The Outcast

Cold and hard like Winter steel,
Tempered by a planet sunken, sallow,
Oh jaded, wasted youth, they tsk,
Knowing eyes rolling in bovine heads
As they down their shots of Apathy - with just a splash of Fear.
Pools of liquid night, her eyes
Swallow the light, the false platitudes.
Beneath the din and clamor of the quickening World,
Spirits call weakly to her assailed ears,
Entreating, weeping.
Her hands tied by a world that will not listen,
She cries in silence perfect, deep.
Slipping sleeping through Reality's cracks,
She comforts forgotten angels
Who, keening, claw at blackened, twisted wings.
Oh irony! She must escape her body
To truly feel, to be felt -
To hear the rough and raw tattoo
Of the drums that keep the Universal Beat.
Shedding flesh and bone and blood -
The shrieking, clutching, burning World,
She slips, ethereal, mysterious,
Darkly glittering and soft
To realms apart -
Outcast no more.

A thing I wrote.

I wrote this about a year and a half ago and stumbled upon it today...

The wolves of the World circle me, drawing ever closer, unconcerned with my meager protective fire. They are strong. They are tenacious. They are cunning and smart. They own everything in the World and seek to add me and mine to their collections; trophies in their mad manipulative game.

My parents and their parents before them let in the wolves, believing them to be lambs and at first - at first - the wolves held to their loathsome masquerade. They were insidious. They crept into my youthful mind via flickering images and catchy phrases and they played their games to see how long it would take to dissolve my will. Somehow, by some miracle, by riding some rare uncollapsible wave function, I survived the onslaught of the wolves - and I have the scars to prove it. They hate me for it, these wolves.

I don't know
if they know
that I know
what they well and truly are. That I know slavering jaws hide behind beatific smiles, that only foul, oozing corruption motivates their sweet-sounding and flowery words, that we are mocked when we play right into their clutches. I cannot blame those who came before me for being deceived, but still I curse them in the cold night, as I gather my fledgling family closer, huddled at our guttering fire, and watch the wolves of the World tighten their circle.

We
three,
the Angel, the Childe, and Me,
stand alone in the Stygian blackness of night.

Alone, but not defenseless.

My Will is yet strong. I know who I am, what I am, what is right. The wolves cannot see the sword I hold, still sheathed, but sharp, forged by Will, tempered by hard experience - experience they have provided through their depredations. They cannot conceive that what was meant to break me has only made me stronger. They cannot conceive that they might lose this game they play. They cannot conceive. They can only destroy, defile, and foul.

The Angel has a light, hidden now, but strong nonetheless - brighter than a thousand suns, pure as a singularity. The light is Love and it shields us all, and once unleashed, nothing may stand against it. Yes, the Angel loves even the wolves and this shall be our salvation.

The Childe is naught but possibilities, loosely bound and wild. Anything can happen around the Childe and the Childe is capable of anything and everything. The Childe is the mad Chaos of change and creation set against the old corrupted order of the wolves. The Childe knows no boundaries and has only to choose a direction, collapse the wave function, and change the World. The wolves have had no influence on the Childe, as they had with me.

The World wants to change, wants to throw off the shackles the wolves have locked around it - and it will. Though we are few and scattered, there are others like my little family, thinking that they are alone in the wilderness, and when the time is right, we will come together. We will merge our tenuous fires into a blaze that engulfs the World and the wolves will know their true masters.

Love
under Will
will remake the World and we will be free again.

Nerd Paradise

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! The Motor City Comic Con is just two months away! Imagine my delight upon discovering that The Ghoul will be there! Adam West, Burt Ward, Yvonne Craig, Lee Meriwether, and Julie Newmar will all be there. Holy Catwomen, Batman! Karen Allen! Charlene Tilton! And, saints preserve us, John Saxon! Not to mention enough comic book artists to choke a camel.

Okay, it's out of my system now.

New Lease

Last weekend, I had two whole days off, so we sent the mancub off to the grandparents and spent the evening (and late night and wee morning hours) at a place I used to frequent quite a bit in my younger days. It's a gothic/industrial club that takes up the second floor of an old hotel in one of Detroit's seedier areas and I practically lived there in the late 80s and early 90s. I hadn't been there in about a decade, but the place hadn't changed a bit, as if it'd been waiting to welcome me home. You go in through an unmarked door in the side of the hotel and ascend a flight of stairs painted with oh-so-spooky imagery until you come to another unmarked door. Stepping through, you enter another world. Black walls covered in greyscale murals, nearly nonexistent lighting, and the thick cloying aroma of clove cigarettes envelope you and draw you deeper into the club. To your left, a respectable bar, television overhead playing some crappy black and white horror movie. To your right, the restrooms that would give any health inspector the cold shakes. Further on, tables, benches, and couches - accommodations for a motley assortment of goths, freaks, fetishists, and others who have come to appreciate the darker side of life. Through an archway into a small antechamber, then on to the cavernous dance hall.

We danced, met some nice folks, talked, danced some more, drank beer, and went back to dancing. The vibe at this place is wonderful (well, not in the restrooms). After all that dancing and drinking, I should have been exhausted come four in the morning, but I felt so jazzed. I still feel jazzed. I'm finding my creativity coming back from its long hibernation and I feel like I'm connecting back to the world. In another month when I get another day off, I'm so going back. I can't believe I stayed away so long.