knightinrustedarmor

[knightinrustedarmor]

Had I a lamp,

magical and mysterious,

and all the stars above could be mine. 

I’d wish for you

all three times.

Had I purest marble,

and the skill and will to carve it,

id carve you a tower,

Straight and tall and true

so the heavens could marvel at you

.

Had I the power to fly

to places far and wide,

 and I could see all there was to see,

id fly to you

that's all the flying id need. 

Had I the strength of arms

to conquer any foe

and all the kings would cower

id pull the sun back to the sky

for just one lifetime to look into your eyes

The stars will fall and the sky will burn,

to dust the world will turn.

Either cold or hot

the world cannot

forever, ever turn.

Yet you and I

for all our faults

were perfect in our time.

and yet the clocks run out

the hour stuck

12 midnight is the time.

I've bent the knee to lesser kings,

and bound my soul to toil

yet still you linger in my mind

and call residence my heart.

Stronger stuff need I be made to take the world alone.

Yet when you're here my place is clear

and not so hard the work.

I've seen that face in mind eye quiet and

pondered its very shape.

yet in your eyes

I find my place

in the shadow of your grace

And yet you're gone

and our times done,

the clock fell from the wall

but treasure you forever

every moment, every minute,

I remember

and desire

every one

every one,

All.

[knightinrustedarmor]

Do not let trouble pass easily from your mind.  You must experience it every time you walk its darkened streets.  You might as well learn the quickest way through.  Endure it.  Overcome it. Master it.  Then as you are cast into its darkness you might check your surroundings and bravely say “ah, I’ve been here before.  I know my way out.”

[knightinrustedarmor]

I know what it is to shatter.

To come apart.

Not at the seems, the seems were sewn together

Artificial bonding.

I came apart in the middle. In a thousand middles

In the middle of everything.

I was a one.  I was a whole.

Then I was a two.  Then a thousand.  A million.  Pieces on pieces falling

away shattering into pieces on pieces

I never imagined a world without we being me.  Now there’s a thousand me’s

A million.  Not a seem in sight.

I can put me together. But I don’t know whats me anymore and what was we.

Its just a clutter, a pile, a dust bin where we were once.

 Me.

[knightinrustedarmor]

A New Beginning Needs an Old Ending

There is a natural transition that shares commencement dates with graduation.  You walk across the stage, are handed the scroll of accomplishment, flip a tassel, throw a hat, do a dance, whatever the traditions may be the completion of that endeavor is a watershed moment.  You don’t really think it is at the time, I mean, you kind of do, in that you know academically that your life will be different.   You won’t be staying in your dorm or  on your campus, you won’t see the same people every day and in the case of college, it’s possibly the last time you will ever attend classes.

But there are those things you plan to still hold on too, the immutable things that are supposed to exist in a time locked space independent of the consequences of reality.  My relationship with my fiancée was one of those.

I was emboldened by the fact that I had once before entered the work force.  I dropped out of college at the age of 20 and worked in various industries for 8 long years before deciding college was actually in the cards for me. At 28 on my first night on campus I met the woman I would ask to marry me.  She glowed under starry heavens alit and star kissed by silver white moon light. A joke and a laugh sealed the promise of great things and we were dating scant few months later.  Years passed in happiness.  There was the standard kerfuffle’s that any couple under goes but by a large we were happy. Except she was battling a demon I could not see and she would not share.  She was adrift in the drowning waters of depression.  There were signs to be sure, but at the time I was unable to add them together in sufficient speed to understand the whole of it.  She battled them outside of my sight doing her damnedest to keep them from me.  I to this day do not know why.  But she graduated, and a year later I followed.  The summer after my graduation, after she decided to spend the year after hers in Santa fe with me, we decided to save money, we would spend the summer apart in the states of our rearing.  My love for her survived the summer.  Hers for me did not.

It was never a possibility that we would not marry.  I asked her on a pitch-black night on a mountain side to be mine forever.  She said of course she would.  A year and a half later I am sitting in the living room or my mother’s house awaiting the post.  The family heirloom ring that was my mothers and my father’s mothers before hers will be delivered today.

I wish I knew what went wrong.  Her parents didn’t like me.  They thought my midwestern reserve was aloof and rude.  They’re Californians who should have divorced 30 years ago but never did. Her mother is mentally ill and refuses treatment.  Her father a contractor that cant pull himself out of crippling debt.  I knew all this and still I wanted her to be my family.  To be my bride.  But it wasn’t enough.  Usually I try to sum up these written works into some kind of bow.  Something didactic that will allow me to gain some insight from the emotions in written form.  But as of now, I have nothing.

[knightinrustedarmor]

When i was a boy, I for one holiday or another was given a play station 1.  It might have been a Christmas or a birthday, but that part doesn't matter.  I grew up in the country, one of those homes that was far enough away from society to have a little breathing room, but not so far that it took a tank of gas to get a tank of gas.  This was long before broadband internet and well before I had logged any serious hours in a virtual world.  My gaming dalliances had been with a Sega genesis whose characters, while enjoyable, were not, to me at least, memorable.  The Playstation offered a different platform though.  Aside from there being cd’s instead of cartridges, this new console presented me with a new style of entertainment.  To me it seemed like a novel, one where I got to decide what happened next, and if I was vigilant enough I could ensure the good guys won.  I was blown away at the level of graphical detail, the story, the whole package. These days I don't remember much of the story, or the characters that were in it.  But I do remember this. The setting of this particular game was just on the far side of a long and devastating war with some feline people of one form or another.  The mighty humans had, through great sacrifice finally thrown down their furry adversaries and planted their flag triumphantly.   Early in the beginning of the game there is a cut scene (fully motion captured and staring Mark Frikin Hamill) where one veteran approaches our hero and through a few lines of witty banter throws the parting line “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

I was about 10 when i played through this game, and i didn't know how to handle what was being declared.  I don't remember the rest of the scene or how it progressed or if luke skywalker had anything worthy to say as a rejoinder, but that line stuck with me.  The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.  Vigilance from what? 

As a child it is easy to understand that there are bad guys at the gates, or wolves in the darkness.  it is easy to understand that there is danger.  It is much more complicated to ascertain why there is danger, and from where.  we, as children are told that the darkness is bad because it is unsafe and therefore we need night lights and watchful guardians to keep us safe.  The danger we see as so fundamental to the human condition is really just hunger, and the absence of sunlight.

While I in no way am claiming that a watchful eye over children isn't necessary, nor am i advocating throwing myself to the wolfs just so they aren't hungry anymore,  I am starting to wonder at the safe space we are now creating around out children's ability to be challenged.  This inst one of those feelings we hear voiced by the disgruntled men sitting at the corner of the bar either.  you know the ones with trucker hats declaring with increasing decibels with every beer just how spoiled and soft this coming generation.  I'm pretty sure if we were to go back a few thousand years, there would be some grizzled old roman centurion grabbing a glass of red with some other equally grizzled sergeant talking about how the legion just aint what it used to be. 

But, I was challenged as a child to come to terms with the idea that victories, while glorious might not be forever.  And after the fanfare fades, the heroes go home.  They become farmers, they become drunkards.  I learned that even the shiny heroes are people who feel pain.  I started to think what it would have been like if mark hamill hadn't been victorious in the previous games war.  what would life look like on the losing side.  it isnt far from that though to the idea of asking what is life like for the guys fighting the heroes.  Its easy to demonize the bad guys when they are 7 foot tall cat beasts with reverse articulated knees and a perchance for consuming human flesh.  no one ever has a moral crisis after they shoot a zombie in the face.

But in reality our “enemies” aren’t 7 foot tall cat beasts.  Or shambling brain parasites.  The enemies we are facing now aren’t even the ones we are being shown on the news. 

While there are a great many people on this planet who would probably delight at setting me on fire for my heathen ways, i wonder more and more how many of them live in this country.  Of course there are the radicals across the world that want to light us up and impose their strict interpretation of lunacy.  But I’m OK with that.  I wish they weren't as well armed, and i wish we could fight them with education at a younger age so we don't have to shoot at them so much, but i don't make the rules.  But these are not the enemies we need to be vigilant towards.  It is an internal watch that we must preform.  it is so easy to slip and see those who disagree with us as 7 foot tall cat beasts with reverse articulated knees.  well, maybe not cat beasts in actuality, but the point remains.  I am wondering now if the vigilance we must exercise is that, once we are victorious and there are no more cat beasts to fight, we will turn into those beasts ourselves.  or perhaps more damning still, the idea that our society so needs the cat beasts, that we will devour ourselves with out them, or invent new ones just to keep us scared enough to be unified.

I think this was all a long way of saying, we have to be careful to not turn to those we disagree with and start seeing them with whiskers. sure, they might be demons or devils or whatever group you think is unmaking the world.  but if those beasts are citizens of this country, it is their right to be just as wrong as we all are.  and trying to stifle that, or take that from them is turning us all in the cat beasts.

But what do i know.  I still think about 20 year old video games in my 30′s.

[knightinrustedarmor]

We weren’t meant to love like this.  

Heart to heart, raw, open.

Unhindered.

But your eyes speak volumes,

How could I contain my lies in silence.

[knightinrustedarmor]

Oh to be 18 again, and have a beautiful if slightly nieve brunette in love with me. A young spring gust of bright crisp wit and wiles, kindness and depth of sunlight. To be young and fresh and not to make the worn or choices over again. To live and love in a new way to be free of the anchoring chains of chosen history forged by will and deed. To slip those ropes tethering us to the dock and once again sail free in the stars own light.

[knightinrustedarmor]

Untitled

In the darkness

I have languished.

A darkness forged

 in my mind

All my days

blindly anguished

An existence

undefined

No force of nature

 bore me neutral

No prevailing winds

forced me back

Just my past

fully spectral

Guided me

 off my track

Not the first

to wander darkly

Nor the last

 to tramp this way

just this mud

stuck so starkly

anchors me

in this clay.

[knightinrustedarmor]

darkly

I sit darkly

contemplating the silence

Sounded, distracted by the moving pictures of those living, breathing, around me  

full well I know that tomorrow will come unadorned by anything resembling bright and shiny,

 yet I breath in and out, over and over ad infinitum.

 Perhaps tomorrow I will wake up.

Perhaps tomorrow I will sing and dance but today,

tonight I sit

alone

silent

dark.

[knightinrustedarmor]

Numb

I find myself perusing the isles of many a book store in search of something.  I am a fan of all manner of books, from literature to fantasy to romance, to me, a good story supersedes genre.  That being said it has been a far long while sense Ive found something that made me feel something.  

   Ive lived the majority of my 26 years living the belief that there really isnt all that much in live to get worked up about.  Sure there are few things here and there, family, friend and the like ofcourse, but on the whole, with the everyday stuff, I find myself rather numb.  Im not sure if this is chemically induced, as recently a doctor put me on some meds.  But this numbness has been present for long before the medicine.  

   Books, movies, music, poems, all I see I search for that feeling you get when youire reading a really great book, or you kissed a person you love, that joy at a spring day when you were a kid and adult matters were foreign.  I look and i fail to find.  Now im not huxley and this certainly isnt a rant against modern soma, but I feel as if Im missing something.  That there was some memo handed out at a meeting that i called in sick too.  And im just not sure what to do with that feeling.

   I haven't read a book that i didn't want to end in a very long time.  one of those books you become obsessed with, and you read over and over until your free moments you search faces around you for the characters in the novel or you wonder which of your friends is which character from the book.  And im looking for that.  There is no shortage of novels around the globe to read, and im sure that most of them are good, or maybe even great.  But, are they great for me?  I dont know, and frankly i dont know how to know.  Is it me? Have i numbed myself into a corner or is something else afoot?

~A knight in Rusted Armor