Nice

Finally its raining.

Tartarus

I'd be lying if I said
"I do not know how long I've been down here"
I remember every second of it.
They did something to me before they locked me in;
I never sleep, never eat, never drink.
I just walk and climb and run
on stones cool and damp,
over abyss and through tunnels wide
crossing ancient bridges and climbing rough-hewn stairs,
passing occasional weathered murals and statutes
depicting things my absent memory flows around
like rocks in a river.

Sometimes a sound like a distant thunder will echo
soft as steel,
my stomach drops and bile climbs
and sweat slicks my skin.
It is always getting closer
no matter how many times I change my path
it always get closer: this I know.

Some days I'll find a room
that smells of life,
the mattress still warm, teapot over the fire,
maps plaster the walls and sometimes
I recognize the handwriting, though not often.
One room had a spear lying in the corner, freshly sharpened.
It may be a trick, or a cruel joke
but even jokes can kill, I remind myself
hands tight and ready.

Ambulance

Seeing an ambulance is a common enough occurrence in towns and cities, they race down streets with sirens blazing, or are parked outside retirement homes. And then there are the ambulances that we don't see, or pretend not to notice, the ones parked in the alley of a half-built shopping mall quietly running at 2 am, or the ones parked outside the scene of a murder half an hour before it happens. And yet even these are still ambulances, though not for human-kind. They resuscitate and heal our worn and warped fabric of reality right under our noses, staving off destruction one day at a time. But they are not our friends. However thankful we are that they exist, whatever the voices in the back say, whatever lights you see, never ever open the doors.

SNUGGLEDOG

Stuff and Things IRL

What I've Been Playing

Besides Guild Wars 2, FFXIV has the most interesting landscapes I've seen in an MMO. It's a beautiful game and a lot of it reminds me of GW2, in a good way. Besides that I've also been playing some Game Dev Tycoon which is a lot of fun but a little too repetitive and  the difficulty spikes are quite random.  Looking forward to Maia coming out on Early Access in December.

What I've Been Reading

The Rifters Trilogy by Peter Watts, great hard scifi. Also just finished rereading every Laird Barron collection and novels, cannot recommend enough. Start with Occulations. Should be recieving my preorder of the Wonderbook in mid-October,  just in time for NaNoWriMo.

More Old(ish) Shit

Untitled 7/16/13

Her eyes roasting like a sacrificial bull

passionately dispassionate

hatefully tender

a mistake away from bloodshed

I could not love her more if I tried.

All’s fair in love at war,

or so the saying goes

Untitled 8/07/13

When we make love

her eyes focus on a distant star

and time is an old relative of ours

dotting and forgetful

her face becomes empty

barren like Luna in the old days

and I am the golden-faced conquering knight;

so close yet so far away.

I cannot help but love her

for her faults so divine

and her eccentricities so human.

She whispers to me some nights,

“We are more alike than you think”

Untitled (Sometime in August)

Her face so feline and cunning

makes me smile

That old kind of smile, warm and familiar

Not done for politeness or spite but for the sheer sake of happiness

Her hair like warm and spacious

enough for me to bury my head in

and imagine a better place than this.

Her voice an old friend

Familiar yet not

Strangely uncomfortable despite all protestations of the opposite

Something new in something old, and you think you might like it.

When I see her staring at me

Playfully coy or Indignant and annoyed or

any number of emotions, my heart

drops

A most exhilarating feeling of falling

through the atmosphere of my heart like

the crystal spheres of old

shattering each with the fearful awe love brings to the vulnerable

but her eyes, like a distant star or

a sunken treasure ship

are worth anything.

It came to me in a dream (UNTITLED)

I tear my dirk through the blood-soaked linen and down comforter that wraps you like a present or an egg left by Those Who Sin Against The Sun. The morning light lands onto your fetal form and you stir first in annoyance and then pain, the light lancing through your skin like parchment. You scramble beneath more bed-sheets and now I know what must be done. I tear down curtains and open windows with quick, assured movements while ignoring your sibilant whispers that drift in waves underneath the red. I call for servants, not daring to leave your... the room. The servants hand me the tools required and wait outside the closed door until it is their turn to handle the remains. The mirrors are all shattered which is for the better and I navigate the glass shards and broken pottery back towards the nest, your evil radiating like fever-heat as you whisper protestations. I assemble the drag-pole silently, screwing in the hook and checking the sharpness, and at this whatever you are now knows it is over. Your hands dart like small fish from underneath the red-stained linen grasping for shadow and only finding light. Your voice deepens with frustration and you attempt to stand up, feet scrambling for purchase on the blood-soaked floor, and now it is time. I catch the linen mass that is your grave, your womb, with the pole and tear through the layers revealing you like some demonic pearl. For a second you are an avenging angel, naked and covered in gore, eyes shining brighter than the heart of the Sun, and then your skin begins crackling like a roast pig and your halo of blonde hair bursts into flame. You surprise me by leaping forward, knocking the pole aside and pushing me to the ground, your teeth daggers and your mouth unhinged like some deep-sea fish. I close my eyes and wait for your mouth on my throat but the sensation never comes. After long seconds I open my eyes to your bleached white skeleton inches from my face, eye-teeth delicately grazing my cheeks.  I sit up and let gravity take care of your hold on me, staring into the sun.

Assorted Poetry and short Prose from an Older Time

Holy Raptor

You slake you thirst on the heartblood of my creativity, gnawing to the bone. With a crackling joy you upset my comfortable atrophy and force me to dance in hot iron shoes. ‘It is pain’ you say, ‘that keeps the body moving’ and with solemn grey gaze you hunt me through labyrinth and dungeon, blessing me with the fear-joy of prey. You are my knife-edge goddess, owl-eye’d and cooly compassionate,  drawing blood to keep it pumping, always stretching for the higher goal. You watch over me like a jealous lover, talons biting my shoulder blade, and for this I am comforted and blessed.

HELLENIC MISCHIEF

Your hazy whisper spoils me

I feel your gaze like a live wire and submit

Your presence is incense is holy sacrement is endless

I worship and worship and worship you

Cavorting like a drunk on feast day

I know you are there with me

You whisper secret knowledge

Set me down winding paths only you know

And for that I love you

You see through me

Into the roughest core spinning dense and tight

But you still accept my devotion

And that is enough

3AM

Sometimes it seems like the Fall

Is all that matters

How far, what speed

Useless details

People just like the splat you make

When you hit bottom

Dreamitory1 WIP

Rhodin

He first saw her at one of his mother’s gala events, held 15 kilometers up in a bubble of ionized air. She moved with the slow, feline grace of one born beyond the heavy grip of Earth’s gravity and she was built like a Martian, all arms and legs and bronzed skin. Her hair fell in waves of the blackest of blue ringlets and held in perfection by a nearly invisible net of silver, giving her a halo when seen at the right angle. Her eyes, surrounded by delicate pale streaks of Osiris, were a flat, natural grey set above the high flat cheekbones that betrayed her Asiatic ancestry, and her lips a glistening black. Most importantly of all, though, was that he had never seen her before.

He nudged his head Minder Mel, a squat red-headed man of indeterminate age, and nodded towards the girl. “Who’s she?”

Mel squinted a second, running a facial recognition program. “Midori Athena d’Aquilia-Ryujii, daughter of a minor-branch cousin to the CFO of the Yakuza. Born on Mars, raised alternately on Mars and Earth every three years. Age 16. No information on the Mesh besides school records and general government records. Wasn’t even allowed out in public until last year, pretty tight leash for someone with such minor pedigree.”

“Mother’s courting the Yakuza now? What’s next, Selenian separatists?”

He continued watching her from the corner of his eye for the rest of the party, she kept aloof surrounded by Minders whip-thin but steely-eyed. When attendees deigned to speak with her, her face was casually devoid of any topographical information and he could tell it unnerved the brave few who came too close.

Since his twelfth year he had invariably fallen in and out of lust and infatuation with various daughters of Houses and even some of the help if he felt especially rebellious. He had not however fallen in pove before. The feeling confused him provoking a childish anger that well’d at the very sight of the young woman, barely more than a girl. Fellow partygoers quickly sensed the emotional roil and an island of silence grew. He quickly moved to the edge of the platform, glaring at incandescent cloudbanks below. He didn’t notice until too late the girl approaching him, their Minders speaking concisely and closing ranks. She joined him on the rail, her gaze directed away from him. “You look stupid standing here all alone,” her voice a cool mountain steam sending shivers down his spine. His mind throbbed as her words echoed in his head, eliciting embarrassment and bright anger. He turned to snap at her but she was gone, nestled like an egg between her Minders. Mel just gave him a look and shrugged. The party became too much for him then, the laughter and brass band and the floating lights dug under his skin, radiating pain. Mel brought the grav-chutes and he left.

———————————————————————————————————————–

Athena

She wasn’t one to display any outward emotion in public but the incredulous look on the moping boy’s face after she spoke with him elicited a signs of a smile. Once outside earshot of the boy Harudo, her Minder, grabbed her arm and whispered sharply, “What the hell do you think you are doing?”

“He needed something to wake him up, I was merely the conduit.”

“You know who he is, right? If he whines to his mother it could jeopardize you and your fathers position, and dishonor your Uncle.”