The Dark Verse

The mind is a strange place.

Excerpt:

I would lie in the middle of Turnby Road on those days when the wind would explain the seasons and the cold and the feelings quickly lit and quickly dampened. The leaves from elderly oak trees would carve their sacred fates between the airs, arousing the nostalgic memories of imagined pasts. In this unsettled ocean of dryness and brittleness, I would rest and soak in the mystifying sounds and crackles. I did not fear that anything might come by, nor did I ever expect it—especially on such days of unrest. So, without disturbance, I laid amongst the turmoil of magical expectancy, involving myself in tales wrapped on the motives lingering behind the engines of nature.

All too many had spoken of the words heard amongst the wind, or at least behind it, but I had much different inclinations from the invisible transports. There was a system to it all, an uncalculated tempo and a mysterious strength. My intuitions conceived an ancientness beset within the heart of a god-like tapestry—a masterpiece sculpted and constructed, mechanically and technically, for purposes of life’s resolutions. I envisioned a magnificent machine built in spiritual dimensions that garnered the energy to exude such power. With organic muscle, it forced soul into the essence of menial happenstances, binding its thought with the world. My mind was lost on the exquisiteness of such hidden things—things I sought in the realms above and around, and even in the realms below.

On one particular instance of my reveling on Turnby Road, my own hidden longings came to exist in the most unthinkable of manners. A carriage came down the road at the twilight of the day, and without such sight as would be required to navigate opposite that of a dreaming boy, it ran across my chest, striking me into oblivion then and there. I recall feeling an unnerving spike of discomfort and the sudden splurge of liquid erupting within me. The pain of it only had a rare affect and was over quite instantly.

 9: The Chambers Of Nature's Machines [15:57m]: Download

A noble came to me the other day. She was adamant about being released from a turmoil she could not plainly describe. When she arrived, her hair was a mess and her eyes were red and dry; she looked as if she had not slept for days. Before she even explained her situation, she begged me uncontrollably to free her from “the beast of blame.”

I sat her in my study and attempted to decipher just what her problems were, but at first I had less than any luck. My only answers came when I showed her my principality index—a collection of detailed, artistic reproductions of all the spiritual creatures I had encountered.

When the image of the exipham came before her, she slipped abruptly into a violent panic, which I quickly subdued with the use of a relaxant I kept on hand. Once she recovered, she was much more able to communicate with me.

The exipham, first of all, is a being not unlike a pig in characteristic, though it holds many qualities similar to that of a goat. When it appears to someone, it always proposes an agreement or deal. It offers an item of material or societal wealth for something of great intrinsic value. During this bargain, the exipham uses psychological tactics—typically the recollection of a horrible wrongdoing or a great sin—to inhibit the victim from seeing the true value in the item it desires. It then convinces the victim of his or her need of its own item, and carries out the trade.

It was questions about such things that I asked the noble. She was brief in response and even firmer with delivery. As my questions engaged her, she realized I would learn not only how to free her, but how she came to be in bondage in the first place—what the sin was that the exipham utilized.

I ended the session by reprimanding her for any dealings she might have undergone with the exipham and that she must be firm from then on, but I later found out that it was already too late. She had poisoned herself by the afternoon of the next day. Around her neck was a glittering diamond necklace and her baby, which she had only recently had, had been taken in exchange.

To think that such personal evil can devour the sense of reason. I pitied the noble for whatever the exipham preyed upon, but I was content that there was nothing left to be done.

 The Augur's Scroll: Remnant III [5:25m]: Download

Everyone finds themselves at some point in their lives wishing they were someone else, or that the circumstances that befell them were different. But we live in a time where Botox and liposuction consume a state of mind with a myth that is, more often than not, impossible to reach. We also live in a time where people change their sex, change their look, and add to their flesh, whether it be tattoos or strange grafts. People want to be more than what they are and influence the world with more than they can fathom. We should only hold the keys of those doors we know we can survive on the other side of.

Excerpt:

I had heard the sound of a key many times—the way it clicked when it slid into place; the way it, whether softly or quickly, depending on the hand which guided it, crashed into the perfection of angle and craftsmanship of its make. It was the sound of power; it denoted the ability of authority and ownership over property. And it was also the sound of revelation. There was no other sound better than the prophetic vision and uncanny capability of success—a method, even in madness, to the inner kingdoms of divine thought and realization.

The key had never been linked to the construct of the lock. The key, in fact, and if of the right kind, created the locks and the boundaries thereafter. Treasures were to be made, not unlocked, and rare keys held the responsibility to make it so. It was this type of key that I longed to behold: the key that had a purpose of unlocking the universe. Only one place had this key ever been found, and that was in the mind—where it was formed by aspiration, devotion, and imagination, a collection of heterogeneous parts interlocking to summate a revolutionary relationship.

I had never been satisfied with the present and primitive delusions of advancement—scientific, technological, medical, explorative. I wanted the deluge of impeccability: a change so tremendous that it would devastate all normality of life. There were certain benefits to the ephemeral pleasures of living, but my view of the eternal had a pungent taste and so I could bear no speculation of lifestyle.

 8: The Phoenix Imago [14:58m]: Download