#if a single seed could make it down here --- firelight verse. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

weavewithin · 1 year ago

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◈ ━━━━━━ Some sunlight reaces the wall of the enclave, but not much, blocked by the great tree. Taliyah is fully uniformed and armed, pebbles and crystal bombs readied. It used to not be necessary to be armed at all times, but the three-way war between Zaun, Piltover and Noxus is only tangling further, and the Firelights find themselves pressed for survival-- and for peace, representing the fourth party that wishes not to be used as weapons or livestock in the war. Conversing with her team member, she absently fiddles with the pebbles in her pocket. The small stones, too, mark the passage of time and change; years ago, the wide open desert had been her loom, and she wove great boulders unbridled. Zaun had demanded subtlety, and she'd learnt the lessons given to her.

Further down in the enclave, their leader has been deep in discussion with a guest for a while now. The sudden call for Taliyah to join them isn't expected, snapping her away from her conversation. She peers down from her vantage point at the level of the tree's canopy, to glimpse at the guest-- a tall, slim silhouette beside Ekko-- and in one swift motion, Taliyah grabs her hoverboard and swoops down to them, wondering why they'd require her, of all the Firelights.

The first thing she notes about the guest is that they are very tall, rather impressed with the tilt of head required to look up at them. She then turns to Ekko, expecting an introduction, but he's already being dragged away by another Firelight, leaving the two to their own devices. This matter clearly doesn't involve him anymore.

There's a hint of the tingling, coursing sensation Taliyah connects to her affinity with the earth, more pronounced beneath the feet of the woman before her. It's a rare sensation, but one Taliyah recognizes from her encounters with mages, or being near Hextech devices. The latter is a much more common occurrence, and she has learnt to be wary of it. It almost smells like arrogance too, with the way the wielders of Hextech machinery so often believe in the supremacy of their tools.

The callous, scrutinizing edge to her expression softens, as she reminds herself that Ekko would only let a trusted friend visit and move about so freely. Introductions are brief, and Taliyah is quick to suggest a better spot for conversation-- a ring of makeshift benches at a corner of the enclave. With the scarcity now more pronounced since the start of the war, she doesn't have much to offer her guest; it's a tiny pouch of sticky caramels, mixed with Shuriman spices the Firelights had plundered, meant to flavor hot water. Saved for an occasion like this.

She drops one into her own mug, and she's briefly in her Babajan's tent again, pouring tea for her mother and the elder, the liquid pluming with the fragrance of spices. This custom of hospitality never left her, or she never left it, despite the many things she forsake after arriving at Zaun on the ship that was supposed to go to Noxus.

The melancholic notion gives way to wonder about her guest's aura. If she isn't a mere wielder of Hextech, could she be a mage or magicborn, like Taliyah?

❛ So-- Caitlyn. You've come all this way. What do you have on your mind that I can tend to, in Ekko's stead? ❜

When Taliyah eyes the woman, there's the sense of a flow, from her to @ferinehuntress, but not the other way around. It's so brief it might have been a shiver, and Taliyah is left grasping for the sensation, before it dissolves into obscurity.

I've always wanted to meet another mage, Taliyah desires to tell her, in that lighter, unbarred voice from before she left Shurima. It's held back by wariness of indigo uniforms and fine textiles, acquired in her later life as a Firelight.

#if a single seed could make it down here --- firelight verse.#all of this will lead me home someday --- threads.#ferinehuntress

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magnetar1 · 7 years ago

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Ruins

The naked page holds, even though my body & mind have long ago deteriorated. Earth bubbling with remorse of new life. The last time I’d project my human sympathies onto her otherworldly demon realm.

Incinerated at the end of a poem. Chains come off without deliberation. Whatever thought had come before, among strings of thoughts ranging through dead space. A molecular courier that is little more than a ghost once relieved from the burden of carrying itself around . . .

I did not carry myself far, or for long. Mostly I sat, staring ahead. The world went about its business, destroying & maiming itself. I knew the outcome in my exposed nerves, even as I remained in this room alone.

Nature has endeared me with her rules regarding deviating sands.

This was a desert once & it would be again. The moment she hardens & protocols of chaos are fixed. Secretly, plates move under us, but we are jostled just the same, dragged away from what is known . . .

Now I know next to nothing & this is like starting over. Of all visions I’ve had, waking or not, this is the one that sticks. The elemental form I’ve seen all my life; coming out of a fog of dull temptations, into the even more desolate channels of Alchibany.

- - -

In a series of poems unwrit there is the story of a demon. Obscured by the northern sun with the gleaming hope it’ll be seen – Asleep in Egyn’s chamber, under Saturn’s sign. Worlds behind its dozing eyes; riddles, hypotheses, domains.

It was ridiculous to consider I’d gain access, but that’s exactly how it is. In all the days of toiling over the naked page; scratching in dark only to prolong my grievous intent . . .

The demon gives me strength, but not without a price. The first time he came into my purview, on the suicidal edge of vacant remission. Stripped clean of earthly contrivances, I became afraid to look Outside.

All I wanted was a quiet exit. My corpse in some wilderness discovered years from now. I’ll have dug my own grave in hopes the rains would fill it in.

Staring at the naked page . . . I want it so much. I want this all go to away.

Cutting myself open to see how it feels. When I am a young man I do this this all the time. I’ll bleed for my words, realizing very quickly this is a damn cliche!

For years hating that fact I need to create. A lowly creature I’ve become, nature’s artifice, soaking blood into an ornamental carpet of poor man’s decadence – Other worlds did not accept me like I accepted them. Nor did I accept the world I was currently living in.

- - -

Isolating contusion. I’d become internally ruptured. Hemorrhaging spirit, relegated to the stasis of self-martyrdom. Another damn cliche! To escape the masterminding sickness, that which holds ALL races behind. The idea our birth means anything where the status of nature is concerned.

In moments of chaos, feeling violent or afraid, I am able to see more clearly that which comprises space. Aetheric density of survivor planets tumbling through still waters of an ever expanding horizon. Beyond the debris of those aborted vessels that sank to the bottom of the sea. Effulgence of stars leading their way, past the shipyard where malformed constellations speak of a different path.

- - -

It is how demons are born. Rekindling a memory that has been reduced out of all nostalgia or emotion – Trading one vessel for another is never enough. Prolonged anguish reincarnates into another destroyed world.

I tear up the naked page. What I never started. A void in the universe that invited him in. For decades sitting here indifferent to music transmitting out of colder regions. Sea becomes an ocean pregnant with trenches. Down there, where Saturn’s restive memory becomes my own.

It is too much to handle at first. I give up poetry for murder. In between murders I gaze at the sky & hum its tune. Wandering hills behind my apartment where the room I occupied sits empty & quiet.

Tormented by restlessness. I cannot go home, anyway, because they will arrest me & I will sink into another depression. Surely I would kill myself in prison, where no star is seen or music heard. All sacrifices I’ve committed to restore its trust in a single man would become effaced.

- - -

Back to the ages, contemplation & sleep. Allowing me to enter his realm, the demon is roused to multiply. Once soft, then coarse; lulling, discordant. He beats me down & brings me back . . .

World is bright when I open my eyes. �� Sky is close enough to touch. Rising, I shake pine needles from my clothes. Mud clinging to my shoes . . .

Leaving wilderness behind. For years I searched. Nature’s fornicator, digging my hands in the guts of strangers, scrying for new visions. Sometimes the results were messy & left me mentally challenged.

In times like this I missed the naked page & the idea I was a poet.

Nothing could be further from the truth, though. Any romantic ideal I may have had in my youth was completely shattered – Revealing the astral seed, or that which had arrived before my brutally mortal birth:

Bathing in my mother’s blood, frightened to come out. I could still see borderlands coalescing in my vision. Still, I’d soon forget those crystallizing forms, in the murky shallows of my consciousness, abandoning me to this foreign outpost.

- - -

The poet in me would like to die now. He’s faked it long enough. The murderer, too, who is no longer able to live in solitude. Perhaps I should have killed myself when I was first edged out of sleep. Now I feel like I could sleep for fucking ever.

A tad dramatic, though. A bit of the young poet coming back. Instead, I’m an old man in hiding. Demon sleeps while I am it’s dreaming vessel. Nature conceals me when she can, but even that is costly . . .

The age I walk in is corruptive & self-effacing. Any martyr-hood it turned its back on is merely performance art. Dirty poets, all, feigning religiosity! Only a few stood out on the burning plane. Succumbing to pestilence of the brain, they did not make it very long.

Riddled maps, tested against floods & fates; repeated verses, chants to a silent, endless cosmos. Though the vessel itself is holder of the key, it must be violently extracted & retooled.

Demon sowers, harvesting oceans, acclimating to pressures of the deeps . . .

The best thing to do now is look away. Even though I have tested the fates in my own way. To know that it was there all along, buried under my tattered skin.

If only I had detected it earlier. Gross malediction of an untended garden. Vines, wasted away, drag it down; rotted bells, dangling from their broken necks. My body, abused by addiction & idleness; existence, a work in progress, breaks down.

- - -

I am lost. Aborted out of the naked page, where lurkers have set my testimonies on fire. Pain resolved in nothingness, all communication shuts down. Now, I am an even older man, who does not know the way. Never the murderer they took me for, but a far weaker specimen . . .

I did not love the vessels around me the way they loved me. Traits, although distinctly human, bore the mark of a demon’s lash.

I’ve learned to hold my tongue when I look at them, but I still feel the elongated touch that gradually drew me away. Salvaging my ruminations for the naked page, I become inspired by cold distances.

He is in me, still, abstracted out of the red night. I roam the streets, alone. Silent killer in me, yet to act, accorded to another paradigm. Horizons I sought, bleeding over from tumorous oceans: out the dark glint of Saturn’s blade . . .

The words are rolling, now, & don’t seem so made up. When it flows there is no stopping it. No longer masking my presence in the world so I could recede with nature’s ghost. Guts alive with burning gall, my deadened form revives.

Necromancy forms another world. Mother bows to astral dominance. Seering ruptures across cloven divides – Too much to hold in. I need to let it go.

- - -

A hallowed mess. Edges snap, relieves the dam. Pregnant no more, swaddling my creation in my emptied guts. Gazing up at me with his eyes, I am reduced to nothing & am forced to snap its neck.

Sirens in the distance – Music of the stars. Eclipsing any mounting reverence for what came before.

How I ever ended up here I will never know. Discharge of a transferrant star, aborted ideal of wandering tempests. Even as my breathing slows & air becomes latticed with the filigree of shadows . . .

They are coming for my corpse. Can I talk about this now? Is it too dramatic to mention death when it’s actually happening – The naked page is not so naked anymore, blindly staring from its shallow grave.

I might of lived like them, without recall or solvency. I might of loved those who loved me, unrestrained by cosmic forbearance. Dissipating from the moment I open my eyes, haze of firelight in reservoirs of numbing cold.

- - -

He is there, behind the curtain, where they come to gather my clay. Naked as the day I came into this world, I go there now. Following strains of a song I heard before, when the sky did not brood so much. Where I left my bones in a deserted field, under the sagging tree of my heart, a seed gently rotting.

Fumbling with my leaking parts as leaves of my final work soak up what’s left . . .

I’ll be dramatic if I want to! I don’t care anymore! To fill the shoes of poets who lost their minds, but only at the end. I am ready to write the great work, now! I am ready to wail into the void until my lungs collapse!

But it does not matter now & I don’t believe it ever did. We are all revenant strangers, brokenly adhering to the shore. Trembling hands about its dim candlelight in the shadow of a storm. Writ in a hurried manner, histories pile up in the moment, but are never the episodes we imagine them to be.

Reality adorns its fools with temporary sanity. A fated concordance that only suffices to remedy the artifice: crystal clear evidence at the end of my struggle. When the womb shattered, delivering me from my own fates. All the time put in staring at the naked page. Telling his story in living verse, permeates my dying breath.

Artwork By Zdzisław Beksiński

#CCParker #zdzislaw beksinski #poetry #dark art #occult

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