The man who pierced the sky [chapter two]

Lord of War

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9^th June 1607

My Lord, I have failed you in battle. Our cities lay in ashes. Our people scorched. In my most desperate attempt to save your immortal soul I have failed to purge a thousand more. The plague is upon them. Death is written on their doorways.

It will rain all this night and we will sleep transfixed by the dark water as our blood runs through our fragile life. You are not conscious, you’re far away in some kind of amnesia, lost into yourself. And this is why I must guard you with the price of my own blood. I have paid in blood anyway … the blood of our people.

What animal have I become? I am half agony, half hope.

You tried to change, didn’t you? Closed your mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake…You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that.

In seven holy hells a golden chest lies wrapped in waters turbulent and dark, and all the devils dance while the reapers reap.  So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.  Fiery colors were painting the sky and the earth in endless waves… but they became darker… and you know why? The more you throw black into a color, the more dreamy it gets…Black has depth. It’s like a little egress, you can go into it, and because it keeps continuing to be dark, the mind kicks in, and a lot of things that are going on there become manifest. And you start seeing what you’re afraid of. You start seeing what you love and it becomes like a dream…  The dream of a shadow and the shadow of a dream.

…but the rain is full of ghosts tonight.

My beloved, do you stand in need of anything? Is it hunger or pain that you feel? Your body is warm, but the heart is pure ice. You see… You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart. Your eyes seem to be expecting miracles I would be most honored and willing to perform.

But I lay dead tonight. Just as you do. We died for a moment, to live again by the morrow’s light. I was alive then.  I felt a world arise and live for me. There was this… fire that was lighting me inside out, I was eager to fight for my country, for Gods, for you… my beloved.

I watched you go, unable to ask you to stay. It was for me and our home you were going away. How could I ask? So behind you I stayed. Remember what we’ve always said? If one falls, so does the other.  But my obstinacy won’t simply let me watch you die. I sacrificed a thousand souls for one: yours.

People come and go, they’ll live again, they’ll find their way back. But you won’t. If you die now, it’s forever. And I am no more willing to let this happen. Not while I stand on my feet.

You know, they say above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here. I was hungry. I was defeated. I was happy. I was sad. I was in love. I was afraid. I was hopeful. I had an idea and I had a good purpose and that’s why I went to war.

But it’s not really like that, isn’t it?

The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, its tides and its depths; it has its pearls too. But yours contains much greater things than leading an army into battle. You behold the balance of the world. One drop of your blood, and my world shifts into darkness. A darkness that you and only you can defeat.

My body is the same body—yet everything seems different.  My heart is so tired. The sins of men have sickened it.

All night I stretched my arms across you. Rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing with all my skin and bones. “Please keep him safe! Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed to pieces!” … I heard a distant thunder. The war must be over. It’s only been a few days, but the darkened sky converted everything into an eternal night. We hid, hid like rats in a bunker.  But it was necessary, my love. Remember the old days when we fought alongside with Gods?  … we now carry the burden of a thousand souls.

Perhaps I should light another candle. It’s getting cold inside. You were pointing at the moon, but I was looking at your hand. Your pain seems to have eased. “Welcome back to life, my lord.”

Fire. The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be crossed; See, we were never about butterflies. We’ve always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant.

I have this vision, my lord, that I would finally come and find you. Scattered pieces of distance would not stand in my way. Not needing words; the barest of glimpses would suffice for you and me. I’ve left battlefields before, I’ve left cities to ashes just to save ONE soul. Yours. And though there’s no war, no guns, no fire, it is still a battle inside of my spirit. The memories are vivid, they live through and for me, as I live through and for you.  I have no fear of losing you, for you aren’t an object of my property, or anyone else’s. I love you as you are, without attachment, without fears, without conditions, without egoism, trying not to absorb you. I love you freely because I love your freedom, as well as mine. You gave me peace in a lifetime of war. I ought to do the same.  After all, that’s what life is about: an endless battle of contrasting memories. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time, and that is how it all changes. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way.

And alike the earth and moon, I am covered with craters and scars. That is not something I need to be saved from. Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. There still might be a place for us somewhere. Somewhere only we know ourselves. Year zero. We’re miles away. But we are alive. What’s imperfect is beautiful. What’s imperfect is alive. We are alive, my love. We went through fire and came down like rain. And damaged people are dangerous. They know how to survive… This is just what we did. We read, we travel, we become.  We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost. This is our unending process.

The winds are silent.  And it is the great north wind that created the Vikings. You and I are particles of these winds, my beloved. We are the mountain, the forest and the earth.

People talk about escapism as if it’s a bad thing …once you’ve escaped, once you come back, the world is not the same as when you left it. You come back to it with skills, weapons, knowledge you didn’t have before.  The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart, and I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole… but it happens that I want you, and that there is no room for any other desires.

So dance with me death, for I am ready. I will take what is mine with fire and blood.

©  2013

The man who pierced the sky [chapter one]

The man who pierced the sky

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My lord, to thee I write once again as I have written many times before, unorganized, incoherent, but still, I write, for the paper can keep my words longer than I might keep them in my hazy and vague conscience, with the hope that one day, when I shall be put to silence, they will speak for me better than I have ever done with words or silence.

You may disagree with all my concepts and ideas, and justly, you have all the reasons to do so. My arguments have always been invalid and brittle, but they stand their ground like pillars of Valhalla – they are my unspoken stale memories floating unchained through my mind, resurfacing from time to time, resulting in these frantic testimonies which I inscribe with all the dearness I have ever been capable to offer thee.

It’s not the first time thou arrive before the world, time and again, unsure of the moment from the obsolete memories. Ancient temples and undiscovered cities bearing your mark, when your name is love in a parallel universe. I subsist amongst two realities, both valid and tangible to me. I do not know whether madness is their name or sanity, but truth is, I exist in both of them, transmuted from lies to truth and beyond. I am no longer capable to discern the white smoke from the grey mirrors of my soul. They reflect the sins of a pagan, not of a heretic. It has swallowed me into and ocean without bottom and without any surface to be reached, amongst whose whirling waters your light shines the brightest.

Before every dawn and dusk I allow few moments to slip past me just to relive my truest existence, which has deserted me since time was time. We substitute coffee for madness and hear the silent songs that awake us, for this is not a dream, yet reality does not strike us either. Like a double-edged sword we sway from one edging to the other, not ever prevailing to settle on any of them.

We stand on edges, slowly hoping, wistfully longing, endure a lifetime of waiting to be brought back. We belong to the sea – the open ocean is our home. You might not hear its call, but I do, sometimes, when I contemplate upon my deeds, and I see an ocean of blood and corpses, fickle visions. I see vessels wandering through a sea of souls which I have torn apart and slayed in the name of justice. And on the cliffs and firths I see angels with raised swords praising Thor and Odin. Shall I walk amongst them? When they look upon me with bitter eyes …

I bear an unceasing war with my inner selves, and I am cursed to never bleed nor die.  Your fingers devastate any savagery to our transitions, softly cradling the restlessness, smoothening the wrinkles of a forgotten past.  We fall, mortally in place quantum thoughts and solitudes salvaged from predestines of multiple transitions – one life for another, romancing the god of the departed. But you stand above all them, my cold and immortal lord, my personal God.

Though our past lives may not agree, the delirium will not pass until you quiet the beating or until you and I are one. Eternally enamored, evidences lay over the earth, as they form in lines and grounded circles higher than breath could take and deeper than the dark, embodying your image, my beloved. And the skies opened – and there was light and fire. The sky beckons you.

Remind me again why I am with you, how I go on trailing the past like a house revisited. When you are gone my remains turn to ruin. The remnants of the warrior lies in my inner self, but you sense this better than I do. You shall burry me into the northernmost north, somewhere where the coldness can comfort me and give me time to revise my past lives and come to a conclusion.

Your spirit eludes me with its simplest, primordial presence.  A time will come when I will miss that presence and eagerly search for it in every leaf, in every wind and every blow. The angels have chosen to remain silent. My demons, yet to come, are raised from my darkest fears and deepest desires only to destroy what my conscience has built for so many centuries. I am losing a game I haven’t even started. I have moved my chessman upon the glass table. It is your move now.

But to no avail, I live for today, not for tomorrow. In the depth of our hopes and desires lies our silent knowledge of the beyond…we’re older than the world and frigid as Nifleheim.

Nightfall and the fire doom…if we are bound to die in flames, save your life and let me in. I want to burn if that will save you. You shall know no fear, no pain, no sorrow. I am to take all of them in. Here, where history may fall, enter the realm of aeon. Spare your soul, spread your wings and ride when all the worlds collide.

My angel, you arrived before the world, but you shall never go unloved.
It has always began and ended with you.

© 2013