Swallowtails airily dancing above
                                  {high-flown sentiment,
                                    lofty outlines -
                                    noble plan of campaign}
                                             young eyes awash in past victory.

Would that lines ever stood fast.
Would that eyes ever beamed bright.
Would that eyes never beheld
                ears never caught
                heart never knew
                                         the handiwork of too high an aim.

Precipice abrupt.

The deep howls itself wide,

jarring derision.

Despite all the things that I disliked about my time in the military, I still miss it frequently. Perhaps I just grew so used to it that now everything else feels foreign. Perhaps the act of offering one’s life to an idea is one of the few things a life is worth in the short time it is given. Perhaps the man beside you is the dearest treasure of all.

To those who have gone before, choosing that the idea was more sacred than breath, whether the world knows not your name or whether history will tell your tale a thousand years from now, and to my noble comrades who know the meaning of sacrifice, I salute you. Happy Memorial Day.

Visions darken,
soothingly star-blankets winking, the
voices of earth calmingly
bearing the descending cup of evening to her intended.

The poet Alambil (with) Tarva the huntress
beacons to the chosen,
shimmering descant damascened in hemispheric sable
and the warrior guards.

Amid the gardens of forever vanity
mouths the query but
pregnant pauses the respondent and ashamed while the
lost children tell no tales.

Stone-wrought visages
weathered
by the storm,
lining the lane leading
to the
groves of death.

Like statues in the gardens of dreaming,
each face a lifetime singing -
promises exchanged and tales.
Glances kept downward,
eyes glazed but hopeful -
for recognition thirsting.
Ever the path pursuing,
fruitless journey:
turning away,
turning away.

Mahogany in his nostrils, smooth-polished beneath his fingertips that sit beside the cold glass. The sounds of a land across the water, the bow sweet-stroked over the strings and the bright voice ringing. Curious that so strong an association arises, unknown as they are. Neither are they of his own place and his own sounds, but from across the water in a greener land - not the tor-flagged home which he cannot envision in his thought and yet of which he misses the sight. Mist-ridden landscapes sharpened with unblemished grass. Pregnant fog on the wet stone. Cold. Things remembered? Things conjured? Never to know, never to know.

The sun bloodies the river, and red the water goes,
A new dawning rising swift, the sky a shade of rose.

Review of Hvis Lyset Tar Oss (Burzum, 1994).

Originally posted at Encyclopædia Metallum.

.

It seems difficult to base a critique of any work of art upon arbitrary or commonly-accepted standards when such a work is expressly and explicitly intended by design to not fit within the confines of normal definitions. In this case, Burzum’s Hvis Lyset Tar Oss is most aptly described as black metal, and yet, even though that is the best description of the record’s sound, it is not only black metal. Hvis Lyset Tar Oss has been called ambient music, or electronic music, or neofolk, and yet, even though those phrases do describe parts of this album, it is neither completely ambient nor wholly electronic. The music of Burzum was never intended to fully fit within a genre, never meant to allow itself to be defined by a word or a phrase. (more…)

Oh. Hello again, April. It’s been some time since I last saw you – a year, I’ll wager. You never disappoint. You’re always right on time. You’ve got my birthday with you, I’m fairly sure; you usually do. A little closer inspection … ah, yes. There he is. A little older than when last I saw him. A little darker of countenance; the same glint of the eye, but less prominent. He does not smile as much as he once was wont. But it is he.

Hails to thee, Vinny’s Birthday! We are well met for the sixth and twentieth time this day beneath a sky so different from that of where we would call home. Thou hast brought tales of the year past, I trust, as has always been the case in years gone by. Let us hear them now. (more…)

The End Of The World

I will outlive my words.
Mightier than the sword?
(To your god, perhaps - all
far-off and removed; unconcerned.) No.
Violence shall split the land
asunder. The deep drowns the dawn.
A wry smile from the groundlings.
Scrabbling for papers, we
push, shove, and generally
degenerate.
A caw of victory from me, at least:
I put someone’s eye out
before I died.

.

Cold

chaotic chords of ice,
hacksaws in my heart.

a wall of screaming memory,
soul consumed in a funeral pyre of ardent azure.

the march of history
echoed in a pounding cadence of
power.

enveloping darkness.

cold.

.

Liar

you’re a liar.
slick adverts, that get
inside
my head,
and your shit does wonders
for a year,
for a life,
and then you’re like
gotcha.