Rush

Shatter open, you thieving thunderclouds

Let your shrieking lightning dance with my fate

Awaken the brutal battle with no bounds

What a night, the haze shows me the gates

I need this rush even as it eats my soul

So be it, I’ve chosen

My mind stirs from the dead, rising through

remembrance of torment, of torture

The rains can’t wash off what’s not true

So I reopen this bloody smoldering suture

Watch your path as you tread through me,

So the twisted skulls of fallen Kings sigh

The fire in their eyes long faded, failed to be

Prayers etched upon bone, this one’s not a lie

I take to the skies, embrace the bitter frost

What a curse, singing a seething blaze

Devour another that’s already lost

Yet this won’t bring me out of this daze

I need this rush even as it eats my soul

So be it, I’ve chosen.

The Beauty and The Beast

Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, you know somethings wrong. We left that September, everything had been arranged. Camp California. It was a well deserved break for both of us. We sang songs throughout the journey. Lisa's voice, well she has a raspy voice, you figure the rest out. Most of my friends ask me how I get past her voice. I would say - Hey men are attracted to women with a raspy voice, we think maybe she's done yelling.

We reached the park by nightfall. After an hour of setting up the tents and other tiring things that come along with it, we settled down for the campfire. After a couple of hours we doused the fire and hit the bed. Tomorrow would be a big day. Trekking , hiking, hunting and of course eating.
***
Her screams awoke me. I heard my name being repeated over and over and over again. Jared , Jared , Jared.

And thats when I saw it. It had entered our tent. A 6feet tall grizzly. And believe me it looked nothing like Yogi Bear. It charged at her. A bearhug. It started clawing her.

I ran to my trunk and pulled out my rifle. I aimed at it. There was enough light around for me to focus on the bear. I shot once and then again. The bear fell. She fell too. I heard her breathing. She wasn't calling my name anymore. I lit a lamp and approached the bear. A bullet had pierced its chest. The other one had missed. I was a bad aim.

I walked up to Lisa. I found my second bullet. It had hit her on her face. Her beautiful face. Her head was bleeding. Her eyes were not gazing at anything in particular. I knew she was dead.
The sun came up just then. And I could see it all clearly now.

There on the ground they lay, the Beauty and the Beast.

Glass Cages

Unspoken words were never truer, the Walls echo,
Whispering: There’s Silence, bridged it cannot be;
Run back, there’s a hush haunting her frail halo
Loud enough to break her brittle heart.
See the Glass cages; built till death do them part.


Perhaps one day she may walk, be free at last
Free from The Man Who Would Not Speak;
He’ll face the answers; Consequence stalks his past.
(But don’t you let those tears drop and shatter)
Happiness is one to pretend for; for Nothing’s the matter.


(How can you live in this crumbling  House of Rust?)
Perhaps one day he’ll writhe in the cobwebs he’s twisted himself in.


But for now, she waits.

Just To Get High

His chest heaved as he gulped in air, the sweat dripping down his face ran into his eyes, he blinked and cursed at the sting. He fell backwards onto the wall, and sank onto his haunches.

"Man, that was too fucking close."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the wad of cash. As he counted the bills, what he had just done struck him with adrenaline fueled clarity. He had broken into the store, knifed the clerk and sacked the till, and for what? 30 bucks?. He had crossed the line, or more precisely run screaming and yelling past it for about a mile before taking a look around.

"Holy Shit."

His body told him to run, to succumb to the most primal of all instincts. To flee.

And so he ran, his heart thudding in his chest, disregarding his previous exhaustion. His mind raced as frantically as his body, seeking answers through the panic-ridden haze his thoughts had become. "I killed someone! I friggin killed someone! What the goddamn hell was I thinking?"

Even as he asked this question, the answer came to him.

" I needed it. "

All questions, of morality, or otherwise, resolved themselves. He had needed it, that was all. All that really mattered anyway. With that, he stopped running, and caught his breath. He turned, and moved with strides purposeful, no longer panicked.

He knew where he had to go now.

----An eternity later----

He leaned back. and blew out. The smoke rushed from his lungs and he smiled through the haze that ecstasy could not begin to describe. He looked at the emptied syringe lying next to his hand.

He kept on looking. He raised his hands in front of his face, and the sight and sound of dried blood suddenly rushed at him. His chest seized, and out of the mire a thought came to him.

"Was it worth it?"

And just like that, the blood staining his hands disappeared, and he relaxed as the high took over once more, stealing away whatever chance he had.

Through the slur of his thoughts, just one emerged, and crystallized, as clear as day.

"Totally."

He raised the cigarette to his lips and breathed in once more.

He Who Hears All

They moved in the night
Not so silently, for they feared none.
Destroying all in their wake, they wreaked havoc
They moved as one, they killed as one.

The behemoth army had risen
And we were all doomed.

Traversing great distances in minutes
They destroyed legion after legion
The massive giants cast enormous shadows
The shadows themselves drilled fear into men
We did not dare look at their faces.

The behemoth army had risen
And we were all doomed.

The human armies were no match
They tried hard, Fought hard
It was futile, for the Giant army was strong
Invincible, Godlike.
We threw everything we had at them
We lost all our best warriors
Palladins, Knights, Sorcerors
They failed
Not one giant succumbed at their hands.

The behemoth army had risen
And we were all doomed.

Those who survived
Cursed the holy one
We blamed the invasion on the gods
We assumed he would hear us
Insults do not escape ears.

A miracle was what we needed
A miracle was what god gave us
He sent us a knight, Strong of body and mind
A warrior in a suit the color of the night.

He descended from the skies
He rained arrows at the giants
The missiles pierced their hides
The giants fell as one, they died as one.

The behemoth army had fallen
We were not doomed after all.

We cheered the Black Knight, he was our saviour.
We bestowed him with all our riches
And pledged eternal loyalty
We loked expectantly at our saviour
He looked back at us
His steely eyes gave him away
His voice was like thunder

"Curse me will you ?
Puny humans you will rot
I will crush you now as i did them
I will do so, For I am god."

And yet again we were all doomed.

Nothingness

As he gazed into the mirror, his eyes seemed distant, as was his mind. It roamed through the memories of a life filled with but one thing...Nothing.

A twisted paradox, and the most wrenching of ironies.

He had spent his life watching, as people had struggled through existences that seemed meaningless in the extreme. Words without purpose, actions without conviction, lives without meaning. That had characterized everyone and everything around him.

And how he had searched. Searched for a glimpse of purpose in that barren land, void of hope. And how he had failed, and with his failure, the last dregs of hope had slipped from his hands. And he was left alone in the void, bereft of purpose,of meaning, and detesting the feel of that which he felt the most, Nothing.

His eyes drifted back to the present and came to rest upon that which had robbed him of the will to live.

He picked up the gun and felt his fingers slide over the smooth steel, as cold as death.

He put the gun to him temple, and with nothing but apathy driving him to death, as he had lived his life, he pulled the trigger.

As the life faded from his body, his eyes remained fixed to the mirror, unable to take themselves from what had stolen their light.

For he saw nothing.

The Tower at the End of the World

Red skies unfurl, velvet light beckoning:

A scathing storm shriveling where it meets the Heavens;

He did not know whether come the day of reckoning

But there it stood, the Tower at the End of the World,

Reaching out to touch him, fingers twirled.

Silent symphonies resonated in Mind’s Eye

Strumming through his heart’s faint beats;

Faith in view of Mystical sight, Nature’s Cry.

The Reaper of his dreams, ‘twas playing with him;

Deliver the taunting closing hymn.

Meet me at the Tower at the End of the World,

Said the girl, the Girl in his vision. Faint as she was now,

He saw her smiling, as she always did in dazzling swirls:

Ah, whimsical wandering wayfarer, come undone

This force cannot; your Journey, it has just begun.