Odd it is what happens to the relentless passage of time when one finds themselves in a place where time stops being a line and instead becomes a circle, the clock gnawing at its own masticated withered and pitiful tail. Perhaps if it chews long enough the whole fucking thing will just disappear, though I doubt it. Too easy an end. To easy the slide into finality. There can be no end here, there mustn’t be. Time is what I have and time is what I need but I now find myself in that darkest of circles, and time has lost meaning. I dare not go in the house where they defiled my woman, if these ghost hands could bare fire I would see it and the memory burned. I dare not look upon my flock, no doubt slaughtered without dignity by men with fouled hearts and hungry eyes. I dare not leave, but I know not where to go. And so I stare down at the one thing my spirit can stomach, if for no other reason than a simple man’s masochism and desire. Broken is how they left me. I’ll never know if they knew I was still alive and absurdly I pray for the sake of their black souls that they hadn’t. Three days I lay, unable to move, unable to eat, unable to drink, unable to shield myself from three cold nights, and finally, in the predawn hours of a fourth day staring into leaden sky, unable to fend off the hungry creatures that venture out at night. It would have been a relief, if not for the horror of it all. Now I am here, gazing down upon myself, an old and mistreated vessel left to eventually be consumed by the earth underneath, my bones someday resembling the charred skeleton that once was the barn where my animals were bedded… And I cannot look away. I mustn’t look away. Odd the passage of time when it is gone, and odd the creature that stands before me, and as it spoke the words they slithered from between its lips like smoke from a dying fire.

Gaze down upon a face knew well, Below my ghost my body broke my love lay sullied and my land lay scorched They broke my back but spared my will-ghastly intent through cold vein runneth still, Oh, the blood that spilled like rivers was left to chill here in the night, Flesh and bone the feral lie that sleeps the storm and stills the mind though mind so rid of yolk so split finds wings and horns and eyes and time to fly, Without purpose a spirit weeps in vain, None to hear none to feel none to know this lonesome spirit’s tale, Scene of horror spreading like moss, seeds my purgatory, I have found underneath all things lay the wyrm eating dreams devouring ill raiment gives them away as does the twist of the blade I have found underneath all things lay the wyrm coursing through the blackest veins of an earth unkind, Husk lain down and spirit doth fly untethered the soul to rich soil my time lay perished in dirt and make fattened the wyrm and go blind in the glare of its wreath round me lay remnants nay sensate nor whole vestige intact of a rainbow collapsed offending eyes far more than the black of the hole that runs through it all it gnashes it tears and eats and gets fat on blood and lies and pain sublime-spirit bereft of tether’s arrest-a sad ghost to wander all alone, Below black wings a cold wind brings cold rain, All to hear all to feel all to drown in the cold black growing stain, Seed of no father blooming on high from pollen of everlasting grief Something-someone-a shadow-a form Dead leaves-scatter like dreams beneath its feet a godless angel ‘dorned with timeless crown, Reticent tangle sprung like a weed aching like thorn’s bite refusing to heal, Tells me its secrets tells me its thoughts tells me its story though name it does not, Tales of beginnings tales of their ends odd how they mirror mine own and own them we do, A deal an offer an answer two nightbirds a stone and cast, Destiny reveals a horrid cure for a terrible parasite, Rode in on the black wind of the eternal sigh of our mother’s waning gasp, A dream a god a specter of ever night climbing the vines of forever’s fate, Leaden skies bleed into black as infernal cries emanate from cracks like smoke, Points its finger to an earthen hole where the wyrm it hides beneath its crimes alone , Down the hole we go in stride our hollow bellies groan ever hungry, Upon the trail the scent of dread is fierce-we corner the beast then cut off its fucking head, Writhe around ‘mongst horror’s sound and paint thee blood on broken crown Writhe in pain as fate has deigned celebrate the flood from open vein, Riding waves cascading red as dead as they take me down into abyssal depths, Now all things within my reach as I become one with all, Of earth and trees of birds and the bees, Of fur and scale and soil born disease, Within all things that walk or crawl or hold to earth with rooted claw my spirit fills the cracks betwixt with cold intent of winter’s kiss, Here be thee the fate of men in shape of horror’s grinning bend their march I taste like bleeding hearts the trail begins and ends in dark, Onward-inward, Coursing through black veins of earth.

All I sought to find was near and not far away, A blind man turning stones only to find the hole below, Need waits while our wants do sate, And ever deeper does yawn the hole, Been sitting too goddamn long. I can still see the look in the eyes of my loving and faithful wife on the day of my leave, expectancy and anticipation of the forever return of her man coming home to hang his uniform and forever sheath his sword. So many battles in so many places, so many faces but all without names and nameless they shall remain. Been sitting too damn long and I need to get up and I need to get the fuck out of here. She waits, her dancing shoes on and her hair the way I like it. She waits in the gazebo I built with mine own two hands, the one where our children were married, surrounded by roses and adorned with a crown of ivy that turns blood red in the fall. Our children left long ago, and though I miss them dear, in consolation it brought me back to HER. Her of golden hair, of emerald eyes. Her of stubborn will, of mercurial wiles. She waits, and in my dreams I approach, my uniform clean, my hair smelling of exotic fruits, their names unknown to me without matter. I take her hands in mine, I savor the moment, take in her scent, anticipate her taste. She is mine… again. But sadly, this is not to be. He followed us. Somehow, he followed us. Three days it took, three days past since we left him and all but I thought he was dead. I never should have looked at him. I never should have bore witness. I could have saved him from the horror we sat upon his mantle. I stood over his motionless but all too living body and it was not mercy that stayed my hand nor was it cruelty. No, it was shame incarnate. An old man unable to control the lusts of his men, their zeal through every horrible act palpable, as if some great evil that feeds on hurt and sorrow possessed my men to ravage a man and his wife and his land. I would rise a man, a proud man. I would stand and don my sword and point it toward home and follow its hone until my beloved’s face could ply it from my weary hand with a welcome smile. I would stand, but the ones that took my legs have not gone far and Heaven knows that winter is long and surely a belly needs filling! As the sun waves its final goodbye and night arrives to sit sentry over the now silent chorus of death below, the only cries to be heard this night howl from mine own rictus grin, for I am the only one left, and the irony goes not unnoticed even as I stare dully at mine own sad chewed remains. I know this to be tributary in his river of vengeance. And all the while, that cloaked slumping figure watches from afar, its black companion drifting here and there, and he knows that I can see him. All around me, the ripping and the tearing and the cries of babes coming from the bleeding bodies of men and that black fucking hole in place of his face stays staring, waiting for me to be the last. Waiting for what? I did nothing wrong. I’m an old man and this was to be my final trial and I could not have stopped it if I tried, for this is what the endless march of war does to men can they not see it? Have mercy! No, not today. Not tonight. Not ever. For the black hole ensconced in cloak standing and staring before me was shown none the same. And I left him there, all alone, to the same fate as which mine own ruined body now sits, kept alive if for no other reason than this final moment of horridly absolute comedy. The animals have receded, the trees have stopped their ravenous sway, the black hole is growing, all is better this way.

Oh, the reaching hands of deeds lain bare to sight, The kind that bind the throat as serpents ‘twixt old stone, Shadows creep though on a moonless night and terror leaps like a virus infecting all things on a moonless night, but why? Why, the feel of breach? The breeze from autumn’s leave? And the dimming of the sun? Where now hangs the moon? The answer lay in tomb, First came the sweat that danced along with the chill, Next came the torrents and currents of crimson spilled, Then came the crawling things that call the night their home to clean our bones when our guilt has run its course, Hungry they be no more, I hear the sturm and drang flowing beneath all things, First drew close the clouds then the sickness behind and ending in a feast macabre, Pestilence of autumn bleeds like leaves to winter leaving ruinous heaps of frozen meat, Our tears they flowed in blood as vengeance spreads its wings wide-a nightbird in answer of sorrow’s call, The earth it comes to life and all eyes know the why, the why… Shadows creep like hands in reach, Makes of men’s pride a tenuous thing, How be these shadows on cold moonless night? A lonely god weeps in dread longing, Leafless trees like hands they reach, Leaves of men’s pride a ruined thing, From chaos sprang life at a lover’s hand, A lonely god weeps as its loneliness tires, I can see the end is drawing near dead armor forged in tears leaden under noose, I can see the end is drawing nigh-and all that I can say is are better off this way.

Behind the bloodshed, behind the trees, behind the ravenous eating of forest fauna, behind my army of dying children there stand two figures, one black one white. They do not speak but they look on, their gazes finally turning to me and I cannot look away. I dare not look away. And through those gazes a story flowed, the author forever but never named. And in its telling I find my grief is not mine own. It is timeless. It is unrelenting. It is forever but never named… I am without beginning. I am without end. As is my grief, as once was my loneliness for something broken has no need to bend. I am constant I am all, under sun and moon. Architect and builder, I am mountain from which monoliths are made and mason to hammer them true. I am forever and never named, Out of chaos I drew myself a line in the stars. From that line unbroken and ever willing to bend I wove a circle, on one side creation and destruction the other and at all points and none at all they gnashed and tore and ate and grew fat upon the blood of the self and the other, and from the smattering of crimson sprang all life and things. I am forever and never named. I am mountain that gives stone, I am mason to hammer it true. With broken hands I ever labor. My grief eternal. My sorrow hung in chain. My loneliness without cold sweet relent. With broken hands I ever labor. I am forever and never named.

Time is a line threaded with grief-spirals out only to come back to feast, Time is a line once drawn out of love-creation that longs for destruction’s soft nudge, Time is a line in helix of grief-around it all bends in cruelest of wreath, Time is divine and its dreams contain all-soil born saplings that reach for the stars, Time is of summer that bleeds into fall-loss sprung like plague in wintry crawl, Time is a line in the shape of a maw-choking upon its own tail as it slithers… Away! When truth turns from glory all heroes lie bold, Ill raiments forged sadly from fires long cold, Their horde met in stride by tempestuous tides of black clouds that ride on winds dew scented with ice, The ice be the pain sublimated from loss that mourns from gravestones ‘dorned in funereal moss, Ensconced within shadow the face of the hallowed looks upon the confusion lain like blankets of snow, Wreathed in dread unknown they scatter as children their cries not to god but to the bosoms of mother, Upon thee hungry knowing eyes, Then it rolls upon you its weight of timeless failing of dawning realization of a line so drawn in circle, Fell screams challenge the singing winds as a grim chorus of their deaths begin, Fallow once this field but soon flowers will grow high turning of the wheel into the yawn of time, Confusion turns to knowing and knowing turns to horror, A line so drawn in bloody circle knows only of itself, Time, it makes of all blood to richen the soil the nectar feeds the yawn and rhythm breathes it’s song, A line drawn in circle knows only of itself, Ride upon pale screams of wrong and glean the path to endless night without dawn’s lonesome call, Ebon specter of ever night bound to its grief in yolk of time’s crooked mile now flies high-oh so high, Anchored at birth we are to our endings chained to our dreams dead and descending leaden our hearts their rhythms unsteady leaden our souls the burden lay so heavy, Time is a line threaded with grief spirals out only to come back to feast time is a line once drawn out of love creation that waits for destruction’s never song, Time is a line in the shape of a maw choking upon its own tail as it slithers away, Time is a line in the shape of us all clock hands that rise must likewise bear their fall, Hungry they be no more, I am stoic mountain that gives stone, I am mason to hammer it true and with broken hands I ever labor. My grief eternal, my sorrow hung in chain and my loneliness burdens without cold sweet relent, With broken hands I ever labor, I am forever but never named, Rid of old pestilence of hubris and ignorance a specter sheds tears to wet the seeds that times left, A sad ghost can lay on down ‘pon motionless funeral mounds and calloused hands finally know a hard day’s work is done, Now fertile be the ground where flowers grow up high reaching to heaven though heavens a lie, I am forever, Forever and ever, I am forever, Forever, but never named Time is a line its palate of Fall rust to dissolve and wither the soul, Time is a line that portents the end-what goes around will come back again.