Sign of the Times

Once upon a time, I had a dream as a child
A dream or a vision, the details blur with time
And I can’t say for sure, the past is lost
If it ever even existed, the doubt of it makes
Everything unsure…but I digress,
The point is, if there’s any point at all
Is I can’t remember if I was asleep or awake,
I just remember the moment.

I was walking home from school, my backpack
Keeping time with my duck foot walking
Down the hill, cross the street, along the cut,
The secret leafy shadow through backyard worlds,
The late spring sun high still, brilliant yellow
Like the eye of a daisy in a forget-me-not blue sky.

I turned and looked up. I don’t know why
I had made an art of looking at shoes
The cracks making maps of the sidewalk
I was never the daystar gazer, but today
On this day, I looked up, and for a moment everything was blue and gold,
For one breath that became stillborn.

There was a flash, I remember the flash
And a wind that pulled up, like the sky was breathing too.
It pulled the air out of me, a hand pressing upon the bellows of my chest,
Squeezing selfish, breath stolen to the point that the blue sky dimmed,
Only for a moment, but when you can’t breathe, a moment is forever.

There was the flash, then the flame
The blue devoured by hungry oranges and yellows and purples,
The fire crossing the sky like ink in clear water,
Everything burning up all at once,
Grass crackling, leaves of ash swirling
Grit and bark and flesh all turning to the dust we are told we are.

There was nothing, no time, just burning, time had swallowed itself and there was just fire and no breath, no breath at all and I wanted to breathe but I couldn’t, I wanted to cry but tears became steam and there could be no weeping, no pain, just fear, just the terror rising to choke and make it so I couldn’t breathe ever ever again, caught up in breathlessness and I wanted to breathe again so badly but there was just the roaring of fire and the hand around my chest.

I woke up then
Or my wandering mind fell out of its daydream nightmare
The sky was blue, the sun was yellow
The leaves green and blowing in a breeze without hunger
And I just turned and walked home,
As if the whole of everything and me in it hadn’t just burned,
Hadn’t been swallowed whole by endlessly hungry, desperate thirst, and no breathing.

I wonder sometimes, what it meant,
But then again, I wonder if it even happened,
The same way I wonder if I ever went to school,
Or kissed a girl, or grew up and regretted everything.
I can’t even be sure that I ever was, so what meaning can there be in these phantoms of signs of dreams that maybe were.

The only hint I have, is that sometimes my heart stops
And a fist gathers around my ribs
And I cannot breathe.

Mud and Bones

Eben got the ground hard on his side, sliding on the churned mud of the field, breathless from the sudden collision. Instincts honed from years of war had his eyes flick back up, just in time to see the blow that had been aimed at him strike Mel. The grating crunch of steel on steel as the blade entered her belly was felt in his bones, a sickening grating all too familiar and so much more real than it ever had been in such a long time. Two bodies toppled forward just a few feet in front of him, the half-spear in Mel’s left hand coming up at the same time as the killing blow struck her, slipping past the cheek guard of her foe’s helm, up into his skull. The sound of the two still struggling foes hitting the ground echoed like thunder in Eben’s ears, all else seeming to become perfectly silent, the screams and yells and clamor of raging battle suddenly still, as if to highlight this one, single instant of gut-rending pain.
Five feet was never longer. Eben clawed through the mire, heart hammering, wriggling past and through the ever shifting sea of legs as the line pushed past him and forward, pressing the enemy back, but oh, but too late, oh much too late, he was much much too late…the distance seemed to grow even as he pulled himself one handed towards the tangle of limbs and mail, the edges of his vision darkening until all he could see was the two now still bodies.
He at last drew close, sword falling from a numb grip, hands clutching, tearing at the offending corpse crushing down over Mel, yanking, tugging, desperate at the dead weight, his strength seeming gone, straining, strangled, animal inarticulate sounds stumbling from his lips as he rolled the massive frame of the Morcthandi soldier off and tossed it aside. He almost rather he’d left her covered.
Blood made the mail covering her belly glisten, the rent made by the enemy sword having cleaved deep past the muscle, the weight of him falling onto her driving it deeper, her legs bent at broken toy angles. Eben knelt at her head, tugging, pulling her half sitting, her body bending strangely above the blade through her guts.
“Get up Mel, c’mon, up, up now” if she got up it would be ok, if she could stand, if she’d just get up…
“C’mon, I need you to stand Mel, right now, you have to get up!!!” Eben strained, shoulders set, legs slip sliding as he tried to get her to stand with greater and greater desperation…
“You don’t do this to me, you don’t, stop fooling around and get up you bullheaded cunt, now, get up Mel, get up, MOVE DAMN YOU, MEL DON’T YOU DARE!!!” Why couldn’t he lift her, why wouldn’t she listen, why wouldn’t his legs obey and get under him and just pull her up, if she just stood up it would be fine…
“DON’T YOU LEAVE, DON’T YOU DO IT, GET UP NOW, YOU GET UP, YOU CAN’T…MEL, GODSDAMN YOU GET UP!!!!…please…please…” Eben tire at her body with one last effort and heard it, the meat tearing sound and looked down. The sword and passed clean through her and had pinned her to the ground. She wasn’t getting up. It wasn’t going to be alright, not this time, not ever, ever again.
Eben lifted her head, rough leather gauntlets running over her pale face, over the short bristles of her hair, pulling her into his lap. How many? How many now? Too many, too many by far and now…now she’d leave too. Eben had been cut and stabbed, broken, wounded in nearly every way a man could be yet nothing, nothing hurt like this, nothing he had ever done in all his years of war had ever felt sick in his gut like this. He felt the tears come, felt them hot on his cheeks the way they had never come for any of the others, not even Grimnir when he fell. Eben never wept, but oh how he wept now, oblivious to the ongoing carnage all around him, wept with great, racking sobs that came up from the ground and shook him like a leaf as he held Mel’s immobile face in his lap. Leaning over her, he pressed his brow to hers and the falling tears mingled with the blood splattered around her lips.
Her eyes popped open suddenly, her body jerking in his grip, breath rattling horribly as she gasped and coughed, bootheels scraping in the mud, feeble as the last life within her still fought. Eben felt more than saw her arm come up, hand clutching at the back of his neck, holding on with feverish strength he wouldn’t have believed possible.
“Hold still, stay still Mel, hold on, I’ll…I’ll…I…” but what? What would he do? Her blood was mingling with all the rest in the mud, her belly full of steel, every movement tearing her insides further with wet sucking noises…what could he do? Like all the others she was going to be mud and bones, like everyone he had ever held dear, just mud and bones, even he, he was just mud and bones that hadn’t stopped pretending to be alive.
“Hold on, I’ll fix it, just don’t move, hold still and don’t move, I’ll fix it I promise…”
“P-p-p-promise…” the words were faint but still her’s, still the low, angry growl, the grey eyes staring wildly up into his. “You…you can’t…can’t fix shite…but you promise!!!” There was urgency, her eyes were staring but not at him, not really. “You go…”
“No!!! I’m staying with you, I’m not…”
“YOU GO…d-d-do what you, what you promised, do what you p-p-promise…do what…what you…you said…I remember…go and…do…promise…”
Mel’s grip broke, arm sliding limp, whatever lingering strength was left ebbing with each beat of her heart. Her words trailed into babbling, leaving Eben again alone in a tiny island of pain and agony within the storm of men doing their very best to slaughter one another.
“What promise?!? What gods damned bloody promise?!?” Eben knelt there with Mel’s head in his lap, stunned, empty, the whole world strange and incomprehensible. Around him blurred bodies surged and struggled, faced swam in and out of focus, features distorted, horrific, masks of bloodlust and death that no longer had any meaning. His gaze moved without direction, casting about for something that made sense, that didn’t hurt like looking into her bloodied face did. His eyes settled upon the hilt of his sword, just sighing his reach, the blade of it trampled into the mud, the mud they all were, that they all ended up. His hand reached out, he could see it but not feel it, the movement of his body alien and separate. His fingers curled around the hilt, the feel of it the last true thing. Faintly, echoing along the corridors of his mind, Eben heard a voice, nearly forgotten, a voice that wasn’t weary, or hurt, that hadn’t tasted so much loss and death and violence.
“Do you know what I do with it?”
There were grey eyes, big, wide open and shining, that weren’t hard yet, that were living and not cold fish marble yet.
“Do you know…”
But what really had he known then, before he’d even ever killed? Before he knew that they’d all of them be just mud and bones?
“You’re safe now, I promise” Eben nearly laughed, he did, even as the ache in his lungs froze, as the cold welled up in him. What kind of damn fool promise was that? How could mud and bones keep anything safe?
“Do you know what I do with it?” Slowly Eben rose to his feet, or at least something that had been Eben, before they…before she…before it all went away. The mud and bones rolled out of his lap as he stood, both hands now clenched so tight around the hilt the blade seemed to vibrate as they shook.
“Do you know…I promise…do you…safe…safe now…do you know…do you…do you know what I do with it?”
His lips drew back from his teeth, his stride steady, even, the bodies coming into focus as he swung, felt the bite of steel, heat and salt splashing across his cheeks. He was never the hero, he was just a corpse that made other corpses. He swung over and again, pressing into the thick of it, throwing himself at the wall of death grimace and blood below, his own features twisted in a manic snarl.
“Do you know what I do with it?”

“I kill monsters.” The words were quiet, no bravado, no conviction, cast out in bitter dispair as Eben flung himself full force into the only purpose his miserable carcass had ever been good for. Quietly, a small voice in his head, the voice of a boy that was now so dead and gone whispered sadly…

“…but there are too many…”

The Imposter Remembers

The wind makes the tails of my coat snap, pennants whipping behind me. It moans, softly, but steady, a constant, drawn out exhalation, weary, grieved, the sound after the first sharpness of loss, when it’s become dull, familiar. The only other sound at all in the vast, flat emptiness is the hiss of dust, fine particles rubbing one over the other, small, but when multiplied by a billion billion times it becomes a delicate roaring, the terrible monotone of absolute desolation. The dust is red, fine as sand yet gritty and it stings my cheeks.

In every direction there is nothing, maybe the faintest trace of geography, the hint of a hill worn down, pressed into submission by Time’s heavy thumb, or the suggestion of a valley, but for the most part the land is a table beneath the perfect bowl of the sky. It is a nothingness made so much deeper when added to the knowledge of abscence, the ache of a festering within flesh that appears whole, the rememberence of a wound scabbed over, healed, but still present. There was something here once and it lingers in the hole it has left.

I know, right where I stand was a plaza, the architecture of it a wonder, stone and steel and living plants woven together, hung with lights, glistening with fountains that would lift up columns of air and water that caught the beams of lanterns and threw up jeweled fire into the night air. Beside me, a bench still holds the lover’s that sat, hands entwined in knotwork of love and flesh and bone, content to be each with each, watching the passers by but only with concern for one another. Children swirl around, have me spinning on my heels as they run, a school of bright fish flicking this way and that, laughing, mischievous, full of wonder and dreams and promise. I can look into a shopfront, see the makers at their trades, here haggling, there bent to their craft, one taking their meal with a spouse that brought it, another passing along the secrets held within a lifetime of callouses, failures, and successes. It was all here, and now it is gone. I see it still though, I must, there is not a thing I do not remember, not one since my eyes opened. Every single moment exists perfect and complete within my mind, drawing the was over the is, making a palimpsest, a double exposure that defines the emptiness and drags it across my memory like a razor.

I had no choice. If I had not acted, the one who came from Outside would have riven the entire universe, shaped it into what its vision thought it should be and all would have been undone, every life across billions of planets snuffed out. I tried to reason with it, tried words to steer it from its course but these failed. It was far too sure in its reason, built an impregnable fortress of certainty and righteousness. So I, being the guardian of The Real, sought to fight it. That, that was foolish. The power of it was vast and deep, so deep the well of it could crush you down just by the pressure of it being. Those inside do not change anything, not really. Magic, power, it can be used to make things happen, bound in patterns and spells, but reality itself remains the same as both hammer and nail remain fundamentally the same when applied one to the other. Their nature never changes. Those Outside though, with the power in them make things different, can simply make what is in their mind be and not only be but always have been, reweaving the threads of reality. It was a power I could not withstand.

We fought across the stars, across worlds, plunging through clouded nebulae, where it passed The Real screamed, tortured into new shapes, rent apart in ragged wounds I did my best to suture shut even as I fought back, striking with every charm or spell I could remember or devise, attempting to surround it with The Border as a body might do with a cyst, condoning off its infection, but it changed and shifted and slipped free. I know not how long we fought, time flowed in torrents, a gale of it whipping me, lashing and battering as I contended with The Outsider until at the last I was weary, wounded, a blackened rag flapping at its heels while it was undiminished, a titan that would pale Chronos, towering, invincible. It turned to me and in that moment, in its eyes I could see my undoing, but not just that, my cessation, the complete unwriting of me and everything that had ever been. I could see only one avenue, one small, desperate gleaming thread, so delicate that it might snap even by clinging to it. I knew what it would mean as it and I stood upon the curvature of the planet’s atmosphere, I knew the cost down to the penny, down to the last bright life just as I knew that if I did not act the price would rise too great to account for. In that last moment, as it turned to gloat in its triumph, I broke The Border.

The Unreal poured into The Real. The space around us boiled as nothing became something and then nothing again, endlessly, warping everything it touched, dissolving the rules, eating away at the is with the isn’t as a wave might eat a castle of sand upon the shore. It crashed into The Outsider and where it was became something else, twisting so rapidly even it could not hold onto itself and was undone. Alas, it did not stop there. The planet beneath us was tortured, racked by storms of madness, stone and seas and flesh melted, ran like wax, became something else but all of it, all of it dead. By the time I’d grasped the ragged seams of reality and knotted it back together all that remained was a planet shaped grave.

All of this I can see, as I stand on the planet’s surface, on what once had been stone, in the middle of what once had been a plaza in what once had been a living city, that had once been a part of a civilization that exists only in my memory of it. I come here every year to stand upon the red, red sands and remember them. They kept their history in one long song, each new thing, every discovery, every new event another verse. I learned it long, long ago and it still exists perfectly in my mind. So every year that has passed since then, millions of years before life would even be a contemplation for its nearest neighbor, I come, and I stand in the emptiness and let the wind bite at my coat and let the dried blood sting my cheeks and I sing. I sing the decades, the centuries, the rising and falling mingling with the dull ache of the moaning wind, I sing the life of a people that were beautiful and terrible as all other people save these where stalks mowed too soon leaving their field fallow and barren. Alone, I sing and remember, always, my purpose and my failure.

Turn of the Tide

There is rust upon the tongue, flakes of grit
The taste of metallic decay, bitter silences
Poisoning all thought, each stillness the longer echoing
Of all the words trapped beneath cowardice
Or strangling themselves stillborn,
Infinite infant corpses dangling faux tears
Strung grisly ornamental from spiny, crusted lashes.

Something rotten indeed
Cloying, unlovely, limping mockery
Nuzzling lascivious leaving viscous fingerprints
Stains beneath the flesh, the marks of remembrance
Bruises and cuts clawed desperate fingers digging
Oh, to remove the cancer bequeathed
Undressing bare to the bone not ever clean enough.

Bouquets of fear in full bloom thorn tearing
Wrung hands raw, wounds upon wounds
Every day, over and over and over
One moment, one touch, one word, or look, or any other abuse
The wreaths hung choking in lungs buried beneath
Crushing weights, pinned butterfly beneath the thumb of oceans
Gasping in the dark alone and alone and alone…

…when of a sudden, a match is struck,
Timid flickering, more shadow than orange burning
But warmth where there was cold, a point
Fixed, a spar to cling, then another upon another
Till there is a torrent of pricks in the night
A blaze, one into one into many and there is a raging blossom
Strong and terrible and righteous.

Another Unsent Letter

Hello again, it’s good to see you
You’ve changed but the years have been kind
Left all the best of you just the same
As the last time I saw you
Although the absence of tears
Is an improvement.

Can we sit and talk just for a bit?
I know you’re busy, full of your life
But if you could spare just a moment or two
I’d love to play catch up
Pretend just for a while
There isn’t a lifetime of space between us.

I’ve missed you, my eyes have missed the lines of your face
I know it’s too much to ask for a smile
I ran out of chances for those so I’ll settle for what I can get
If you could just hold still a bit longer
I want to hold the focus
Before time blurs the edges all over again.

I want to tell you I’m sorry
But we both know we’re beyond all apologies
I’m glad you’re well, that the bruises are fading
That you’ve discovered just how strong you can be
As I always knew you were
Tiny, mighty, holding up all of the sky.

I won’t keep you any longer
I’ve held you up too long and you have places to be,
Thank you for topping by
For giving me one last chance I didn’t deserve
To be a part of you, however small
For just one last time.

An Open Letter

Dear ***,
I’ve tried writing this letter so many times over the years and every time I could either not find the words I wanted or I let my cowardice win and deleted it, convincing myself there was really no point in writing it, that committing myself in writing served no useful or constructive purpose. I’m still not convinced this will do any good, but I think it can’t really hurt either. It’s not like I think you’ll actually ever read it and even if you did happen to come across it I truly don’t think it will matter that much, not now, not after so much time and distance between us and now. What was “us” anyway really? A little bit more than a year when we were both still kids? Nearly twenty years in between filled with other people, experiences, good, bad, or indifferent but all changing and shaping each of us into two people who may not even recognize each other if they passed on the street?

Only for me, I know that’s just a little bit of bullshit. I’d know you anywhere. When you can’t stop thinking of someone, picturing their face, holding on to the sound of their voice it makes remembering very easy. I honestly haven’t ever stopped thinking of you, not once. At first they were all angry thoughts, trying to justify myself I guess, distance myself from my own stupidity and selfishness. They changed though, over the years. I replayed everything out over and over, all the moments, all the conversations, all of the mistakes I made just coming clearer over time. I was a shitty boyfriend, from start to finish, there’s no way I can deny that fact. I took you for granted, what you were and how special that was, how rare. So now when I think about you, all I can feel is guilt and regret.

There’s the big word, “regret”. You are, among all of my many regrets, the biggest by far. Kind of late in the game to realize this, but it’s true. I never once stopped loving you, no matter what I actually said. It’s quite possible that you’re the only woman I can truly say that I do love, that I can honestly use that word for. I’ve told other women that I loved them, and I’ve always wanted to mean it, I’ve convinced myself thoroughly that I did mean it but the thing is I don’t miss any of them. Not like I miss you. Some days I think all that I am is missing you, not a person, just this raw walking streak of loss. I know with a grim certainty that I will go to my grave missing you just as certainly as I know that I won’t ever see you in the flesh in this life again. And that’s my fault.

I think I’ve tried to evade that fact for a long time, tried to twist out from under it for years yet I can’t deny it any more. I could make excuses, I have made excuses, I was young, I didn’t know what I was doing, I was stupid and foolish and just fairly horrible all around. But those are reasons, not any kind of justification. In the end, I convinced myself that this wasn’t love, that there was this mythical something out there, that despite believing for all of my miserable life that there is a “one” that you weren’t it. I’m very good at convincing myself into things. Most of the time in doing so, I hurt people, just leave a lot of wreckage in my wake. No more so when I walked away from you. If it helps any, not that I think it will, I hate myself so much for doing that. I’m so angry all of the time and I can pretend it’s because of the state of the world, my disgust with humanity and all of its failings, or whatever other high handed bullshit I can scrape together but in the end I’m angry that I threw something precious away and I have no one to blame but myself. I punish myself every day, I use memories of you to beat myself raw and bloody because I don’t think I can ever suffer enough to make up for my mistakes.

That doesn’t really matter though. It’s not going to make any difference in the end. I’ll still do it, but it’s a pretty useless and futile gesture. Even if I could look you in the eye right now and tell you how sorry I am, would it matter? You’ve gone on to have loves of your own, you’ve built a life, struggled, suffered, become someone who might in some way remember a boy who broke your heart once upon a time. My relevance in your life is a negative, something so much less than nothing. Fuck, I’m just close to being a complete stranger to you now. I like to tell myself that that’s why I’ve never written this down before, that at best all of this would be an awkward and unwelcome reminder of something that once was, at worst it’s just pulling open an old scar best left closed. The truth is though that I’ve never committed to anything, not you, not my life, my writing, my marriage, nothing. I’m too scared, too much of a god damn coward to lay everything down and make a choice for better or worse. So much of my life is filled with moments where I let events unfold until all the choices where made for me, except once, and I made the wrong motherfucking choice.

I really don’t know what all of this is, why I’m writing this. There always seems so much I want to say but it never comes out just right. Maybe there’s no right way to say this, maybe I could start talking now and never be able to explain everything, just keep talking until my voice got lost but I’d still be making the words with cracked and broken lips because it will take me the rest of my life to truly convey all of the pain and anger and regret I hold inside of me. The bottom line though will always be this and this alone. I love you. I always have, I do right now and I always will for the rest of my wretched life. I always keep the hope that you will find your happiness, that for every hurt you will find the remedy. I want you to always know how beautiful, intelligent, amazing and truly wonderfully weird you are and I hope you will always keep who you are and feel that strength. I will never, ever be a part of your world ever again but I hope I can always find some way of knowing that you are out there and doing well.

I guess that’s pretty much all I have to say. It’s not really, but at some point the words have to stop. I just want to leave you with this and then I’ll stop. No matter what happens know this one thing as the truth. There will ALWAYS be one man who loves you, who thinks you are the most incredible person he has ever known and believes with all of his heart that the world is truly better and special and magic because you grace it. Know that sweet, beautiful girl.

Forever yours,

Matthew Brewes, The Beautiful Imposter 

Running Out Of Time

How many pages could be filled
With all of the silences?
The words that could have been said
Is there enough ink
Would an ocean suffice
If all the rain were gathered
To anoint every pen
So that nothing remained unsaid.

Tomorrow never comes
No next time
See you later becomes never
Getting around to it
Is not on the bus driver’s route
A wave goodbye the final gesture
Goodnight with no mornings ever after
Every second may never know
The one to follow.

There is only now
That’s the only guarantee we get
Every chance is the last one
They need to be taken
The world full of sudden cacophony
As every voice rings
So that nothing remains unsaid
All the knots tied
For good or ill.

Fingers Like Fire

There is a fire burning in my 
chest
It’s stoked by fingers reaching 
from the past
thatrandompoet

Does porcelain become brass
Under heat and flame?

Can her hands glow even brighter

Any part of her shine

As her eyes do

Through the smoke and wrack of memory?

If any fingers could stir

Cold ash to wakeful tongues

Of hiss crackling orange and red

They could only be her’s

The girl crowned and clothed

In autumn copper herself.

Does she know

That her hands run through my veins?

Still to this day

Card through the warp and weft

Of my tangled skein
Making a cat’s cradle

Cutting bloody slivers of my heart

With the same indifference any child gives

To such games?

Of course she doesn’t

I turned away from any such hope

I have my answers

Knowing I will burn again and again and again

Each time cold ashes are stirred

To quickening light

By hands that could only ever be her’s.

A Room and A Chair

There is no conceivable measurement
Of the distance between where I am
From where I saw myself
A gulf of time and regret
Bad decisions and inaction
Old ghosts and fading memories
A scattering of busted toys
Tumbled about my feet, littering the floor
Around my chair.

Music plays faint and scratchy
Popping and hissing through the dusty silence
Voices that never fade out
Crackling reminders spinning out and on
Needle cutting tracks out of my fingerprints
Smudging bloody over skin
Smears of bright color across sepia
Twisting smokey though amber whiskey lense
Choking down fire to bitter ashes
We all do fall down…don’t we?

Rags and feathers
These instruments of faith and sex and God
Right, isn’t that how the line goes?
I was beautiful in my brokeness
But you twist yourself into those shapes of damage
And it sticks, limbs twisted
Into driftwood gnarled water carvings
Bones have memory and are hard to untangle
Too brittle, snapping under the weight of scrutiny.

Time passes like a razor
Slicing paper thin, peeling a rind
Of blank tape, spooling out
In meaningless ribbons just waiting
For a random spark
Something hungry to move from me to nothing
Faintly flickering orange greedy tongues
Leaving an empty chair
In a dusty room
With a scattering of busted toys at its feet.

Voices of October, Lust, Heaven, and Disrepute