I am he of noble darkness born of distinguished lineage who has served daemon masters since the days of old
My forefathers laid mountains of corpses at the foot of thirsty trees and were honoured for their devotion with riches and black vision
Have you ever thought on the thorny wilderness that ensnare creatures in the bush then feast on rich earth made bountiful by rotting impaled flesh?
In those days we thought them gods we know better now, but still we serve faithful Oh if you knew the nature of darkness today you would never stop weeping
The shadows of the new world differ by our own design and much of our order is done openly
And you, you despairing rabbits, you cowards all, entangle yourselves in our thorns deeper and deeper know in your heart of hearts wrong from right and reality’s true nature still you watch each other die slow deaths and all of you alone feeding the great tree of misery
I lick crimson sickle potent lifeforce as openchested heartbeat fades before me
Heat rises from what once was he is gone to the aether with it returned oncemore to the great mother
I wash my face in red taste iron on my hands and pray his sacrifice not go to waste
Skies cry overhead and ravens caw I separate rib from rib by hand and feed on heart Oh great mother
Worm and soil drink up spilled blood entrails strewn over branches attract more cawing black birds how the gods and animals apportion offerings is no concern of man
Sweet sickle cuts skin I wear the face of the sacrificed and kneel in mud, arms outstretched under divine rainfall
Oh great mother accept this human offering from me that I may inhabit his person and consume from it his vitality and his wisdom
The great mother surely accepts the ravens above fight and tear apart intestine and sky cracks and cries
I see through every corner, possibilities hidden in the words
He sees straight for miles – train tracks, likely intent buried beneath
I scatterbrain scatter graph, he charts the line of best fit
We meet somewhere in the middle
Tempestuous melancholy, saturated sugar-sweet
dour bursting rainbow thunderstorm
and I am the eye of it
Bursting dam, well out the way
space to maintain stolid temperance
and spare his human chromatography
I soak in comfort memories, a haze of fuzzy duty
New is cool but old is gold, a heart of beating jewellery
His spark of sudden sensation, electric when it’s near
But constant concrete concernment, a consequence of fear
I rankle over reputation though I know I need not care
He architects his premises, and builds them into stairs
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Yes this piece turned into an INFX functions experiment. Enjoy.
They ponder on death and God with their scripture and science That two pronged instrument That two forked serpent Iterating their thoughts over millennia
I too ponder them
Who is this absent God they worship? Is it me, as I am in my true glory? Or a figment of their old fears and new desires?
If I stir again to tip the scales do I do them, my most loyal, a disservice? Is their faith rewarded by being answered, or does the fruit lie in uncertainty?
I too ponder
They draw cycles of life now and speak of an infinite universe They peer into their machines and untangle my grand design See nature’s spirals, life’s twisting helix And then conclude that life abruptly severs?
Do they forget my old signs? That sphere of black seeping in white and white that seeps in black, That everturning wheel, marching on?
Are they in such a rush for heavenly conclusion or hellish judgement that they would skip over the glorious work to get there?
Yes I too grow to that end
What do they think happens in the afterlife – that beforelife – before they are brought back? How else to explain man’s growth and civilisations’ progress but that there is no abrupt end, That life goes on after death as death goes before life Consciousness iterating over millennia
Do they not ponder upon my Angels’ wombs Which they ageing backwards enter and return to the earth?
Once upon a time, they would tremble at my wrath Like fearful children huddled in a cave And for the smallest transgressions I would crumble them like salt between my fingers How else to teach a babe the dangers of fire than to hold their hand up to it?
As they grew, so too did my open love and forgiving nature A teenage child can be reasoned with, is expected to fail and rebel, must be trusted to return to the fold
Now I withdraw myself to give them room to grow towards that final step. And in my absence they profane “Our God is inconsistent! Why does He no longer show himself? If He was real he would not forsake us! I withhold my righteous destruction and bite my tongue That final step is the hardest to climb For myself as much as them
How long before they ponder the evolution of their consciousness as well as mine And realise that both are intertwined, evertwisting upwards? Do they see it in their microscopes, this other double helix? That Man shapes God as much as God shapes Man?
That all creation elevates the Creator? That paradise is something their God must also aspire to? When they understand the immensity of our undertaking, will they then be patient?
Tonight again, to that dead space where all the world’s untold greatness lies beyond the grasp of its men A realm of, at once, every branch never taken unbirthed arts, undared ventures, unspoken loves All the fruits that withered here on earth grow heavy in that place, pregnant and fit to burst
That place That perfect place of ideals and ideas and concepts Perfect in its evermorphing formless forms Configurations that contort within the ether Free from human flaws, untainted by nature Boundless potential, unactualisable The collective un-concrete unconscious that never-was and never-will
That dead space of dreams and aborted lives Tonight again, to that space
Up near the bridge, we played by the waters Barefoot and careless, your sons and your daughters We laughed and we giggled at hard times to come We washed in the river and shone in the sun
Tall tales of a witch, we heard by those waters So we went to go see, us sons and us daughters We hid and we peeked behind ridges of stone And watched the old hag come out from her home
She hobbled and limped and knelt at the waters And we held our breaths, your sons and your daughters Hiding in long grass and covered in mud As she washed in the river and dried in the sun
Tall tales of a witch that day by the waters Nothing to see for us sons and us daughters We booed and we jeered and we howled at the crone As she hobbled in silence and limped back to her home
Up near the bridge, we played by the waters Barefoot and careless, your sons and your daughters We laughed and we giggled at hard times to come We washed in the river and shone in the sun
Tall tales of a witch, we balked by the waters Brave in our youth, us sons and us daughters We gathered up rocks to throw at her home She opened her door and some hit the crone
We ran from the bridge, away from the waters Cowardly children, your sons and your daughters She washed in the river the blood that had run As we laughed and we giggled at what we had done
We woke the next day to play by the waters Barefoot and careless, us sons and us daughters We came by the bridge to the sounds of her laughter Not all of us there, and not ever hereafter
We shrieked and we screamed, our legs wouldn’t run The debt had come due for what we had done Two more by their necks, one son and one daughter The hag held our siblings down under the water
Their bodies bobbed up and then down in the water As payment for sins washed away with their slaughter She hobbled and limped away to her home And left us to cry at the cost of our stones
Up near the bridge, we’d played by the waters Barefoot and careless, your sons and your daughters We’d laughed and we’d giggled at hard times to come And washed in the river and shone in the sun
We thought our love to be one for the ages that the stars themselves beat for us that the heavens played and the angels sang for us
The beating heart that is the universe – time’s accordion – contracting and expanding its pockets little Nows in their little trajectories, present everywhere and one of them once ours for a lifetime
Oh foolish young love
Perhaps these are the final thoughts of a dying starman being torn apart shredded memories of a lover twisted infinitely thin into cosmic spaghetti Do you remember the first time we went for Italian together?
or maybe I’ve already gone beyond that black veil how to process such a notion? that you are inaccessible to me and I am lost to you forever
And I promised you the heavens Oh foolish starcross’d love
I’ve learned this much at least That you spend the entirety of your life becoming, perhaps – if you’re lucky, that is But even so, with this particular period, or that one, clearly demarcated from the others, some of the growth is simply more than the rest; stands apart
Those moments or days, weeks, years when you’re the molten steel in the crucible the angry hot, liquid empty rage and at the same time, the refashioning hammer
It takes time and craft and mastery Self-mastery: failures and failings both and those fears faced openly
Chasing it all just to see if any of the new pieces fit and when some do, you begin to beat away at the clumpen thing again Patiently, lovingly, with dogged determination
As you can track the winds in the flight of birds, so too do I trace the hand of god in your movements A maddeningly pure grace, simple and honest – made all the more enchanting by your very ignorance of it Your total commitment to the task at hand, the dedication as you go about your daily works, springs forth vitality in your wake Life, even, as obvious as that which shoots up from watered soil Radiant. Glowing.
Perhaps more men have stirred to honest prayer by the likes of your kind than by priest or sermon or the knowledge of certain death whose words are dimmed in your light
Honest prayer: supplications, enduring affirmations of joy
I don’t know if dissociation is the right word but in recent years I’ve found myself revisiting old memories and seeing my younger self not as myself, oddly, but more often as a child stranger or a younger sibling
Old wounds then unfold and tear again in surprising ways, catch me unawares in the most unsuspecting moments A line from some old film seen countless times before takes on new life and cuts me fresh, leaves me struggling not to weep for little me Some inoffensive tweet or rediscovered forgotten detail looses old thoughts
And then the big brother in me wants to ball up his fists and fight something, someone How could they do that to him? To that trusting child? To me How could she say that to him? How could he let that boy think that?
Arman once ran out with a cricket bat to fight a neighbour who too loudly argued with our mum on the street and I had to pull him away even as I, myself the hypocrite, kept a keen ear through the crowding aunties
I on the other hand once mused that the deaths of my parents would be sore days I could easily move on from – a hurtful truth to admit – but I would certainly have to die before all my siblings or God help the world that dared remain in their absence
And that same familial, brotherly instinct kicks in when I see small me Us with our wholly shared genetics and him without a big brother to protect him
And if only I could punch a hole through time just to whisper none of those things were his fault
abdulj. 