Blood and Ashes

Pieces of Writing.

2007-05-20T05:05:35Z

I thought I'd share some little snippets of current projects.

The first is from an evolving story called "The Eldritch"

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Keith woke up in blood. It was everywhere, dripping from the ceiling, soaked into his sheets, splattered on the walls of his room. He clung to his mattress as he sat staring in horror at the crimson stains everywhere. The previous night was a fragmented blur, a night of drunken partying with his teammates. But nowhere in his mind could he find reason for the carnage in his bedroom. His football trophy had a girl’s shirt draped over it that looked like it was dipped in gore. Tiny bits of what he imagined to be muscle and skin were scattered over his computer screen and stereo. Overwhelmed, Keith screamed. Inside him, something laughed.

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This next piece is from a short story I'm calling "Reality."

---

Thomas Falkner was a man on the run.

His feet slipped as he entered an alleyway. Thomas didn’t look down; he knew the asphalt was slick with blood. The good thing was it wasn’t his. People screamed all around him, their cries leaping from open windows, passing cars, even the occasional eerie wail of a person falling from a great height. Thomas Falkner’s imagination was running overtime. It had been doing so since the incident on the expressway. Resting his back against a rugged brick wall, he pulled a cigarette to his lips with a shaky hand. The tip of the cigarette flashed briefly with a conjured flame, then glew brightly as he inhaled. Exhaled smoke danced briefly in front of his face, twisting into elaborate patterns. Thomas glanced up at the sky, his eyes tracing black and widening cracks. The occasional piece of azure fell, sparkling like glass as it tumbled, revealing a viscous bleakness, pulsating as if a living thing. Between the spidery cracks in the sky, darkness oozed, glistening like oil as it dripped to the earth.

Thomas knew the world was ending. This was how he imagined it.

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And the last is from a story that as of yet, has no name. Admittedly, this throws you in the middle of a situation, but it seems the best snippet without posting some obscenely long clip.

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While Simon drove, following directions displayed on the inside of his visor, Azreal’s mind wandered. The past few days had been increasingly difficult for the Angel, especially the evenings while he watched over Simon’s sleeping form. The visions had come, more vividly than they had. Usually, a trip to the Holy Artificers helped alleviate the problem. A few hours hooked up to their instruments and he was focused once more.
Unfortunately, he had been over a month late for mechanical maintenance. Artificers told him it was common for some of the others to begin receiving Holy visions- dreams of the lives of men who had been clerics. His own were of a former Resurrection Cleric named Malachi, a man who fought for the church with zeal. The visions carried Azreal through the cleric’s life, from his hazy childhood to seminary school in Springfield, to the birth of his children. The visions were a blur of surreal imagery, switching so swiftly from one aspect of life to the next in a chaotic montage of living that the Angel had to record them all and slowly stitch them together chronologically.

The most vivid dreams were Malachi’s Resurrection Ceremony. Villages had gathered for the Easter Celebration. It was always held at the hometown of the Priest selected to become a Resurrection Cleric, in this case, Kalb, a town surrounded by fields of crops. Malachi had traveled nearly nine days to get home from Seminary School before the Ceremony. Family and friends watched in pride as he was placed on the cross.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Machine,” the Priests intoned. The crowd responded with a murmured “Amen.”

His arms were bound to the wood, then his upper chest. After he was secured they drove nails through his wrists and feet. As the cross was raised, pain lanced through him, teeth clenched, he bore it all with stoic silence. The Priests attending the Ceremony began reciting from the Book of God.

“He offered up to God the Father His own body and blood to deliver man from his sins. He delivered His own body and blood to be received by His apostles. And as He died, to rise again on the third day He said unto them ‘Do this in commemoration of me.’”

A member of the Holy Guard stepped forth as the last word was spoken, driving a spear through Malachi’s side. As his blood began to flow from the wound, taking his consciousness with it, he could hear the rest of the Ceremony progress. A sharp pain jarred him from the blackness of unconsciousness. The Holy Guard were cutting through his shoulders, severing his arms. Malachi screamed in pain as the Ceremony reached a peak. Then the world faded away.

He regained consciousness on the Artificer’s table, vision blurred and unfocused. Sounds came slowly, forming out of indecipherable murmurs and rumbles. Gradually everything solidified in his senses. Around him a choir sang hymns softly while the Artificer bent over the table. A flood of sensations filled his mind. Gentle tugs on his skin, the smell of burning flesh and machine oil. His eyes fluttered close for a moment before staring up in a drugged lull, the light strips on the ceiling merging in a cross. There was a clang of metal landing on the table next to him, then everything faded away once more, leaving the disembodied echo of hymns floating through the dark.

Communication with God, the Artificers called it, insights into the lives of His chosen. Azreal secretly thought that if God were communicating with him he’d know and understand.

-------------------

Fun times, eh?

Wine, Roses, and a Hot Bath...

2006-05-28T04:58:45Z

Sounds semi-romantic, eh? Well, toss out the roses and that was my alone evening. Would have been nice to share with someone, but things being what they are, we can't always have everything we desire, now can we?

Finishing off the bottle of Merlot and listening to a new playlist, soaking in the tub sent my mind whirling. Whirling seems too strong of a word. Perhaps wandering would work, but it still just doesn't convey what I would want it to. In essence, I starting thinking about all kinds of things. However, prominent was my love life.. or lack thereof at the moment. There is so much that went through my mind that I just can't bring back into words. The essence is there, but the organization to put it into language is fleeting. I know how I feel.. but expressing it in this seems nigh impossible, if not completely so.

I remember thinking that maybe I just need to be single. Utterly and completely for a bit. But the idea of that alone-ness bugs the hell out of me. Almost scares me, actually. I know where my heart lies at the moment, but I don't know if it should. For so many reasons, many of which I won;t even bother getting into here. I know many think it sounds stupid or even braindamaged... but I know how I feel, and that's all I can really say. I know what I want... I remember the dream.. though fleeting and fading it seems... and that alone fightens me. My mind went down the old pathes and trails of what ifs and if onlys... and I didn't like at the things it came to. Consequences of actions done or yet to be done, or that could possibly be done... wondering what is going on... afraid of knowing what is going on...

Then the thought = if it's not enough to pull together then it's better off being a whisper of time past. And that bothers my mind. And no, I don't think much of this makes sense in that jumbled odd way of thought to paper as it flows... Apologies for those reading this... my words may indicate or implicate one thing, but I mean so much else... and other things than may be expected or thought. The direct line is not always the correct one.

The merlot seems to be speaking in a way... directness without being up front... words within words double stacked on meanings that sometimes it seems only my mangled emotions and troubled mind can fathom.

Every living thing on this world dies alone.

A frightening thought. I always imagined finding that one person and spending the rest of my life with them. Soaking in each other's love. Being each other's support. Even doing something so small as when seeing each other upset saying "Is something bothering you?"

I don't know why it is that I can so easily move past some things... big things, moving on with the lesson learned, and not giving it a second thought. As if there was no consequence, as if there needn't be any difference in behavoir afterwards. A flaw at times.. but when it comes down to someone else wronging me, I occasionally think that it is a good thing.

I sit back and look at this river of memories... at all the ones I miss, and that part of me always wished would come back.. if only to say hello. How have you been. Faces move by so swiftly sometimes. And it's amazing how we can look out and only glimpse the surface of the amount of lives that we've touched with our own actions.

Everything just seems so surreal sometimes. And I blink and it's gone. A murmur of a familar scent... wisps of inviting emotions. And on the flip side, sometimes everything seems like a nightmare. How did things get to this point and when the hell do I wake up?

Do you ever get that feeling when you go through something and wish with all your heart you could take back what you did... but you know that if you did that you would lose an important perspective, forget an important lesson, or not have those discussions that end in good things? And you are caught between the moment... what would it be like.. would things follow a worse course or a better one? But you wonder what could be worse than what you went through.. even with the upsides...

Fuck it...

Oh, here's the playlist I've been listening to tonight. Maybe I'll see some of you tonight at the Metro... if not... have a good time. If I'm gone.. remember I was here.

Dusk

1) Bloodwire - Boardwater

2) Depeche Mode - Waiting for the Night

3) VNV Nation - Endless Skies

4) Bloodwire - Absence

5) Wolfsheim - Kein Zuruck

6) Assemblage 23 - Lullaby

7) Razed in Black - Come Back to Me

I want..

2006-01-19T21:24:47Z

I want to be alone... with the same fervor that I don't want to be without her.

I want to sit in the middle of a forest and be at peace again... without this tearing me up.

Again, face to face with the worst parts of myself. Oh, how the not so mighty have fallen. Again. Crashed and burned. Wreckage pinning me to a self that makes me sick to my fucking stomach. Literally. Twice now today I've retched... twice now my body has had nothing to expell but liquid. Trying to eat was a mistake. Came right back up. Pleasant, isn't it?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I want to be alone. Away from this thing that is eating me like a cancer... and I let it for the brief glimpses of happiness. But that's a pathetic thought. A very pathetic one. Perhaps it's because that's how I feel. Fucking pathetic.

So much hatred and anger pushed beneath a docile vaneer. So much rage at injustices as I percieve them. Unfairness. Selflessness returned with indifference. And no, I'm not talking about you know who. I mean in general. I have no outlet. I have no place to funnel this... festering contempt and disappointment within me.

And that dam burst. In the worst possible way. A small trigger just set loose the deluge. And now I sit trying to make the pieces fit back together with the back of my mind wondering if they ever really fit at all.

I'm TRYING DAMNIT!

For me, for you, for everyone in my life that I have a respect for and fear of being a pathetic disappointment. And I disgust myself. I disgust myself at being so docile. I disgust myself at being so dependant. Tried to break that cycle. Fell right back the fuck in. Because I thought it would be a change. I thought there would be a change on both sides. Fortune favors the bold, right? So I boldly marched my ass back into that situation.. and set off a fucking bomb. That will never fade away, I suppose.

So now... what are the choices? What are the paths? I need to find me. To face those things in me that disgust me.. that fill me with contempt for myself even as I see those things that make me love parts of who I am. I need to spend more time alone. I haven't done that in oh, so long. Take the day or night to myself. Just to myself. And do it often. Until I find out what this is.

This monster in me... this beast of hatred and anger. It's not some nameless thing. It's me. A larger part of me that I thought I could get rid of by being the docile, selfless boyfriend. The one who will do whatever you want before you ask it. The appeaser. The pathetic, whimpering piece of grovelling shit too afraid to anger or upset because of a fear of losing that which I love... and doing it to an extreme that for the past year and a half I've forgotten who I am. Bathed in self pity and loss... bathed in "maybes" and "what if"s... maybe if I do this, what if I do that.. things will be easier things will be good.

Fucking tired of it. But I need to channel it. Focus it on something else.

Once upon a time I had martial arts to fill that need. Once upon a time I would write my pains away, my anger exhausted on fictional characters and situations that I create to move and tell stories. Now? Martial Arts seems like a good idea... right before I get down to it. Then I decide "what's the point?" Writing? Words fall uselessly from my pen to a paper that swallows them whole and spits them out, garbled, ungraceful. Pathetic.

This is me. I've been broken for so long I've forgotten how it feels to be in one piece. Shards of me left scattered on everything I touch. Looking that pathetic, weak fool for not being able to look at myself and say: "I see me. I see what I've let myself become. How I've let all of this fester and splinter into so much more than it ever needed to be. And I need to fix it." No. I was content to talk to so and so, and this person or that person. "This is what is wrong in my life today... yes, I'm trying to do something about it but I feel lost." Lost, like a poor little boy in a dark forest with no way home... huddled in a damp cave waiting for someone to rescue me. A small detail about myself that I lost somewhere along the way. I've never been in a forest I couldn't get myself out of. Used to try it back home for fun. Run randomly with someone through a new piece of land yet undiscovered by us. And then make our way home. Never getting lost for more than a few minutes and never panicing.

Time for me to rescue me. "OH, woe is me, woe is me, have pity on the poor broken Ray." Fuck it. Only reason to pity me is because I don't fix myself. The pity of disgust and disappointment. The only person I think I disappoint more than anyone is me.

And that shit has to change. Now.

Falling Away

2005-02-28T03:52:21Z

And I watch as the light fades.
Falling from former states.

Humorous in a masochistic sense.

Feeling something just seep out of you... like blood from a fresh scar... just dribbling and slipping away in slow motion. In the mind's eye it's the heartsblood of hope for ideals that you've always upheld and always believed in no matter what odds stood against it. Emotions can be such fickle things at times. Waving as wheat in wind.

But there comes a time, as there always does... when it finally stops. The dream ceases to be... shattering like crystal on a marble floor, shards dancing in the candle light of nights past. Whispered words spoken in sacred confidence echo and fall on deaf ears. And then... there is nothing. The harsh reality of it all sunders any notion of possibilities or recompense. The realization that things are now, as they always have been... only the scenes and details skipped beyond sight. Hidden behind dancing words and moments of sentiment that now, seems to be... seems to have been... little more than pleasant illusion.

Amazing how our duality can be so apparent at times... and hidden in veils of stillness at others. How one person can assume one role in private... yet be an entirely different entity when around others. Duality or human nature? Maybe both. Maybe two people were under an illusion.. not one... that things can be not as they are, but ... better? Where does the lie stop and horrid truth begin?

Or is it as simple as a wave and a sigh?

Love has always been something to sustain hope. To foster happiness and bring a light into the dark lives of those who behold it.

Love has been something that this one has held as the most sacred of all truthes. Something that has stung deeper then the deepest cut, the worst bleeding night.

Perhaps it was a petty belief that wasn't "matured" to these days of reality.

Ironic, that it is myself that has lost faith in that "higher" emotion. After all this time, with so many... and having been through so much... yet still clinging to that illusion called "love." And over something so small that revealed so much... practically all belief in it has died away. Belief in that feeling has done nothing but lead to pain that begets more pain. Maybe it was the last lesson to learn on this path. Love is an empty word... rotted and hollowed by broken promises and words... glances and embraces... that seem genuine... but are but plays upon a multitude of complexities. Where is the real in any of it? And was there ever? Doubtful I'm likely to ever know.

Fuck Love.

Thunder

2005-01-21T01:46:47Z

Have you ever watched the beauty of a thunderstorm? Watched the clouds as they rolled in, boiling over with an electric smell in the air that just sets your senses aflame? You feel the small hairs on the back of your neck stand with the energy that just rests right before your finger tips. A feeling of such unrestrained power that you know if you could just reach out and harness it the world would be at your feet.

Then, the breeze hits.

A warm wash of contradictory cool air tinged with a slight sense of heat. The moist smell that wafts on unseen, but felt, currents as the leaves around you begin their dance of praise on the back of the world.

Something savage is unleashed as the first torrent begins. Like a sheet of water cast down to wash the fears of the world away. Trees sway as the winds pick up, branches moving to a music hidden from the ear, yet a symphony that so many artists try to capture. It awakens something primal. A deep seated sense of celebration, release, and joy as the rolling thunder peaks in an invisble crash.

And you dance.

You dance with the wind and the leaves and the trees of the world around you. Up above, your lightshow begins. Lightning flickers between clouds. Perhaps it's that sunset storm... oranges melding in white light as the purple of the dying light rushes in to greet the night and herald the rise of the moon. That mystical moment as the sun makes it's final travel below the horizon. When everything seems so right. So beautiful.

The wind caresses your skin, sends your clothes billowing against you in silent hello. Crawling softly over skin and cloth in an unpredicatable pattern that just sets your sense of touch aflame. You could lose yourself in that feeling.

Gentle drops of rain beat against closed eyes as you hear the thunder crash, closer, always drawing nearer and nearer. The sky is crying on you. Warm, wet tears of the clouds finding their way to your heart. And you cry with it. Dancing still. Swept away in the moment of union with the world beyond the cities of "progress."

Then... it's over. And you remember... you just washed your car. Damnit. And your cell phone got soaked in the rain. Damn the rain. And damn thunderstorms. It's dark and you dropped your keys somewhere.

What's so beautiful about nature anyway, right? It was just a thunderstorm at sunset.

Right?

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Commentary by the author (yeah, yeah, boo hiss)

Just like feeling in love. Full of such beauty and grace... until the trivial truthes of existence tear that beauty to nothing but a moment.

Have you ever felt the beauty of being in love?

Then why do we let the trivial destroy such moments when they could comprise the totality of our experiences?

This piece isn't any more about a thunderstorm than it is about just letting go of your worries and taking comfort in the feeling that someone loves you as you love them. Before we let the little things pick it apart, piece by piece.

Yeah, you all know, Seraph has a bleeding heart, and the fate of a poet (for those of you who I've discussed this with).

But, seriously. If you love someone... and have felt this way... tell them tonight. Tell them sincerely and honestly.

I love you.

Let's not let these moments fade into obscurity. Beauty is where we find it. Why not treasure it?

-Seraph

Underwater

2005-01-21T01:25:29Z

(Monologue alert... monologue alert)

It's amazing, when you think about it. How small electrical currents and chemical reactions govern the way we think... who we find attractive... whose pheremones get to us. How we react to situations. How we respond to pain or anguish. All because our bodies are the most complex and self repairing machines ever designed. Designed or evolved, take your pick. Does it really matter how or why we're here when we can't even figure out how to coexist with one another?

This sea of humanity... this overwhelming tide of unfortunates with sob stories and triumphs... in ten thousand years... will anyone remember you? Will they remember me? Or will they find our atoms fused into the endless waters that will cover the world because we've raped and pillaged our home planet like crusaders in a "heretic" village?

Technology is simply man's emulation of his own body. Our computers think the way we do... only more hardwired then our own "wetware." Electrical currents stream along sodered highways and circuitry laid by a man attempting to be a God. We give them a crude nervous system of sorts... that responds to the stimuli of our fingers typing like small lightning strikes on a keyboard... or a "mouse" that we control as if we were the mountain moving forces of fate ourselves.

Oversimplification, certainly. Our technology makes us the god of the natural world... along with our ability to reason and communicate. These things place us above the beasts, don't they? Forgive me is I sound somewhat bitter or sarcastic. Mankind is such a... contradiction in motion... much like these words are meaningless pixels on a screen to me as I write them... each word vanishing from my mind as it is translated to your screen. Like a fireflash of a prairie blaze.

What is it exactly that I want to say with this? Does it even really matter? Will anything anyone ever says truly change a decision you make in your life? Short as it is? No. So, go on, as you kill your planet... driving your sky choking vehicles to your corporate jobs where you slave like a machine in a world filled with such natural beauty that you never see... because you're too busy staring at the artificial world that lights your life direct from your television screen. Discount slaughter of the natural world as you make new and improved products designed to make our life and world even more slothful, while at the same time triumphantly sending our planet into it's death thrones.

Our winters mellow... our sea level rises... oil corporations poison our ground and waters, draining our "mother," "gaia," for those so inclined, out of her lifesblood while growing fat like ticks off of the dollar signs clinking into their electronically transfered funds and bank accounts.

You, in your ambercrombie and hollister jeans... you corporate wage slave hacking away at international business deals... you self hating clean freak... open your eyes and look around. Maybe once, mankind was an animal beholden only to his instincts... but look what we've created. A world where we've designed a technological society to make our lives more mindless and "easier"... Machines made to duplicate our tasks. Machines mirrored after our movements... our own bodies a template for that which might one day replace us entirely.

Man has lost his glory. His mysteries. Science and technology have become our new gods. Replacing Zeus, Jupiter, Marduk, Jesus. Any "god" a man has put a name to or dreamt up are simply that. Dreams. Our reality? The screen that is blinking in your face right now.

By leaving one reality, we've created and entered another. No longer completely bound by instincts... we are bound by that idea which we've created. Programming. Unlike our machines, though, we don't type in how to think or hardwire ourselves to a server. Not directly anyway.

What television show has programmed you today? What radio talkshow host has scripted your conversations for the watercooler? Where is your original thought?!?!

Unclad your binary soul... that pixelated series of zeroes and ones that is tethered by the "norms" of society programmed by our "entertainment."

Create. Be.

Find your own mystery beyond what is presented to you.

And in ten thousand years, I'll meet you underwater.

Well, if you hadn't noticed...

2005-01-20T23:49:44Z

I've turned the journal from a locked, friends only affair into a public one. *shrugs* No real reasoning for this, just seemed like the right thing to do for the time being. Besides, I want to share some of the things here with people I know who don't have LJ accounts (perish the thought, eh? Ah well).

There's something in me right now that wants to boil to the surface. That feeling of electricity in my hands and mind right before the muse strikes her hardest. When emotion has been simmered long enough and become something of a fuel for the burning urge for creation within me. That irresistable drive... that undeniable -requirement- in me to create. To paint emotion on a blank canvas of a reading "audience." And watch what ensues afterward.

We'll see what comes of it.

-Seraph

Been awhile since I last updated, eh?

2004-10-02T10:04:00Z

Well, here's a small snippet from a scene between gabriel and lucifer from chapter four of Love of Angels. Yeah, this is a direct copy of the rough, so have fun, tear it apart. LOL. Suggestions welcome.

"Where is 'God?'" came Lucifer's sneering voice again. "Do you see him anywhere, Gabriel? Looking down with infinite wisdom from the Chrysler Building, maybe?"

The green eyed Angel frowned silently to himself, expecting the coming rhetoric he could sense building in Lucifer's tone.

The Fallen Seraph pulled himself from his seat, the creak of leather echoing oddly in the imposed quiet of the room. A few graceful strides brought him beside the Angel of Redemption. As Gabriel stood wordless, eyes on the people moving below, Lucifer leaned against the glass, both palms against the cool surface.

"Do you see him down there? Do you see him anywhere for that matter?" A hand came free to make a sweeping gesture that consumed the entire city before them. "Anywhere in this forest of concrete and prideful work, do you see him?"

"I do," came the firm, and not unexpected reply. It put a smile on the Morning Star's face. One of those smiles a parent gives to a child when they say they didn't break the lamp on the living room table.

"Enlighten me, please."

"In the Churches that line the streets. In the hearts of the Faithful... say what you will. He is always here."

Lucifer's laughter, not surprising to either of them, was biting none the less.

"The Churches? Yes, of course. In each disgraced confessional where 'men of God' violate their precious 'lambs.' In each tainted rectory where they masturbate to lewd pictures or internet pornography sites. Your Redeemers, your virtuous priests? Your men of Faith who go watch strippers with lustful eyes and buy whores ... with collection plates for wallets and the Lord's Prayer as their forgiveness." Lucifer couldn't help but offer another small chuckle, as if to punctuate his point... how laughable it all was. "The Shepards of your faith... the Guides to your Salvation are as tainted and base as any other. Your Churches hold them aloft, above the sins of the rest of mankind as a pious example of a rotting morality stale and rank with the passage of time.
Christianity is a water-logged corpse being nibbled away one stinking morsel at a time by practicality and realism." The Morning Star turned his gaze to the Angel beside him, noting the Seraph's clenched jaw. His tone changed to one of sad understanding and patience. A soothing breath of realization.

"Perhaps a thousand years ago... He stood with the 'Faithful' as they murdered and raped in his name. Pilaging and burning hamlets and villages. But, look around you, Gabriel," Again he gestured to the city beyond the window, "He's left the 'Faithful' to rot away as the bones of his aged morality are picked clean by the evolution of man's own ethics."

bleedingseraph @ 2004-09-17T04:21:00

2004-09-17T09:27:18Z

Cautious sentiment
of a mechanical angel

bleedingseraph @ 2004-09-09T01:06:00

2004-09-09T06:15:07Z

That was my heart, you bitch. That thing you trampled on, for "my" own good. You remember what it felt like, right? How you took comfort in it when you had a bad day, or when you just needed someone to be there. You remember, right?

Or, is it, that you don't want to remember? Is it that you're trying to tell yourself so many different things.. why you said the things you said to me while we were alone... why you opened up and made yourself vulnerable to me the way you did. Justifying? Or trying to lie away the fact that you were genuine? So that you won't get hurt again? So that you won't losing something you shove away? Something that could get close enough to hurt you... and bad.

How much was real and how much was lie, tonight? How much was trying to push me away and hurt me so that you could feel "better" that you wouldn't hurt me in the future... (oh, how self sacrificing of you), and how much of it was genuine feeling? I know some of it was.

You told me you saw yourself ending up treating me like "her," and we both know who that is. The one who hurt me oh so recently. You said you were afraid you would hurt me as much as she did... and you wouldn't tolerate it... you wouldn't put up with it.

Should I even bother saying you two aren't alike?

Should I even bother saying that I -do- care about you and I -do- wish that this hadn't happened?

Should I even bother trying to talk to you again, when you just want to shove me away?

Or should I just sit here, rocking back and forth... making this pain something I can deal with...

The Suicide Monologues (Pt. 1)

2004-09-05T11:46:08Z

I was actually going to write a collection of monologues all based around various reasons and types of suicides... here's one called "Falling Away"
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Don't worry. It... feels like... flying.

Feeling the wind in my face, my clothes blowing against my body.

You remember how I always wished that I could fly? (Small laugh) Even though I'm afraid of heights? Funny... isn't it?

The earth below... the city lights... It all seems so peaceful from up here. And there's a silence. A hush despite the roaring wind and the pounding in my chest. A quell in the storm of my mind where I can see everething... where I can... feel.... everything.

I pass a window with two lovers embracing and I think of you and I. How it was. How it all fell away. I wish I had the chance... the chance to do things different. But, none of us will ever get that, will we? I suppose that's what dreams are for.

And ohhh... how I've dreamt...

There's so much I wish I could say... but none of it was left unsaid, was it? So much I wish I could express... but you've already understood. And... in the end... it didn't change anything.

I reach out and I feel the nothing of the world... and it screams inside of me. It makes you feel free... like twisting in a dark void, spinning and spinning... and all you can see are the lights rushing up to smile at you.

Flying and falling... is there a difference?

I close my eyes and pretend that I'm racing into the clouds over a moonlit night. One of those nights where the stars shine out over calm waters... and I picture you there beside me. Laughing. Smiling.

I let your smile in my mind become my own... as the concrete of the city erases everything that I am...

bleedingseraph @ 2004-09-04T05:56:00

2004-09-04T11:01:33Z

This languid flow of objective thought destroys sentiments spent on dying dreams.

This is the barrier of truth: this language incapable of describing the most basic of functions of what it means to be human.

When emotion is offset by logic... what have we become?

Ether Dream

2004-09-04T10:53:23Z

Flowing through the Ether Dream
My mind follows like a sluggish beast
Through the pathways of tomorrow
Through the burnt forests of yesterday

A tarnished spirit leads the way
Mended soul soars the oil stained sky
Memories and moments slip away
Flowing through the Ether Dream

bleedingseraph @ 2004-09-04T05:34:00

2004-09-04T10:39:11Z

Judge me with your eyes
Judge me with your unfailing righteousness
Not by what I do
But what I believe

Look at me
Am I not the same as you have known me to be?
Does this detail make it so different?
Where do you draw the line?

Does it matter what I believe
When we've known each other before this
Was known to you?

Is it so difficult to accept?
Does it make you choke on your misconceptions?
On the programmed reaction of society?

Normality is comformity.

bleedingseraph @ 2004-09-02T04:51:00

2004-09-02T09:52:18Z

Creation Bleeds

Homecoming...

2004-08-27T08:57:38Z

He stood upon a plane of darkness, eyes staring out over what was once magnificent, what was once beautiful. Riding on the currents of the depressed air the ashes of trees, of brothers and sisters, the ashes of burnt dreams and offerings swept around him in a silent dance of mourning. Wisps of clouds fell burning like tears from the blackened sky. Around him were the charred and dessicated bodies of those he had once raised his voice in praise with. They were dead now. It seemed that everything was dead.

Home seemed like such a hollow word to him. He strode slowly through broken and bloody gates once white and glistening like pearls. He stopped just within them, dark eyes moving over the intricate details burned into memory from countless lifetimes of longing. Things were different now. hinges were torn, the gates themselves hanging like impotent lovers, their bars twisted and shattered, turned to ash in places from the heat of a rage that had shaken the pillars of the universe.

Were there any tears left within him they would have filled the boiled rivers, flowed through the empty streams. His boots crushed the bones of the fallen as he moved beyond the gates. The remains were everywhere. He stepped on them not out of malice, but because there was no where else to walk. Each footfall sent clouds of blackened ash into the stale air.

He walked the pathways of lost children. He moved among the fallen trees and melted playgrounds of youth. His solitude was the essence of a millenia. No human could accept the mantle of outcast without feeling its sting. He had been branded the enemy of all that was good in creation because he refused to bow on bended knee. Loneliness was a mere word for lack of companionship, it could not begin to describe the emotion that twisted through his being.

He stood alone, staring down on the smoldering ruin of Paradise. The smell of flowers and honey had long since died, the laughter of children had echoed into silence. The only movement was the quiet settling of ashes abandoned to fall by the tiring wind and the gentle sway of his hair. It had come to this. It had come to flames and silence.

(Just a little something I wrote inspired by the Cruxshadows song "Return." It's pretty old, but I still like it.)

Reunion

2004-08-27T08:43:01Z

He stood silently, the cigarette between his lips slowly burning down. The tip had ashed of it's own accord, the grey particles floating on the soft wind, unnoticed, to the ground. His eyes were on the ground before him, the deep brown mirrored over in the light of the afternoon. The light was still painful sometimes. It seemed like he scarcely saw the sun these days, working nights, prefering the dark anyway. A soft drag was finally taken, his fingers reaching up to take the thin cylinder from his mouth as he inhaled. The Marlboro's were alright, he guessed... but he'd much rather be smoking cloves. A mental note was made to buy a pack of Djarum Blacks as soon as he cashed his check.

Waiting always made him nervous. Always made his heart pound. What would happen? What would the outcome be? The sounds around him were distinctly crisp, his ears having adjusted to detecting the minute sounds around him from walking tours at work and having to concentrate on your senses. Down the street a group of children was moving with a teacher at the lead. By what they carried it seemed they were coming out for a picnic for lunchtime. He sighed softly, still not hearing what he wanted: The sound of footsteps from behind him.

His chest under the black turtleneck felt uncomfortably bare. The familiar weight, however light, was no longer there. The necklace had been removed. No ring rested against his heart... he doubted it ever would again.

The CD player in the car rattled on its play list. Answer, by Sarah MacLachlan, began softly. His eyes shut as he let the cigarette fall to the pavement. It always hurt to hear it... ever since he got the CD. Once, before he bought it, he had sent her the lyrics. When things were good... when things were different than they were now. Now, it was almost promised to bring tears to his eyes.

Leaning against the car, he pulled another cigarette from the crumpled pack in his pocket. The lighter was almost dead so he had to fiddle with it for a few seconds before it lit. Puffing the cigarette to life, he slid the pack back into his pocket and absently tossed the lighter through the car's open window onto the seat.

That made four cigarettes in maybe ten minutes max. He could imagine the smoke polluting his lungs, the tissue slowly blackening under the onslaught of tar and nicotine. Mary Kate would have his head, if she were talking to him... and that was about to come to a head, now wasn't it?

The moment he had both anticipated and dreaded occured. He could hear them coming down the street. He looked back over his shoulder, squinting his eyes against the sun. There she was. She was wearing blue jeans, her converse sneakers and a dark sweater over a t-shirt. Her satchel was over her shoulder as always. She hated purses. The haircut was different... but there she was... walking out of his dreams and into what could be a very painful reality.

As she drew closer, his heart raced. Hell, it seemed it would explode any moment. Her footsteps seemed to echo in his mind, turning the seconds into several hours. As she came closer still, he swore in his mind that he could smell her. The familiar scent that instantly made him think of home... the home he had found in her arms those months ago.

He blinked in complete shock as she dove into him, her arms going around him and pulling him close. Then, with a sigh of contentment, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her hair. Her head rested against his chest and he felt it burn, as if a bonfire had ignited within him. All the fear, all the doubt had been thrown aside.

They stood for what seemed to be a pleasant eternity in each other's arms before hesitantly pulling back. Her eyes stared up at him, the depths of which he wanted to just dive into and let himself be lost. As the smile crossed over her face he finally found his voice.

"I've missed you," he said softly, his voice scarcely over a whisper.

"I've missed you, too," came the reply.

Cathedral

2004-08-27T06:50:50Z

A single building. A cathedral. It stands on a hill over looking a cemetery. The gravestones are cracked and worn. Wilted and withered flowers losing their petals to the chill saber of winter's first breaths lie in forgotten groups at crumbling mausoleums. Like a wrinkling grandmother, the building stands. Spires stretch into the sky like talons reaching to tear the clouds from their thrones in defiance of days of lost beauty.

Her brickwork is hidden beneath spidering veins of ivy, blackened with soot from a fire long ago. Stained glass windows once lovingly set now hang, broken and cracked, reflecting the dying light of the day.

Its story is not important. The only thing that is important is that it merely is. What does that tell you about yourself?

By the way...

2004-08-27T06:34:13Z

Don't be afraid to post comments or criticize the work I show here... it's what this is for, so... by all means... please... comment.

-Seraph

Alright...

2004-08-26T11:30:27Z

If you want to be put on the friends list for this journal, comment on this entry.

The entire journal will within the next writing post or two be completely friends only, so hop on now.

I'll still check this entry from time to time to see if anyone new pops up.

-Seraph

Mirror, Mirror ...08/26/04

2004-08-26T10:40:31Z

Make me bleed. Make me cry. Go on, you know you want to. At least, you'd think you'd want to.

Haven't you done this enough? Tortured me with half truthes and splintered promises. Honey soaked lies and barbed hopes. What is it about me that makes me such a beautiful target for this? Is it that I can't just let go and say that I'm finished? That I've had enough?

Don't the scars on my arms scream enough to you? I close my eyes and I can still feel the blade cutting through the layers. A warm friction at first... then a wash of cool breath as blood touches air like a long lost lover. Is that all I am? A bleeding wreak who shivers in a cold corner, begging, pleading, screaming for attention that I never deserve... that I never earn? Isn't it enough? Haven't I done... enough? But, I haven't... have I? Not by a long shot... it'll never be enough.

Reinvent me. Swallow me whole. Grind my self esteem to powered bones and gristle. Shred my heart with a razor's kiss. How much you hurt shows how much you care, right? How much you bleed... well... that's even better... isn't it?

ISN'T IT?

But you'll never tell me, will you? You just stare. Stare and say nothing. Too good to speak... too good to even smile. Don't you see what this makes me do?

But... there's another side, isn't there? There always is... the undeniable duality of human beings. The hypocrisy that we hate and love. We love and hate. The hypocrisy of ourselves... of self acceptance... of self denial... and so... we turn on each other. No matter how much we want something... some part of us will always keep it from us... in an effort to punish ourselves for our "sins"... is that what this is about? Why you can't just let me be happy? You keep this from me, hidden, cold, damp and afraid beneath a layer of self doubt and longing that will never be realized... because to realize it is to accept it? And to accept it... is to... is to what?

To be happy? To be free? Tell me... what do those words mean? Do we even know anymore? So lost in a sea of commercial guilt and discount euphoria that we float on an endless wave of oblivion without even realizing it... or... maybe we do... but don't care. Do you know? Do I know? Do any of us? Or... do we know... and like it?

Is that why you're doing this? To give me a taste of enlightenment that comes at the brink of self destruction? The self awareness of self nullification? Does that even make sense? Do any of us... make sense?

And here I sit... holding a bloody edge. A razor... a customary tool of self love. Bloody and ravaged by the doubts of self that make me want to bleed... and bleed... and bleed... And I do it, you know. I bleed. To feel alive... to feel... -anything- in this place.

This is where you left me. Don't you like what I've done with it? A dark little hole... walls painted with my own fears and bloody scribblings. That dripping noise in the shadows? Don't listen to it. It's only the jars of tears I left to rot away in the heart of my own pathetic worth. You did that too, you know. Helped me craft the tools of my little damp playground of ecstatic pain.

But... you don't want to talk now... I see.

I'll just sit here, ragged cuts painting the way to my heart.

But that's the way it always is... isn't it...

Mirror, Mirror, on the wall?

--------------

This just flowed a few moments ago. It's a monologue about a cutter. The entire time staring into the mirror, talking to himself. About himself, really. I kind of like it, myself.

Untitled, 8/26/04

2004-08-26T10:07:35Z

Cast back this thin vaneer of pampered flesh
Cast away these feelings of helplessness

This vague perception that everything I know is irreversibly wrong
Unjustly brought to the stocks and stoned; naked and bare for all to see

What is it amoung ourselves that we cannot accept "us" as "us?"
Cut me and make me bleed until I lie, beautiful and accepted amoung you all.

Carve my face onto the covers of your magazines
Sell my soul, my essence, my life for a flash of a bulb and a smile from a fan

Our role models kill themselves to be what they are
Is it any surprise we kill ourselves to be like them?

--------

Well, it was written untitled... but I've been thinking of calling it "A Model's Cry" ...

I suppose...

2004-08-26T09:02:56Z

I should more than likely start posting in this journal.

Unfortunately, those posts might be few and far in between, depending on how my Muse decides to strike. This journal is primarily going to be a creative outlet for poetry, lyrics, short scenes, whatever strikes me at the time.

The friends list for this journal is going to be decidedly shorter than that of my primary, Shadowfallen, journal. For the sheer fact that I only wish those who I respect as creative people to view most of what will be posted here, and yes, that does mean that this is most likely going to be a Friends Only journal as well.

The posts will start soon enough, possibly tonight, actually, going back through some of my older poems that I might repost here for simplicity's sake.

-Seraph