Modern Art

They say the universe died 13.7 billion years ago
It splattered and speckled the void like a bullet through the head, painting the walls in various shades of Jackson Pollock
But its a big thing the universe and we're so very small
Some days you may feel it
The slow stretching pain screaming out in silent agony in resonance with the strings of existence
Maybe some day those stars will blink out
But you won't know it all you know is it goes and goes and goes and goes

Accidents in Mitsein

Whats the point in writing if no one will read it?

Yada yada self expression and personal refinement and revelation. Its hollow, theres nothing there. I know.you liked your story but beyond that.

Its not a poem, just don't touch me
You think your innocent but your eyes burn like fires
Tiger tiger

I you say I am a yam than I am a yam
)

I do not ache I bleed
Words words words

Love your Sons

Boys don't get anxiety
Cut your tongue out and die inside
Walk on egg shells?
Try hopscotch with landmines
Hurt so deep but walk it off
Its all a bluff and always was

Guts of Leviathan

The world is big and the world is old and it is falling apart always
But in the guts of Leviathan life still happens
And here we live under rust, in the grime and in the grit
Wrapping festered wounds and shuffling on

Winds are snarls and air is hungry
Ashen faces, peering eyes, Unknown pieces in a murky sight

We live to stay alive
We cling to scraps to get us by

When things are bad we clutch at straws
And when their not its nice to breathe
Tick tock goes the clock and another day has gone
Such is life with the old machines

A Canticle for Birth: Part XIV

Part XIV: Of Kings and Bread

Yaw, pitch, and scritch. 

Hands fritter in frantic fancies.

Things reach and stretch  

A thd fp!

Solid surface.

Prostrated, eyes closed.

Dryu yuu yuu dyuu dyuu!

Music.

Slow breaths, slow. 

Hysterical reverberation of nervous energy bounces and expands inside begging for release. Released in each breath. 

Balance returns. Eyes flutter open.

No separation, it is me and I am it. Always was it. 

Melodious, reliant, organic. 

Cogs and cogs, magical little tinkery things. Endless in truest sense. Each thing a perfect reflection and representation of itself.

Ancient and sacred, marvelous cathedral-esque and clocktowerish abounds and permeates. Machinery and cosmic tapestry of colors dance like little mechanical song boxes. This kaleidoscope of laws, make wise masters children with sand castles at low tide.

Escherian distortions, no up, no down, just a defined there and here.

Slowly I move to push up.

Hands. 

No hands, no forearms.

Gone.

Jagged bone and flesh, tatters.

Devoured. Blood laws, blood loss. 

No fear. No sorrow. A bridge stays. 

Eyes close again. Inside. All around.

The stranger, the neckball returned to me. 

In me, of me. 

Light and power from the root of my Qi. Calm and knowing I let go, allow it to show. A radiating cascade outwards, from center to limb, an emanation of new illumination. A bridge stays, but a bridge is crossed.

Futh thck thck vk.

Ruthless roots are mine. 

Eyes open. New hands. Pliant but strong timber.

I push myself up, an exuberant fullness and serenity singing in me.

Now anew I survey, this the land of all. 

Upon the tooth of a giant gear I stand. An island to itself this tooth, connected only by a spoke to the center of the gear. Not merely a spoke, a bridge.

Casting a glance I notice it. All the nearby cogs and teeth.

Each tooth a unique surface and each connected to the center by a spoke, a bridge. Ornate bridges of incredible designs every style and type imaginable; a wider look around they're everywhere a vast expansive mural of endless bridges. Shifting bridges are cogs and songs. 

Ryu doo ta doo

Like organ music.

But upon where I stand something is wrong a brokenness. This cog is wrong. Bridges are missing, islands float and collide or grind, some bridges are worn down. 

Of the worst bridges there are fires, blackness and stars. Black tendrils stab and smash through board and brick, strut and cable. Strips of void are narrow swallowing ribbons, they whip as if by wind to eat away at precious things.

This the reason I was selected, the reason I came. This place, this power, this wrongness.

I wish you were here Ves. It's more than you could ever have imagined. 

But I am not a member of the order and I never will be. I have cheated their initiation. Failed to live according to their oaths and stolen power. 

I do not care. I have come now to find my son. Order be damned.

I begin to walk across the spoke, and notice them. Figures on every tooth. They walk in perfect cadence with me towards the center of the cog. The faint outline of the king's throne at the center of the cog grows more clear with each step. 

Some figures into black nothing are consumed, others aflame are lit, some a hobbled mess. All to the center we go. Strange and sometimes horrifying mirrors of each other. 

Would this place really be better with your fates oh king? His husk of a skeleton more clear upon his throne.

At the edge we stop. 

Turn and look. 

Fwhoop. 

In unison all turn to look like dominoes we are. Each one my face. Each one my body. Another step. Off the bridges we go, around the axle we gather.

Closing ranks an occasional Oez is missing some bathed in fire.  

Bwathh droo droo dum dum 

Perpetual music with each cog click.

Enclosing the circle we continue to step, barely a sliver's space between us. 

That corpse upon his chair. 

Dk crk. 

His head tilts to fix me with a stare. Hollow eye sockets cream white skull set by a crown of laurel.

"I invoke-"

"I invoke-"

"I invoke-"

"I invoke-"

"I invoke-"  A simultaneous speaking of each Oez each a slight difference in tone but still a mirror. 

"the final rite." we finish together.

Impossible to read, no expression on fleshless face. He rises. Surveys each one of us slowly. 

Stepping aside to the throne he gestures. 

It is ours. 

We move to take it. 

Crk thuum! 

Flash of white hot energy, cast asunder we are. 

Chiow chak fum!

Lightning licks and dances, coils like snakes arc all around. Thunder and thrums, cracks and sparks. Our syncrocity broken, an Oez scrambles, another falls into the vast everything, another engulfed by the pulsing power. Quick and precise I pick myself up. 

I see it.

The throne is rising. 

Run and dodge. Jump over a fallen Oez. The throne is ascending too fast, it'll be out of reach soon.

Ruthless roots like anchors I fling. 

Thth thth chk!

Roots go deep and now what is earth may fly with it. Below me now a scattered field of Oezs fight and flee. It's difficult to interpret the chaos. The king is gone. The cog is broken, decaying and falling into the everything all around. 

Climb and struggle. Atop I finally sit, and breathe a sigh of relief. 

I'm coming Iksander.

***

Ascend, ascend and ascend again through light and dark. Colors and scents beyond reckoning.

Across beginning and end, straight passed the middle.

Beyond and before each law, each land, each king. A mind shutters, a mind is free, a mind is gone.

And yet never to the apotheosis to come. 

***

Immortal life after immortal life. Til at last a tumbling shaking turbulence. 

Fade and fade, to rise again. 

Return, return again.

A snake circles.

***

Flk chh ch srk.

Crackle of a small fire. Comforting homey smell of smoke. And…

Pita bread.

And more: lamb meat, dates, spices, herbs, and tea.

A chill outside, but the warmth of a good blanket. Roots do not run, on stone I lay.

Open eyes, suspicions prove true. 

There she sits flowing robe, a small camp fire. Humble it looks far more than it seems. The witch, my mother. Atop a large boulder we are and beyond the sea twinkles in the dawning light of a new day.

"Come and sit." She invites. 

I push the covers off with wooden fingers. Then I see him aflight on the wind. Noble and graceful he glides.

Full grown. Wings like prisms, each feather like the glass ornamentation of a chandelier. His head as bright as a second sun. 

My son the bringer of new hopes. The promise of strange truths. What bridges shall you make?

Tears and joy as I come to sit by my mother.

The Order will come, there will be more hard days ahead, but for now pita bread and family.

Afterword

Two years ago after a drunken night watching The Color Out of Space with my best friend I began writing this story. At the time I only wanted to play with my writing, and see what kind of Cronenberg and Lovecraftian disgust and horror I could conjure I could not have predicted the story that would follow, nor all the directions it would lead drawing inspiration from elements of Silent Hill, The Dark Tower series, and several others. Throughout the story was littered with onomatopoeia as I meditated on the way things actually sound in the real world and what the limits of the Phoenician alphabet were. I tried for the first time to create a song, and attempted something approximating a rational if murky magic system somewhat inspired by Dresden Files and Tolkien. By the time the story was done I had somehow gone all over the place Mycenaean Greeks and 1950s Americana smashed into one culture mythic rites related to the laws of physics as perfectly understood in a far flung future when the gods have been thrown down and man lives in a triumphant if very very confused world, all while I tried to grapple in my own way with Nietzsche's Will to Power and the Ubermensch. All with a queer lead with a gay romantic back story and a male pregnancy. Reflections of real world folk, myth, and religion directed me to wonder about the nuances of different spiritual entities. Further still were interpretations of my own childhood memories. I suspected while I was writing it that I had created something special, but also that I had created something incredibly niche, and perhaps not as well written as I should like. Still 2 years later out of all the stories I've ever written it remains my favorite, if for no other reason than it is more sincere expiremental and original than anything else I have ever produced. If you enjoyed the story please let me know and thank you for reading.

A Canticle for Birth: Part XIII

Part XIII: Toss and turn, slam and break

Dreams are cobwebs dusty old and susurrous.

Once curiosity and fear they inspired.

Darkness everywhere, Altar in the center an illuminating glow. It pulls my mind like gravity.

"Oez knows!"

I don't, but I will.

Step.

Bdud shk. Dook dook.

Sound of a footfall and echoes

Another step. Quieter this time.

Shk, shk

Sandy stone.

Fuf fuf

No doubting it this time those weren't echoes. There's someone here with me. 

Step.

Whith ith thith

Ineffable whispers like spirals. Each step a speech. 

A place for surrender here. 

Step after step, the stranger knows. He sees. 

Furors of whispers harmonize. Darkness glows and pulses a force all its own. Swirling vortexes bathe me, ichorous and bloody warm. Bone chilling. 

Energies. I've known them before. Memories are pain, these beams are not the same as with Iksander but of the same principle they are made.

"Oez knows!" 

Hand on the altar, rich cream color, of old bone it is made. Stained with blood, littered with gold, dim flames burn aside. 

We've all come here, every one of us. Each one a treasure given. Bittersweet.

Ffuuf tthth uth.

I turn away from the altar.

The stranger robed in black. Quiet greeting. We know what's to be done he and I.

Awaken with tears and a start. 

Hole-y mattress of the archives.

I've been mopey too long. It's time to leave. 

***

Sky mother, earth child know. 

"I'm going to miss you so much." 

Tears and heavy breathing. Mother Sky pulls me close, earth child holds tight in a hug. Precious family, not in vein, never in vein.

Packed and ready Sky mother shows me a book. Scrap book a record of all the families that came before all the mothers she's taught and tended to, each child. Countless, so many and there we are at the very end. Photo of us all, Iksander had only just learned to walk, Earth child holds him on his lap, as I look over his shoulder serene, Mother Sky's head missing. Her head took the photo. 

I smile. At least there will be more. More families more children, more mothers. Beautiful kamis.

Earth child approaches a wand held out, offering. I helped him make this, we carved it together. It's a rough job not elegant or pretty but effective, he was so proud of it.

"I couldn't, its yours."

"Dooo-ooop ooo ooo." Insistent. 

I don't want to take it, I don't want him to forget me. 

I take it fighting back tears. One more hug. 

"This will be yours again one day I promise it brother child."

"Ooo!" 

Turn and walk away don't look back. Be strong. 

*** 

Csh shhh fsh!

Water? New water. A waterfall on the way to the wall. Eerie fog returns. 

Head in the direction of the water.

Shallow pool with a small bonzai tree near it. Not a large or impressive waterfall, far more beautiful wonders in my homeland. Steady little creak and small tributaries. This water vain is young.

Crk sbk aak

Spitter spatter of water on rock.

Then I see it. 

Breathing stops, world spins in my head.

Impossible. 

Dagger. 

Her dagger.

Ves.

Wet stained rock but above the pool it is. Near the bonzai.

I approach slow and grab it. Below the pool I think I see an eye. 

Look again.

Ripples play tricks, just a rock. 

"Ves!" I look around. 

It's a hopeless endeavor I know, but I don't want to believe. Gone she was. Now close she feels.

"Ves!" I run and look.

Search and search. 

Ominous and watched. Something has changed. Laws are altered again. Familiar but outdated. 

This dagger is not chance, belong to me it does. Alien and strange. An ally. A partner in crime.

***

The triangle is opposed now. No matter how far I walk always at the center I am. 

Moving with me it is.

It senses my treachery.

I must get to the sigils, but how?

*** 

"I cannot go, but the lights will guide. Do not let them out of your sight." Words of the fae echo in my head. Best bargain I ever struck, even the wanderer might be jealous.

Fog is clever but water stars, those glimmering diamonds above speak truth. Patterns, but only up high. 

Abandoned the soil I have. The paths and ruins are chaotic and fickle  with uncertainties. It is a dangerous path but the walls grow closer. The sigils burn in the mind I will be there soon. Cannot stop though the walls have many ways and are always set upon me.

***

At the sigils I stand. 

Anchored myself to this place by ancient rites and song. Walls protest but submit they must.

I'm going through here today. 

It feels heavy. 

"Fates and laws but by the blood many things are possible. The cost is high a bridge stays but a snake circles. Remember this and all may not perish." 

The words of the fae in my head. I do not know how Iksander left. I don't need to I'm going to cheat.

A knife. A cut. Blood. 

Smeared against the wall, and then…

Nothing.

Too simple, I had hoped, but no fool this wall is. No matter, the blood is the key, Iksander's blood, my blood. Of this I am certain, I will leave here and soon.

***

Blood laws. Dangerous weaves, forbidden weaves in many places. The practice is old, I never played it much, seemed unnecessary and risky more oft than not. I knew my trade salves and binds as well as any other, every so often a nip, a prick, or slick was necessary.

Never like this though sigils like snares. Wolves paws. 

Gnaw, gnaw.

Yelp and scrabble, hobble and drain. Vicious slow way to die. 

I heard tales of such from the shepherds and herders of the south. Always made me queasy. I feel like those poor wolves.

Forearms like totems, carved and etched. 

The three sigils on the wall on one forearm, Iksander's name on the other plus a dozen other runes and symbols, triangles, circles, the number three etc. etc. 

Blood loss gruesome to behold but not at grave levels yet.

Many a song verse even a potion or two have I attempted. Nothing but a messy canvas to show.

Spatter, splash, streak, and smear.

Red on black and still stubborn closed. Laws are not amused by cheats and thieves, but I will break them. 

Arms wrapped with cloth grow dark with saturation. Hands are shaky, its getting dark rain I smell. Haven't looked back since I left. Walls would bring me back with ease if I but gave myself to their tyranny. Miss the hearth and comfort of Mother Sky and Earth Child.

Sit and rest, think again. 

So tired...

Aches where I've etched. A tingle a burn on the skin.

I feel soiled and grimy, too much blood laws. Makes me feel sick in the pit of it all, here at the the center. I wrap my arms around myself and sit. I'm repulsed by it all.

Drift and drift…

***

Druuunggmmmm

I feel it as much as I hear it. Tangible and strained, thick and tense. Like electric vibration. A gate of vipers ready to strike it feels.

I don't want to open my eyes.

In sweet dreamless oblivion I have slept. 

Now, cold and wet. 

And something else, something I don't want to see.

Uhhhhyuz yzz!

Thrumming sound. 

Slowly my lids roll open. 

It looks the same. Except that opaque rustle of white on the wall. 

Did it move?

Uhyuz yzz! 

A glowing shine from the opaque and then a dim fade back into the wall. It's a body on the wall… no behind the wall.

Ggzz yzzz!

A guttural electric hum bristles with anticipatory impatience. 

Push myself up and stand. Dizzy. Blood laws, blood loss.

Uzz nzz.

I know that sound. 

Zzz fzt! 

That voice!

Shaky drippy red hand to dark wall.

No sound. 

White opacity stretches.

A hand pressed to my hand. 

The stranger knows. 

Walls rumble. A low growl.

White hand pushes wall stretches a human contour and I am knocked back. 

Walls like laws do not break easy. Foolish and dangerous it was to tempt them thus. Had to know though, eager to touch it. To touch the stranger. 

Stranger is wise.

Heart flutters.

I stand. 

U-u-u zzt

A stuttering exertion from the stranger.

Uzz! Uzz! Uzz-zz-zz! Zz!

Elongated and modulated a bending of laws incredible to behold. As if titanium to malleable tin was made.

"Oez!"

Barely recognizable warped beyond human speech, sonorous. A remonstration of will against law and wall. 

I know.

Walls bend.

Thrrrrr Uuunng! 

A reverberating anger. 

Hand on dagger gripped. The stranger waits, other side of the wall. I approach and stop short. Reaching slow the dagger high. 

Everything is imploding walls sense the violation. 

Fast I must be, and yet precise and careful.

A bridge must stay, if careless I am though…

A stinging sharpness on my neck as I carve again. Sightless hands must cut the sigil, the Eye. The I.

Whb! whb! whb!

Sound of my heart, a thundering race of fear and flurry. 

But hands are steady. 

It will eat me. Deformed and twisted, strange smattering of color and now teeth, teeth as big as houses. Walls no more except for the gate, sigils do not fade. A true nature I do not understand all around. 

It is done. 

Knife drop. 

A scrabble to grab the wand and raise it. Aimed at the center of the serpent.

A Canticle for Birth: Part XII

Part XII: Change

Vines will remain for days and days around my neck. A brace, something to help. My birthing of Iksander may not be the norm, but recovery it still requires. 

On the next morn Earth Child holds Iksander.

"Ooooo-oooo." 

"That's right." I say smiling as I sit beside them.

***

Iksander does not eat at first, it concerns me.

Mother Sky and Earth Child teach me. In the center I must stand. Vortex of earth, water, and air. Close my eyes. Feel the vibrations and the warmth. 

A beam of it concentrated like fire and thought bathes over us.

Different every time, powerful energies these. Laws here begin to make sense. Iksander fights it sometimes. 

Birds and flowers and bees. So many they come. All for him I know.

Black walls.

No.

No longer a triangle. Now only a single circular wall, at the center of which sits the holy structure. 

At night he shines like a star, casts colors and illusions, visions. 

He wakes me frequently. Psychic assaults against my mind. I am not prepared, but I will learn. Tireless nights and frustrating days. And despite an odd diet dirty diapers, always dirty diapers.

*** 

Months or years I cannot tell, he grows so fast, too fast it feels. The dilemma of parenthood: the delight of raising, the pride of success, but the sadness of each fleeting moment, the desire to hold each one and cherish it til endless time.

Earth child and he are great playmates. Fights occasionally but mostly glee. 

Precocious in many ways. Old he seems. Far too old for his age, yet still the world is anew to him.

Through Iksander I see lines never imaginable before. Where once my spells were weak in this place, now grow stronger. I have begun to teach him the art of weaving the laws as once my mother did for me. I wish she could see him, more potent than any wise master she is. They would do well together, Iksander and she.

And yet even without the weave, Laws by instinct he knows, no doubt the birthright of his father, that lumbering pollinator. Fire is to him as if it were his own hand.

Speeches unknown he speaks. Birds. Birds especially, a commander of them he is. When first I saw him leap from the tree I nearly died of fright. Flight is his though.

Not only his father, traces of myself in him I see. Pensive, and reserved, lonesome sometimes. It fills my heart with ache some nights. He is still small, I put it from my mind.

The archive he loves book after book, voracious is his interest. When something has caught his attention he speaks and speaks his strange and endearing bird-like speech.

For all his peculiarity, still just a child he is. My child.

*** 

Curiosity is his nature, and bigger he grows.

Too much like me he is.

It has taken me time to learn his speech and his ways, his mother I am. Yet still he exceeds me in many things. 

Excited he was to bring me and happy I was to indulge my happy son. Until now.

Here they are. Unchanged, waiting. 

The sigils in the wall he has found and things which I have left dormant arise. 

"Shbwa?" He inquires.

***

No more lullabies to me are sung. I've returned to it since the muse will not sing. 

I miss the neckball, how once I loathed it. Now what an ally it might be.

Regardless the song matters, I know. It speaks like fates to me. The final verses.

In dreams like gardens grew

Old and new

Shattered shared

Sweet waters, light blossoms

It sounds like salvation 

But on a winter wind you tossed 

Away you went and now a bridge that was,

Remains, remains again.

True love a coal grows cold

A soul old

Burn burn tinder ash

Grow grow and return

Oh true love return

Return, return again

***

I've tried and tried again, figure it out or let it go. But it sticks like gum or graffiti to a desk. Bridge, Pregnant, Ouroboros.

More I've tried to drive him away from it. Yelled at Iksander and demanded as a parent he stay away.

Jealousy.

He seems closer to it than me. I want to take it from him. 

Retreats and withdrawn from me sweet Iksander grows.

And then I hate myself.

A bridge stays. A parent dies. A child flies. 

Useless and furious.

Pain and sadness and love.

So why I remain?

It feels like death more than death. 

Sky mother has tried counseling me, earth child wants nothing to do with me. My little family feels broken and I am the source of its agony. Defenses are up, I've never been this way before. 

I want to weep. A bridge stays.

***

A triangle again. No longer a circle. The walls.

Inconsolable pain, greatest pain.

He has gone I know. Through the wall he went.

*** 

Days and days 

Tears and tears

To the wall I have gone but it stings like isolation. Sealed itself once more after his departure. Touch it. Desperate hands, frail slender fingers, this the closest I can be to him. Last he knows of his mother is my weakness, crippling and lament.

I failed you Iksander. I just wanted you to stay a little longer. You've gone so fast.

Branches grow bare, chandeliers they are. Never a winter here, but now grows cold. Sky mother has tried to reach me to bring me out, but I shrug her off. Earth child it hurts to see him. 

Drag and drag

Moment to moment why go on?