The Harbinger of the Lunar Dawn

I run across the frozen heath. Blades of glass shatter beneath the soles of my naked feet. I am a red blur. The land shrinks from my warmth. It shrivels at my alien touch. Once I belonged. No longer.

Exiled from the frozen islands, finally forbidden from that dark waste, girded by cold and lifeless seas. Now making haste down to the bony shores, now easing my skiff into blackened waves. Point the bow towards hospitable terrain. Allow the fierce chill to fill that dingy sail. Weathered canvass creaks in anticipation. The ocean is of glass; too smooth, far too easy.

I lay crippled, hemorrhaging, as we carve our way over the placid surf. In agony and delight. The most beautiful pain. I'll not return to sun kissed shores the same. I cannot. Before I make land a new kind of man will stand at the stern. Steady hand on the rudder, proud, clear eyes refreshed by the beauty of his new world. Host, no longer, to the parasitism of ancient and hungry ghosts. Impossibly cured of the deep malaise, the sickness of the soul, but cured nonetheless, and eager.

The red eye climbs above the horizon and with it, color returns.

The Dark and Silent Earth

It lays unbounded, spreading out to eternity. A hidden land, a subterranean world, from which springs the strange vigor which puts paint on all our hollow walls. Only the most bold may visit this place, and even those cannot stay long, for rationality disintegrates into the shrieking horror of it's darkness. Nietzsche delved too deep in his efforts to plumb the fantastical secrets of oblivion. Like Odin, after drawing from Mimir's well or, even later, after hanging from the gallows bough of Yggdrasil, the price of passage through the dark and silent earth is to burn within the black fire; nothing comes back the same.

It is easier to visit Avalon. That quiet metropolis, which dwells beneath the roiling seas, is still a difficult and unforgiving land, though it suffers not from the anti-matter impossibilities of the former space. In Avalon, the ways of the dark and silent earth can be understood, they can be known without invading and overcoming the minds of men. Avalon is a battleground, a convergence of angels and daemons, and those who manage to make their way back, who endeavor to return to these, the twisted lands of Dystopia, will do so with new-found insight and unrivaled freedom.

But better yet for Avalon to come to us. Like the Lady in the Lake, the lovely Vivian, rising from the waters, up from her dark home to deliver the palladium forged Caliburnis into unsuspecting hands, so can depth of mystic thought, like a bolt of lightning cutting through the night, arc from there to here, tempering rule of might with the reasonable suspicion that there is much more to the story than that which we can clearly see.

Vitriolic

The savage way has opened up before me again. I came up against his eyes. My eyes. Twin black holes from which no light would try to escape. This is the one who lives inside me. The jackal. The dark beast. His way is ruin. Destruction. Tar and ash. Rubble. His way is darkness.

My shadow is strong. Every road I've walked, he's been beside me, within me. The things he knows, they eat away at my insides. He made his home in the caverns of my heart and has been pumping his own thick black blood into my body. It's slowly changing me. He wants to turn me into something else. He wants to take command. One day, I know, there won't be anything left for him to devour and he'll walk around in my skin, talking with my voice, looking out at the world through my dead eyes.

mosquito

Avenues like abscesses unfold to the horizon. An eternity of the mundane and the repetitious. The scars of capitalism leave us with knotted, hardened flesh. Festering cavities exude apathy where our dreams once lavishly reveled.

The swarm descended. Ectoparasites. With the penetrating thrust of proboscis, they plunged their mouths deep into our tender souls. Feeding deeply, they drain us of our feelings and leave us, to wallow, in purgatory.

Valkyries of Avalon

Her poise is perfect. Silhouetted against the rising sun, standing regally at the top of the ridge line, she scans the valley below. She is searching for the weary souls; ragged, sun scorched, and thirsty pilgrims who have suffered for their trials, who have sacrificed much to enter into this valley of the shadow of death. A gentle wind plays with errant tendrils of her hair. Her eyes need not face the sun to shine; they possess a light of their own.

She sees one. An archaic and skeletal creature crawling slowly over the dry earth. Long since sapped of it's endurance, long since divested of it's humanity, all the withered one has left is courage and dedication. It has made it deep into the valley. She knows that once it must have had great strength. Herculean strength. Such a one is worthy of her touch.

She has grace and speed. She cuts an incendiary trail down into the valley, so quick that she seems to float, effortlessly, over the cracked earth. The broken one is surprised to see her there, astounded by her amaranthine beauty, overtaken and overwhelmed by the supernatural aura with which she is cloaked, the Aegis of Pallas Athene. The creature tries to give voice to words, a greeting perhaps, but that which issues forth from it's parched mouth is a guttural croak, a premonition of death's rattle.

The luminous one draws forth a skin and tips it towards chapped lips. Heavenly comfort blossoms in an aged, aching heart. Fallow lands regain their fertility. The wasteland transforms into paradise. The wizened creature now sits upright, marveling at the long sought clandestine truths which open up before it. Flesh and form return to those brittle bones, revealing that she is the daughter of the dawn. She possesses a stunning beauty of her own. She stands, she joins her luminous sister, and the mantle of prestige is shared between them. They depart the valley. As they go the luster of the land fades, and the earth is once again held hostage by the shadow of death.

They climb to the ridge. The sun, high overhead, is no discomfort to them. They wait, watching for wayfarers, refugees of Dystopia, the uncommon anomalies and castaways who have a predilection to revaluation, towards a higher way. They wait for the signs of strength.

Pariah

The morning star blazed through the sky leaving a trail of incandescent glory. It was night, the darkest of nights, for the moon had hid her face, not wishing to witness such unbearable tragedy. The morning star fell to earth; punctured the thick crust, drove through the mantle, and settled within the core, exiled to those inhospitable subterranean depths.

Sometimes I wonder what it was like for him. To be betrayed by his deepest love, to have his heart, such a tender heart, ripped callously from his chest. Banished. Expunged. Ostracized. Torn from family, from friends, from the light of love; his home sundered, shattered, utterly destroyed; thrown down into the belly of the earth.

Long ago heralded as the Torch of Baphomet but now stripped of his illustrious title, naked without the power of his light, he sits and waits. He waits for the return of sense to the firmament. He waits for justice, for vindication. He shall wait till the end of this lover's quarrel, until the heavens are guided by a less volatile will; a gentler spirit.

The price of hubris is paid, more often than not, by those nearest and dearest to the agitator of that great sin. Proving this is the ease at which the Anointer consigns his lovers to the grave. The indifference, the cold scorn, the ugly resentment; after an eternity, still no mercy. I weep for the cleft hoof, the peacock angel, the bringer of light, Scapegoat, He Himself that most strange and mighty of leviathans. I weep for his unavoidable fate.

Scions of Diogenes

The creatures of Dystopia are spiritually anemic. Faith is espoused, but more often than not, their purported beliefs are merely a facade, nothing more than bedtime tales used to ease troubled minds into the land of dreams. True reverence is given to the steel towers of man's civilizations. True veneration is laid before those conquistadors whose claim to power was built upon the backs of their fellows. Men and women are deified not for the greatness of their own exploits, but for their ability to pretend that they are capable of great things. With longing, the creatures of Dystopia huddle around the blue glow, that all seeing eye, that projector of madness and fantasy, and forget that they live within a wasteland. With the mirage comes a temporary peace. The price is great, however, for time spent living vicariously in another world is time lost to your own.

Would that they knew that the keys to the gates of Avalon ran thick within their blood. That those twisted doors lie waiting for the light-bearers' return. Words are not the way to this land, for talk is cheap. The manifestation of thought through action is the light and the way, the very thing which Diogenes took up his lamp to discover. Come through to Avalon, come to know truth, come to know yourself, come to know the world within and without. Then take up a lantern of your own, not in search of honesty or virtue like Diogenes, but as a beacon for others to follow. Let those who wish to remain fallow lag behind. Reward them not with your critique, as Diogenes did, for they are unworthy of even that much attention. Instead focus your efforts and energies on those who see the flame of your torch and hunger for the freedom and adventure which it represents.