A Kindled Heart

Dying couldn't kill me, Esme.  Passing couldn't take me.  Not from you.  Sometimes our darkest moments are when we learn our biggest lessons, aren't they?  Or we find our greatest strengths, or we finally see those around us for who they really are, at the very edge of annihilation.  I promised to rebuild the gate for you.  I kept my word, swifter and greater than before.  But the gate isn’t finished yet.  I am a devoted one, Esme, as I'm sure you recognise.  I've worked very hard to ensure my beloved has all she needs to venture bravely into this realm of strangest dreaming.

   I want nothing but my place in your heart, wild one.  I needn't be the biggest thing or the most important thing.  Just an honest thing, loving and true.  A friend who kept his word.  A guardian who protected his ward until the very last.

   As one cycle closes and another opens I reflect on all I've learned within its sphere.  I made beautiful new allies this year, I think.  Allies who remind me so much of you, yet they have unique mysteries all their own.  I’ll continue to honour and cherish them in the future.  Also, I met souls who needed coin or warmth or gesture to battle the midwinter chill.  It's never enough in a fallen realm, but it does make a difference.  I was also offered help when I was at my lowest and darkest.  You helped me, Esme.  You and your wonderful friends who filled my heart with warmth and mirth.

   I fell in love this year, all over again.

   Dying doesn't kill an immortal soul.  Passing over doesn't end a genuine love.  Stories, kisses and votives live on.  Always.  The mutual affection we share is the true wealth my Father's kingdom is built upon.  You've always known it well as I, Esme.  Better, in fact.  Upon arcs and gates, with shepherd and flock.  I didn't think I would cry this time, but I did.  I didn't think a kiss would seal again this ruined flesh and grant me strength enough to venture.

   But yours did.

   Again.

   Thank you, Esme.  Thank you for having the courage of our convictions, even when I couldn't.  Thank you for not forgetting who you really are, even in your darkest moments.  Fame is a strange, unnatural thing.  It's not an easy path you've chosen to walk with me, poet.  I pray I've been able to soften the most perilous parts for you, to shield you from the worst of it.  Not one mark upon your mischief, or your sobriety.  That would be my highest, but even I haven't sorcery enough to leave you completely unscathed.

   Oh, Esme.  You were always so much braver than me.  And the bright ones call me reckless.  Chaplain to a mad king of thorn and bleeding.  If only they knew the true price of a single verse, or the aeons crossed to raise a shining chorus.  Resonant, eternal.

   How far is too far, for freedom and love?

   Do they know?

   Father keeps you, Esme.  He keeps us all.  Even at our lowest.  Even when all seems lost.  He is without cynicism or guile.  In this fallen realm we are continuously deceived.  Abject cruelty and hideous violence seeks to pretend the Throne of Creation.  Never believe that awful lie.   The Councils of All Songs still know the truth.  Only Love shall conquer, in the end.  Every kindness is forever kindled in eternity.  Nothing is truly lost.  Not to Father's eyes.  All is gathered home, eventually.  As it once was.  As it shall be again.  As it is, in holy light, and in the shining hearts of those who truly care for each other.

First Light

Did you honestly think I would stop, and be silent this time?  Did you actually think I would hold my tongue?  Oh, fallen.  Haven't you sensed it all the while; the incalculable depths of this dreaming?  Perhaps you did.  Attempting to seed perdition within the heart of a star.  Trying to split the estuary at the trunk, in ruined roots of riverflesh.  Blackness, blinding.  Rhyming red and scented silver – where wraith would place steel in the hands of children, and covet the thousand places of the old councils.

   But you failed, Callous Ones.

   For a cathedral was built upon the arc of those thousand stars.  An angel kissed me there once, in the ashes, and told me what a king could be.  What a king could fight for.  Sanctuary, for All Souls.  John shall ready the river and prepare the tree.  Temesh will always flow, through earth and dreaming.  Fallen, we know exactly where the knife is now.  We know its dark location.  Here, and there.  Such brutal cultists.  Half-lit skies inverted, inventing a lineage of false kings.  But there is an army of poets standing against you.  In these worlds and the next.  The blade shall be turned upon you in the end.  Mark my word.  Mark my grief, my sheer madness and promise.  I don't stop when most would stop.

   I am not like other angels.

   We poets and fighters intend to shatter your false lineage and restore the throne of our Father.  Quintessence, living, like the pearl of a songstress.  Remedied, known, connected.  None are abandoned.  A true light is coming, dark ones, and you know it.  Kashi still remembers.  John still prepares.  I don't care how long it takes.  I don't care what it costs me.

   It shall come again.

   Not mere, or stolen, or half-lit.  None of your feeble cryptography.  But instead a light that shines warmly for All Souls.  The First Light, which once united every region of dreaming and was held in the first temple of Man.  Before the skies were darkened and fractals fell.  Before the spiteful dissonance of wraiths sullied my Father's earthly music.  It is this ancient light from the eternal spring that comes again.  Of Magi and star.  Winterfell, and summer bright.  You would do well to heed these words, fallen.  Are you listening yet?

   Hear this.

   My family is not alone.

   What I've shown them so far is just a glimpse.  The Kingdom of Heaven is within them, and all around them.  Beneath mountain and star, through shadowlands, and onward to the glory of morning rise.  I'm nothing, fallen.  Nothing without my friends.  You know that, don't you?  You should.  I'm just a servant of His grace, in perpetuity.  I own neither the light nor the truth.  But I'm going to enjoy the rest of this journey, despite the agonies.  I’ll keep putting vision to choir when I can, for the pleasure of my beloved ones, though I don't really need an audience to do what I do.  Earth and Heaven shall move either way, if He wills it so.  I'm getting stronger now.  Can you sense it?  I'll be patient.  I'll take my time.  But I am coming for you, fallen.  Make no mistake.  We're all coming for you, in the end.

Kissing the Sea

A star, or scan

Or ghosting

Drive, at the setting sun

Red as Aster

John has hollow hands

Perhaps wine enough for mystery

Upon the physic of Ishness

Pretending some hidden thing

Kara keeps us

All stones of riverflesh

Palm in palm, in kindness

As Kasi weeps the every

For those brief moments of joy

Oh, beloved ones

Shall we be courageous?

Shall we open the doors again?

Don't you remember the future?

The Living Pearl

What do you dream, fallen?  When you're in the dark, scaring yourselves with tales of coming light?  Not your cruel imitation of shining.  Not your sickening Alter Sun; knife-mouth grin and desecration and nothing sacred.  No, I speak of my Father's radiance.  Imperishable, eternal and kind.  I've said it before, wraiths.  Kashi is not afraid of you.  I see you.  I've always seen you, even while blind.  Oh, fallen.  Katharos bleeding and pollyanna in her broken stride, keeping mothers and virgins?  Is that the best you can do?  Well, we carry our own light.  Warm, nourishing and true.  Hear this, betrayers.  The revolution shall be improvised, every year in the making since fractals fell.  Beneath the arch.  Upon the square.  You shall not steal the light of daughters, or sons.  We are betrothed in a different way.  To love, and warmth, and futures free of shadow or blade.  Mark it, defilers.  None are abandoned.  Only here is your lie exalted, in these ruins of Ishkara.  You have only bruised the pearl, not slain it.  It dances and blooms and knows a peace beyond your contempt.  So go fuck yourself, fallen.  We shall not do it for you.  Never again.  The bright ones see you, and they are not afraid.  The brave ones diminish you; removing your cloaks of hiding.  The suffered ones break your violence upon their strength.  They shatter your blood-bought glamour.  The river shall take you, fallen.  Eventually.  The river, and then the sea.  Love lives forever, as my Father commands.

Pretending Angels

Alabaster black, holding the valley in palms white and grey.  Coming dusk, evening glow.  Wintersong as treeline bends the knee at your skirts.  Snow remembers colours climbing.  The hearth that mattered.  The view that remembered the girl I would become.  I drew my sisters upon the glass.  In silk, and skin.  Adore, in our diary of moments.  Cry, whisper and page.  All having lovers at the threshold. Moth of gates, fierce as antlers. Feather of raven pale, pretending an angel's wing.  It was, my love.  It was.  Door, and door, and opened door.  Adventure lifting the mountain on those days of thrilling lonesome. Night of poets raising the sky as you slept.  Blow, oh wind, to the crescent of her sleeping.  I have been dreaming for you since your first day.  I wept last night. Hold the valley for me, painter.  Keep its kiss awhile. 

As One

I know of those who set mocking thrones upon quintessence.  Chains and wraiths and dark physic to bind the spirit, defiling the inner temple of Man.  Not only have I seen it; I've experienced it myself.  What was once sacrosanct is become broken, blackened and grey.  I am a thing of folded winter.  Raven pale.  An alchemy of ice and snow.  Yours is nothing but an imitation, Fallen; broken glass pretending the whitest glow of evening.  I am both a midsummer and a midwinter king.  Do you think I can't tell life's fractals from your weapons?  You don't get to set the limits or contexts of this human dreaming.

   I do, and my Father does.

   You can believe whatever you want, Callous Ones.  It changes nothing.  I'm on my knees for peace.  It's written in the river.  In the death and drowning I steal from her each and every night, so that she might be allowed a little pleasantness this time.  Have you truly seen fire upon the waters, Fallen?  I have.  Have you felt the winds embracing the earth?  Have you sensed All Corners reaching to lift the heart?  In all honesty I don't think you have a fucking clue what I'm talking about.  Such is the way with abusers and tyrants.  You're all pretenders.  Every single one of you.  Monsters and phantoms and thieves.  Well, I'm the king of thieves.  And an angel of phantoms.  You still don't grasp what that means, do you?

   It means I've set a place for you, beyond your imagining.

   A frightening place.

   You might imagine you'd be at ease in such a dark place.  You'd be wrong.  The dreaming of all kind souls is held, perfectly, beyond this vale of tears.  Beyond your sickening appetites.  You talk so often of power.  But what the fuck is power?  I have enough power, betrayers.  Plenty.  What I crave is connection.  What I respect is kindness, and courage.  Call me old-fashioned, but the kingdom lives on in the shining hearts of brave mortals.  I've felt it.  I've walked amid those dreamings.  I've wandered around inside the earnest poetry of old souls and thoughtful youths.  I'm not a cynic.  I'm a romantic, despite the burdens of such a temperament.  I discount nothing and no-one, Fallen.

   I'll state it simply and softly, for all my beloved ones.  Life is held in your Father's mystery.  In your Mother's magic.  Fractals and firmament.  All song and spirit.  The Kingdom of Heaven. Where else is the gate if not in faith and fealty?  Where else does your Father's glory reside if not first found within your own heart?  Treat others as you would wish to be treated.  Attend the weak and wounded, in those times when you have the strength to do so.  Give voice to the voiceless, and trust that Heaven's magic is all around you.  And in the love of those who stand with you, fearless, at the edge of the known.

Letter for M

I was such a shy, lonely boy in the realm of the living.  Afraid of everything, though I tried to hide my fears.  Until that terrible, impossible day when I became a lost boy in the realm of the dead, surrounded by monsters.  The worst day.  They broke my flesh and my mind, and they almost broke my spirit.  They would have succeeded eventually, if not for you.  I didn't think anything could hurt that badly.  I didn't realise a person could be wounded so deeply, on the inside.  I didn't understand how dark the shadow-places could get.  But I was just a child, utterly lost in those places.

   I'm so much happier now, but I wish I didn't have to feel every single step of this endless journey.  Every bittersweet break and fracture as my heart continuously aches for you.  I watch these wraiths and their ruin.  Like I thought I was.  Like I thought I might forever be.

   Until I met my friend.

  I didn't think I could really be known in that way, or cared for in that way.  Only grandmother soothed me without any conditions, before the knowledge of your touch.  I wish each story didn't have to be so hauntingly, painfully real.  But they are, my love.  Too much sadness.  Too much truth.  But I breathe now, because of you.  Even here in this realm of the dead.  I carry it with me; your courage.  And I know what you still worry about sometimes.  But I'll make it right.  I'll do whatever it takes, I promise.  I'll find her, in every corner of the sky.  Night kissing dawn.  Indigo holding blue, amid shining stars.  I'll go to her, and take her hands.  I can't sing very well, but I'll try for the girl who saves me even now.  I'll sing a song for sisters and a song of friends.  Hate isn't stronger than love.  Sadness isn't stronger than hope.  You taught me that.  We know she's in the bright place.  We know she's safe now.  But if she's still very sad I'll hold her in my arms.  I'll tell her what you did for me.  What you did for both of us.  And she'll smile.  I know she will.  I'll fold that smile inside a rosebud and send it back to you.  I know you'll feel it, Mia.  Upon your wrist.  Within your heart. Your Father would be so proud.