mystery lover theatre

the first time was the best... Pinot Grigio, this album, that I'd never heard, playing, at your insistence. I remember you telling me things I'll never repeat - but that i'll never forget. You beneath me. Me stopping- scared by the look of incredulous shock in your wide eyes. Neither of us believing in the power of the moment- Marukka den es mort, and how I lied, to protect you, to protect myself-

and we danced away; from each other, from those perfect moments that we both knew could never be recreated. I want you to know I think of you, and that moment- and how much that moment changed me, forever. And you are minutes away, and yet ...millions of miles away. And I know, i'll never reach out, and you never will either. So all i can hope is that some days you revisit that moment in your head, and share it with me again.

Love is always best tempered with memory.

Last caress...

SCENE: Sitting in front of a Computer screen, opening yahoo messenger to a chat window all alone-

ME: I know you ain’t around, but my avatar is a pic of the new kirk

Hopefully new and MUCH improved...

I want to see pics of this baby by the way when it gets here

ME: ACTUALLY, I'd love to see pics of you right now, preggo as hell, but I bet you are avoiding the camera like the plague

ME: Stupid as it may sound, believe it or not- I am more excited that you are expecting than I was for my own new bambino

ME: The only immortality you will ever touch is now growing inside you. Enjoy.

I remember how your eyes lit up, (even decades later) whenever you were happy and excited about something- I hope that time has not eroded that passionate kid inside you.
There has never been a smile that touched me the way yours did- When you-

ME (interrupting my own reverie): Any-way... I digress.

Enjoy. Enjoy. Enjoy.

You deserve this.

ME: This will be my final "ex dipshit-bf waxing drunken poetic in a messenger window all alone" message. I am happy for you.

It ain’t much, but I humbly pass along my best wishes... and a boyish smile that is less shit-eating grin than it is pure, childlike glee for the girl I loved, so long ago, and still.


Enjoy.

(for Angela Christine Rash)

Living in it

"Alas, life, it is a hard thing... almost no one gets out of it alive."

It's like nothing I ever imagined.

But it's greater than I ever hoped for.

Push away the little tribulations, the petty pains, ignore the immediacy of the stress filled moment. Take yourself outside and look in. And when you close in on that inner strength, that love- that pure fucking joy that is in your center (against all odds)- blow it up, magnify it and let yourself be absorbed into it.

And let everyone around you know it, share it, be a part of it.

Sometimes this life is too short. Sometimes it feels like it's dragged on way much longer than it ever should have lasted. Don't just live in the moment. Pick and choose which moment you want to live in.

Be that moment forever. Smile bigger, love deeper. The alternative is... well, that really ain't much of an alternative, now, is it?

kirk

Escape!

He rose slowly out of the burning bath water, savoring the heat that reddened his skin and sent wisps of steam rising around him. He was intoxicated by the feel of his hot flesh and the sense of finality that surrounded this moment. He was acutely aware of the purpose that sat upon his brow like a halo of hope; the purpose that had been missing these past four or five years. He didn't bother to drain the water from the tub as he stepped out, loving the cool tiles beneath his feet and tasting each drop of water that dripped from his elbows and hair.

The air was shimmering and for a brief moment he thought might pass out from the pleasure of simple awareness. He toweled off lightly and combed through his hair before returning downstairs to where she lay. Concealing the smile that threatened to betray his knowledge of her duplicity, he crawled beneath the covers and shut his eyes.

She trembled next to him, half fear-half ecstasy, and she was too preoccupied to realize that she wasn't angry at him anymore. Her right hand clutched the kitchen knife under the pillow and last minute pleas of future regrets fought a wild battle in her mind. The smile rose unbidden to his face, uncontrolled. He could sense her apprehension, could smell her sweat. Seeing his grin, that fucking shit eating grin of his cross his face- the anger welled up again and her vision went bloody as the knife jerked up and into his chest. She laughed hysterically as she stabbed again and again. His eyes winked open and gazed into hers. She dropped the knife, falling backwards, terrified.

"Escape!"

The word bubbled out of his mouth on the crest of a wave of blood, and his smile grew even bigger, as he died. She alternately laughed and cried, huddled in the corner of the room, underneath their wedding portrait. No one in the family had thought it would last. They were right, but no one could have predicted this outcome. Her feral eyes glazed slowly over, covered by a transparent veil of insanity. Soon they mirrored his, staring but unseeing, dead but still alive inside, somewhere.

He knew he had won, but not yet what his victory held for him. His
sense of purpose faded from its orgasmic/euphoric glory into numbness as he was hurtled from this world to the next. Multicolored flames sprang into existence and chilled his blood as they fanned over him. He noticed with some shock that he no longer held a form of flesh and bone. Transparent, translucent, ameobic was what he had become. A different awareness washed over him, alien yet wise. Images that he had once known as past, present, or future strobed before his -`vision?' (he no longer had eyes) - and he knew time and existence as it was- completely simultaneous, no paths to go back or forward upon, just the point that was/is/will be -constantly occurring.
(1993)

Grails

"In the west," the hermit said, "a Cup stands on an altar in a golden tower. You know of it. From its brim the lips of God have tasted.
...

"To take it and bring it away, that ever after it will exalt the hearts of men. Who then will dare it?"

Up from their chairs the knights leapt, bold and loud. "I! I will dare!"
...

I went to her in the sunset of the third day. The rosy glow hung low upon the orchard, and she walked there in her pale summer gown, her gold hair flowing like a stream of light off from her fair face, round her shoulders, to her narrow waist. If I had not done more than touch her mouth or fingers, that too was my strength, for she was beautiful.

"My love. I must be gone with the dawn."
"I know it."
"And if I must ask you, will you wait for me? This road may be long, arduous and cruel."
"Yes, I will wait, my knight. My soul is in your heart."
"And mine in yours," I said.

She wept and her tears were sweet to me, for by her pain I saw her love- God knew, I had had no other proof.
I gave her a ring of gold set with a square blue gem. It lay on her white hand like a flower.
"I will return to you, and you will be my wife."
"I know it, too."
We kissed and parted, and the sun went down.
...

Tales are told of such a quest, of the adventures that attend it and the perils that hunt it down. But there were no mighty deeds or terrors that befell me.

I slept by night in ruined chapels, under tall hills, beneath the eaves of forests; or else in byres, in rich lords' halls.

When winter came, I kept on. More than one winter came and went, as had more than one summer. They were all alike, as the villages were like each other: the squat churches and the carven halls.

I understood the way. It was only to go on.
It might be I should not find my goal.
So much too I comprehended.
I was humble, patient. Yet, was I not sure?
...

By night I dreamed of it. I dreamed I came and put my hand upon it. Sometimes it burned and again it might be icy. Or it changed to water and clipped away, or into a snake, and wrapped about my arm and stared into my eyes. But I knew I would see it. And in the days I dreamed of it too, more and more, and it seemed to me that the more often the Grail was there before my inner vision, the more certain I should be to come to it. As if- God Forgive my blasphemy- I gradually and carefully fashioned it myself, out of the air.
...

Then there was an Easter-tide and when I beheld the children playing in the house, I thought of sons and daughters. And that night I dreamed, in that soft bed, of the children a young knight should have with his young wife.
...

I found the Grail. It was in a tower of gold, beyond a wall of bone...as they said. They do not lie. And the Cup itself? Yes, a single tear, now like blood and now like emerald and now like the sky of night with all the stars inside it.

It was done.
...

"It was a slow, sore journey home and I had been so long on my road, I had mislaid the way. But I was a traveller now, and it was all one to me. Did I yearn for the known land, the castle on the plain, the gardens and the court? They were dreams. I yearned for them. But, idly. I had grown used to loss."
...

"Liege, I have searched these many, many years and brought home to you the Cup of Love. The Grail." Then they murmured, and even into his muddy eyes there swelled a sort of gleam. But it faded.
...

"Later I sought my lady in the broken gardens, and under the apple trees which had died, she met me. She gazed at me askance, finding how I had aged, so lank and lean and grey. She too was wizened and her beauty was all gone, like her golden hair, but on her withered hand the blue ring still perched, a drop of summer water on a dying leaf."

"I have been a long while, " I said.
"I know it."
"But I will wed you now."
"No," she said, "we will not marry. For my dreams of children are all dead, and besides I should not please you."
.
Then I bowed my head and tears fell from my eys, into the grass and thistles, as her tears had fallen at our former parting. But she was old, and half blind and did not see them.
...

During the days which followed, the King's antique cranky men decreed that a magical cup must be hidden in a golden casket, inside a tower of stone, and this sealed with iron and bronze, and a great wall built up, guarded by mastiffs. This, to keep all safe. Therefore barely any remember now that such a treasure is with us, and only a handful know that it was I who strove, and completed the quest. I do not have a care for that, or for anything.
.
In this way I sought and found the Grail, which exalts the hearts of men.
Above Red text are Exerpts from Tanith Lee's Exalted Hearts
.
Our true Grails are often not the ones we seek. The "Quest" itself can disguise the treasures before us.
.
My grail is before me-
.
I can see it, I can touch it, I can hold it, I can even love it. But will I be able to see it for what it is before I discard it in the quest for something new?
.
God, I hope I can.