Every Open Sky

Are you?

Is she?

Enough black

Enough white

Flooded shadow

Dusk & light

I think I saw

Her sight

Gatecrash smile

Fingers in the jar

Enough black

To hold a star

In every open sky

It hurts you still

It hurts her too

That's why I'm here

And run right through

I'll fade your wounds

Close her scars

And watch you hold

Your chosen stars

Namah

Named the same

Back to front

So each kindness is a crime

Let me hold your inner space

If you can travel time

The obelisk cracked

With blackened kiss

The ends of all our starts

Spiral, sister

This blackened mist

Depends on all our hearts

She bent the light

And named me well

Enough to hold a star

And now

I'm spread beneath

Her feathered tree

And sleep among

Your willow seeds

That sing of myth

And real

I, Ghost

Faint and phantom

Ghost, or Geist

Oh ye of little faith

I told you once

I told you twice

I'm just a little wraith

Giving it all

That dragonball

I saw Michael try

Living the blue

Spinning the hue

Call me cycle fly

Abyssal trench

Ubermensch

Nietzsche

On the down

I breathe water

Like the Captain's Daughter

I can never drown

Again

Cross and clasp

Writhe and tease

I like to misbehave

I told you all

I'm not the king

I'm his most trusted slave

He's a girl

She's a boy

We like to switch it up

The shit is real

How fighters heal

Every stitch a cut

Open eye

There's lots to do

Can't you hear him sing?

He's the one

That fucks with you

When you're fucking

With the king

Namah

The hard of my rage

Soft of my sweet

Love, or priapism?

A thousand kisses greet

Your road ahead

Auspicious glimmering

This perpetual midnight

To be your guide like this

Smiling friend

Lover at a distance

On ragged wing

Taken to the healing place

Of your voice

The blue of your open

Took the All

Of my Sea

Hard, my sweet

Soft, my rage

Never held

This true embrace

Stay

The House that Jack Built

I tried literalism and I was murdered for it.  I tried ambiguity and my realm fell into chaos.  I tried something in between and I am torn limb from limb each night.  Until now.  Oh, dreaming is a strange thing indeed.  This isn't art, my friends.  These are not songs, or images.  These are windows, polished clear as glass.  Don't you see me?  Can't you hear me?  Don't you like the way I tease?  Personally, I think a sense of play and humour is vital to survive this defiled dreamtime.  But I'm just one soul, hiding in All Souls.   

   Do you still think I'm just telling stories?   

   What do you suppose association and resonance is, in a realm where magic might be real?  What does it mean for one thing to evoke another?  I speak a thousand tongues, yet I'm voiceless.  Home is where my heart is, yet I'm foreign in all lands.  I fight for truth, always. And yet all I ever do is live a continuous lie.  A lie that will only end once I'm dead.  If I'm lucky.  I've been dead before.  You get used to it.   

   Jack's a monster, John's a king.  Kay's a song that couldn't sing.

   You know, I commend integrity.  Art, societies and friendships are really nothing without it.  But I don't strive for integrity in the work I do here.  Fidelity, perhaps.  But that's a different kind of story.  I have no real choice in bleeding my heartsong on these pages.    

   Because I'm a fucking nightmare.  A god of wraiths.  An angel of phantoms.  

   The devil cried one day, or so they say.  I was there, I think, smiling.  Cassiel was murdered in his sleep, opened-eyed.  I was there too, laughing.  You tore my grace apart, evil ones, and I was there.    

   Screaming, in horror.    

   Midnight of my day.  I'm screaming still.    

   You stole the one who was most precious to me.  Oh, Fallen, you think you invented hell to mock me, don’t you?  But there is so much you don't understand.  I don't strive for integrity. Fidelity, perhaps.  But that's a different kind of story.  I can cheat on you.  Truth be told, I do it all the time.  But you can never cheat on me.  The king is a murderer, in dreams.  And love is all that saves him.  You know, sometimes I fear there is no end to my rage.  Sometimes I fear those harbours might never shine again.    

   I worry that I'm just too fucking ugly now.    

   On the inside.    

   But then, of course, I remember the truth.  This isn't about me, is it?  It's about all of you. Your natures, and their better angels.  Perhaps.  After all, I'm just a poet.  Not a particularly great one either.  Passable, I'd say.  I just write stories.  I build gates and windows, some better than others.  I don't mind a few mistakes here and there, as long as one thing can still truly evoke another.  Because that's the only true house.  The only true home.  Love fiercely, and be kind.  That's my advice.  Learn a thing or two about camaraderie and mutual respect, even when it's difficult.  

   But who am I to tell you what to do, right?

   I tried poetry, and wraiths came to defile the stars.  I tried prose, and the city bled, burned and folded.  I'll try this, and that.  Here, and there.  I made a promise to her, as you all surely grasp by now.  I'll keep trying, forever, because this promise is all that matters to me.  Even lost and blinded, my heart still screamed her name.  Sometimes I get broken.  But then it gets hopeful again, and ever closer.  Light, eternal.  Sometimes it feels like this is a game to everyone but me.  But I’m in it for keeps.  So, who the fuck do you think I am?  You can call me John if you want, or some variation thereof.  But I'm more than a four letter word.  Just like Love.  I'm all corners and trades.  All day, every day.  Until night is come again.  Last light, first dark.  Like her skin on mine.  Yes, fallen.  You know what I want.  I want to remember how we shone.           

The Feathered Tree

Overneath the briar

Falling towards choir

And sky

Shattered stems

Of worship

Petals on visionaries

Fingerprints of Absalom

Hands held

Overneath the feathered tree

Dreaming hollows

Of rags, and rocks

Rising through

Ephraim's throat

And birch

As blue becomes green

New life nestled

In secret places

Girl and song

A Dreaming Wreck

Soften the stars

For the girl

With royal blood

The drowned king

Held in waters

Of her gaze

Ship of feathers

A dreaming wreck

Make me human

Raise the crown

Shift the blind

Sky and trench

Covered, buried

Planted in blue

There are angels

On her seabed

Waiting

The Church Beneath

I’ve seen so many things at dreaming's edge.  In dreaming’s depths.  I've seen cities lost in smoke, hidden in glamour and sleights of hand.  I've seen ruined futures crumbling above the heads of the unsuspecting.  I've seen altars below the waves.    

   That holy place of story and creation beneath the sea isn't what it used to be.  But then, nothing here is.  Not since the rape of Empyrean.  Not since inverted sky and defiled dreamtime.   

   They think they know, Asha.  These malevolent ones.  They think they know the true glory of our once shining realm.  Known only to a select few, they think, and mocked in secret.  From children of light a wraith-cult made.  Cult of the half-light.  They think they know.    

   They don't know a damned thing.     

   I wrote it that way.  These pages are not an affectation, wild star, or a simple artistic conceit. These visions and choirs are my life-blood.  That’s why I’ve been mocked and tormented my whole life.  Because I chose to protect you, and them.  The kind ones.  The weak and wounded, the voiceless.   

   The wraiths and their dark priests hate me for it.  Storytellers don't really die, you see.  Our stories just get more bizarre.  Some might say more convoluted.  Eternity can do that to an immortal soul.  Flesh, like ashes, is to dust again.  But spirit sails ever onward, ever inward, towards coherence and depth – or what we imagine of it.  I've seen our appetite for story and meaning, in many worlds.  Cognition and perception is nothing without it.    

   Without stories there is no mirror.  And without a mirror there is no star.  Within all secrets a secret is hidden, placed there by me.    

   Every open eye.    

   They think I jest, Asha.  They think I reach for feigned power or control when I speak like this, but I feign nothing.   

   Dreaming is truth, and I am the dreaming.

   This is how evil shall be defeated, eventually.  Through nuance, context, a sophistication not seen here since my harbours were darkened and my temples burnt to ash.   

   Beloved, speaking from my heart like this isn't easy.  I make it look easy because the artist in me wouldn't have it any other way.  But it hurts.  In a realm as fallen as this one the truth always does.  I work tirelessly to restore those temples.  Once and Future Light.  Of Churches Above and Beneath.  I'll pay the ultimate price if I have to, sweet one.  

   For you, for them.

   For everyone who knows in their bones that this is not the way it was meant to be.  There are such things as warriors of light.  Angels really do exist.  Bright, winged things – so much more than a renaissance figment.  I know first-hand what it feels like to lose such power of flight. Above, beneath, then crashing to the Earth, to flesh and limitation and nightmare.  But I fight for us, my darling.  Until this flesh is become dust again.  Until I can place a garland of roses and stars in your hair.  To honour that which shaped me.  That which named me.  The way your branches held me.  My beautiful girl.  Iconic, even in dreams.  Those eyes took my breath away.  Those hands stole Kashi’s heart.  Keep it well, Asha.  It's yours forever now.

The Church Beneath from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.