Armies of Ash

Jolyn and I were arguing again about having live tv here in the cave. She is still adamant that allowing me to watch current events simply can't end well. What she fails to understand is that current events aren't likely very different from the same shit I saw out there 500 or a thousand years ago.

People don't really change. Oh sure some of the veneer is different and technology evolves fast enough, but deep in the heart of people, the human race is always going to be at odds with something.

She thinks that simple truth will upset me. She's wrong. The human call to battle isn't necessarily a state of evil. It is what drives humans to grow and develop even if that core remains the same for all eternity. To be honest that drive to improve the world by force is one I respect. And to that aspect I've created a poem to honor the eternal battle cry which drives the human species onward even in the darkest hour.


ARMIES OF ASH

Sun rising from the dark
Setting the world alight
People born, taking breath
Living, dying, full of strife

For love, for life,
For freedom and pain
Everything lost,
Everything to gain

Over and over
Repeated mistakes
Time and again
The same damn heartaches

Someday, sometime
We’ll face the truth
We are all soldiers
Born of the ash
Forever doomed
To repeat the past.

Armies of ash,
Nothing that lasts
People of ash,
Reborn of the past


J.

Sunbathing

Jolyn is pissed at me.

Yeah, nothing new there. She came looking for me earlier and found me. Found me laying naked in the sunlight. According to her the sight of my nudity has seared the corneas from her eyeballs. She's being silly. Yes, I am her father, but it's not as if we're humans, reared on those restrictive customs and taboos.

Empathy isn't really my strongest skill but I am trying to understand. Raised in hell, surrounded by demons, I suppose my experiences would have differed from hers. The demons often went bare or nearly bare and had little regard for modesty of any kind.

Then again, Jo did spend more than a few years living with some kind of religious order, monks or something. Regardless, she's pissed.

So I'm looking at some way to make it up to her. Maybe I'll just have to limit the nude sunbathing to during her class times.

J.

Fresh air...

This winter passed as quickly as any other. For me, a single season is little more than a blink. Still with the loss of Sam and with all the time that Jo has spent among humans or with her mother, somehow it was a colder darker season than usual.

But spring has come and mostly gone and above my cave the world is warming to what I hear is expected to be a hot summer. Down here of course there is little change. The same cool stone. The same still air. The same everything.

Until yesterday when a gust of sweet fresh air rushed through the caves. So sudden and new it was a shock and a welcome one. I followed the breeze back to find the source -- a cave in. Sunlight, the first I've seen in several hundred years streamed through the cracked rocks and spotted the drab stone like a splash of golden paint. For a moment, I believed my prison door had finally been opened.

Freedom.

But it wasn't to be. Despite the warm touch from the sun, the path was not open for me. I tried to push through but was stopped at once.

So why am I not pissed off? Because for once, I was treated better than an animal. Rather than lock me away or knock my ass out cold, C talked to me. Shit we probably talked for an hour or more. Honestly he talked while I just soaked up the sunshine. But during his sharing something changed.

Hell, everything changed.

I asked him about Vinola. I always do. He is the god of reincarnation. When I lost Vinola all those years ago he promised to find her for me. So I always ask. But this was the first time he had any news. She has not been recovered. She has not been reincarnated. When she is, I'll finally be freed. According to C that time hasn't come yet. But it will be soon. He said soon.

Soon I will have her in my arms.

And until then, the cave in will be left as it is, so that the sunshine might break through into my darkness one small crack at a time.

J

Sam

Had a guy sent me a private post through this blog thing. I didn't know you could do that. He said he liked the poetry and wanted to know when I would be posting more. Here it is.

You
are
all
worm
food

I
watch

Dying
is
the
easy
part

We buried Sam today. He fell asleep at my feet and never woke up. Just like Sam to not want to cause any trouble even in death. With as much death as I have seen in my life you would think I would be immune to the loss, but I'm not. I think I took it even harder than Jolyn.

We found a quiet spot in the caves that had a dirt floor. Then I buried him in the old way of the Tascryn Demons. Considering he could shepard my soul I felt that was fitting. I dug the hole, with a small ceremonial trowl. Deep down and perfectly round. Then I prepared the bottom and sides so he would not have any rocks poking him. Some loose dirt at the bottom to soften the bed. Sam, curled in a ball inside his shroud... he might have still just been asleep.

His shroud is gold with sparkles. Jolyn's choice but fitting. Then we each placed a some dirt in while thinking of Sam and all he gave us. I filled in the hole.

The top of his grave has two stones. One from me and one from Jolyn. It is a small cairn but one to show he was loved and will be missed. My stone has his name and is partially blacked with dragon fire. Jolyn carved a stone for him. It says "Loved".

Sam, we miss you.

J

feeling poetic

sudden pain
breaking apart
love torn away
from a broken heart

violent impulses
held in tight
cradled in darkness
away from the light

no thinning clouds
under no blinding sky
for freedom I weep
forever I cry

locked here in my
dark garden of stone
I dream of my past
my future alone

hearts broken
pain without end
for now I sleep
waiting for when

for rising tides
and shaking ground
this world gone wrong
becomes fire bound

kingdoms of fire,
landscape burnt bare
take care of the edge
dragons be there

J

Another day in paradise

or some such shit. I'm hanging out here in the cave alone again. Jolyn is off with her mother doing some crazy fucking thing. This time it's a mother/daughter bowing league. For gods sakes. You've got to be kidding me. Bowling?

Oh well, at least she left me entertainment. Jo brought me new dvds, this time two years worth of some tv show called Dexter. Have to admit, she knows me well. I do love this show. My only complaint is that sometimes it seems the murdering psycho complicates simple things. If it's his nature to kill, why is it wrong for him to do so? I seriously like that he found a way to channel his needs into something that improved the world as a whole.

Hate to get deep and analytical, but I wonder if I can turn my own dark nature to some favorable light? Not sure, but I'll have to give it some thought. My particular skills at first seem to have only one use and I don't think the rest of the inhabitants of this paradise would appreciate being burned into nonexistence. I could be wrong but since it's sort of a one time thing, I don't think I'll experiment.

Not that it matters since I'm still locked up here.

J

Wolves

Wolves. I honestly didn't think much of them or their duel souled counterparts, the Valafrn until one day when I met one and she kicked my ass.

Vinola was a Valafrn werewolf but also more and much like myself she was out in the world searching for herself.

Jolyn, I hope you understand that I never loved your mother. I cared for her and I respected her courage. But there was no love, not the kind that should be between mates. She was given to me as a sacrifice. Her family expected me to eat her. (I did, but that's another story) Perhaps in our circumstances tolerance and eventual betrayal was the best we could hope for.

But Vinola was different. She captured my heart from first glance. Oh sure, it took her a while so see any value in me, but it wasn't for lack of my trying. You might wonder what it was about one werewolf that caught my eye when I'd seen the whole world and not been overly impressed with any other? I think this might be the difference between love and "forever love".

Damn that sounds cheesy.

I believe that if the world had given us enough time your mother and I could have come to love one another. But no amount of time would have bound her soul to mine. I think that space was already spoken for long before I even came into the world. Vinola was that other half that I'd been searching for without ever understanding. The moment I saw her, my heart awoke. That inner place in my being that had been quiet--it roared. I had to have her, be with her, love her.

Nothing else mattered.

Grant was with me at the time. He and I fought over my reaction to Vinola. I was then, and still am now, completely irrational when it comes to her. I'm sure I drove him nuts. If he hadn't promised to stay by my side no matter what, I'm sure my mood swings would have driven him away. But he did stay and eventually Vinola relented.

We were together far too short a time. But for that time the world was perfect. Before we'd had more than a taste of that love, she was gone.

If I get a little misty when I see wolf art, it is for missing her.

J