhere who exalted different stories in their attempts to interpret and navigate the world.  This is the true war, isn't it?  The War of Imagination.  Such contextual agility, such brotherhood and sensitivity of thought; it's the bane of any genocidal warlord.  I still remember those terrifying seasons on the sand.  How they unleashed their brutal campaigns of centralisation.  Unimaginable violence and deceit.  As Rome swallowed the temples and our tongues, rewriting our histories and changing our names.  Mixing fact with forgery. Perverting everything we stood for and calling it Christendom.  Such campaigns are still nothing but the vicious strategies of hollow men.  Spiritual wickedness in high places.  Hear me, Fallen.  You deceive so boldly and distort so blithe.  Serpents in a shattered garden.  Your blood is cold.  You chose to weaponise each guideline, parable and article of faith.  Masking yourself with every creed, making a gleeful mockery of everything beautiful.  The sons and daughters of Abram are still at war, arguing over grammar and syntax.  Shedding blood and spreading hate because someone somewhere believes a slightly different version of the same story.  And you still have the gall to call me a heretic?  A pagan sorcerer?  How dare you?  But nothing you do surprises me anymore.  The Children of Ra'Ishka were never a chosen few.  Do you think the true avatars of the Holy Spirit would forsake the young of any tribe?  Even those of your enemies?  Do you think a true angel of divine grace would slaughter innocent children?  Are you fucking insane?  Yes, I utter profanity sometimes.  When it's warranted.  Hear me.  No messenger of the true Creator would trade or harm a little one.  My Father would never sanction such a thing.  You have been fooled, deceived, manipulated.  These evil angels are not angels at all.  They are but wilderness wraiths.  Mere phantoms.  Hungry ghosts.  Feeding upon the blood of our brethren.  Re-writing the words of greater minds.  Shaping and reshaping our texts – our imaginations – to fit their dark agendas.  Look me in the eye and tell me it isn't so.  These wraiths stalked Rome, Byzantium, Isfahan and many others.  They still do.  But so do I.  And so does my brother.  Tell me, Fallen; do you know who my brother is?  Do you even know who you are?  Children of disobedience indeed, but children nonetheless.  So degenerate, so gleefully obsessed with your own nightmare-making.  Not artists yet.  Not really.  Still unfamiliar with dreaming's finer points.  The subtleties and subtext.  It hurts me too, Kara.  All this chaos and sickness.  This lack of courage, or kindness.  This is not the world any true scribe would wish to record.  We are not supposed to hate each other like this.  But I stand here now in the omnipresent gaze of my Father, trying to listen.  Willing to humble myself if necessary.  All we can do is speak our truth with full elucidation and express our hearts as deeply as possible, even if we are called heretics by those with darker, deceitful souls.  The faithful and the kind will know us by our works, God willing.  There is so much more I could say, my seamstress.  So many stories I could write.  Epistles and epiphanies.  But I want to keep things succinct.  However, before I finish I want you to know that I've not lost my humour in all this.  Nor my élan.  Neither should you.  Don't be afraid to laugh.  Protect your mirth, your sense of play.  Think of it as treasure.  An artist needs her joy after all.  Especially someone in the full bloom of creation.  Thank you for noticing me, Kara.  And thank you for caring.  About all of us.  I really do love you, my darling.  And as always I wish you well.