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My eternal foe, the obdurate, crimson sun.
She mocks my thirst as I struggle to shield myself from her unrelenting gaze.
That one unblinking eye, indifferent in her cruelty,
crying tears of flame, lighting the sky ablaze.
Visions of dusk, a sky of stars, or cool, limpid pools ever elude me.
For she has drank the ocean and strangled the night,
jealous as she was of sharing her realm with the stars.
Naught but ash and dust covers the earth,
while that baleful star passes judgement from atop her throne.
My nemesis knows no equal.
No mortal may withstand her glare.
Her rage which turns forest to ash.
Her love for which wars we have been waged.
Yet each day, anew, begs me to wonder:
what misdeed earned us her ire?
What sin of our ancestors cursed us to toil in her incandescent light?
No shield may I raise in defense.
No blade may I wield to cleave the sky in twain.
For her enmity burns eternal.
Stealing the darkness as we pray for rain or night to grant us
the illusive dream we survivors share:
but the briefest respite from her flaming sky.
Until then, I wander the cracked earth, ever under her hateful authority.
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2. |
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In my endless quest for shelter, I came upon a cavern.
Its entrance, a vicious maw, swallowing sand and stone.
Yet the promise of respite
from the endless sea of blistering heat,
the scorching haze, birthed by our ancestors,
bid me to seek inside the tunnel’s Cimmerian shade,
disquietude put to rest by my calcinated flesh.
(For they were mindless of the venom they scattered like ash,
cursing their children to inbreathe by their sins,
though their wanton profligacy, by their vain transgressions.)
Once inside, a chill wind drew me further down, descending into the blackened depths.
The sound of my footsteps reverberated as if their echo resounded across time.
As a blackness, heavy as the night sky, enclosed me into its glacial embrace.
What arcane chasm had I foolishly entered,
tempted by my desire for reprieve from the punishing glare of the crimson sun?
What cryptic shadow now embraced me?
Was the solace I found within a false promise, merely a chimera?
Or had I found the last unburnt reliquary?
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3. |
Sentries of a Dead Earth
06:11
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I had heard tell of such a place,
tales spun by ancient ones of those entrusted with legends of times before.
Stories I believed to be but myth,
for all know that the length of this barren land,
once rich with temples built to revere wisdom and sanctuaries guarding our antiquity,
was put to flame by the sun cult, that crimson horde
And, yet, then a light in the cavern’s depths illuminated carvings in the stone walls.
I studied them, in silent and reverent awe at the chronicle, recorded therein:
The horde, who worship the Eye Aflame, despoiled the water, earth, and sky, while but a few retreated here and swore an oath to keep alive old ways.
Then, rousing me from my wonderment,
shadows long upon the walls, cast by robed figures.
My dread abated as they spoke in a single, ethereal voice,
“fear not, seeker, harm shall not befall you.
For we are the sentries of this hallowed sanctuary.
The dreams of a world reborn manifest before you.
We saw our comrades burned upon sacrificial pyres,
fed with the amassed wisdom of every generation.
For the most sacred parchment or venerated artifact,
even the flesh of their kin,
is merely kindling for their hate."
And my eyes beheld their relics-
rarest tomes, held with a parent's tenderness.
Runic symbols covering fragile pages, alien to my faded eyes.
Yet my hosts read aloud the words,
divine in their sagacity and elegant in their configuration,
in this shrine to a world, deceased.
Would that I could beg their forgiveness.
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4. |
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My hosts nursed me back to health
and taught me of what they guarded.
As my broken body healed, my mind swam in new waters,
pondering the movement of the spheres
and machines to extend our reach beyond the stars.
The grandiose splendor of their craft,
harmonies stirring fire in my soul.
Days passed, then months, before I realized
my hosts had become the only family I had known.
I wore their vestments and joined in their chants, and
they welcomed me with endless munificence.
They never forbade me to leave.
Such direct control would be anathema
to the solemn code that they observed.
Yet, I felt their fear that my wanderlust would pull me back to the wasteland above.
Ashamed, now, I admit they were right-
though I hid my desires from them,
I wished to abscond with the knowledge they had given to me
in hopes its bounty may enrich we survivors.
Yet, more ignoble, was my basest motivation;
for while it’s true I hoped to bring enlightenment,
even more, I dreamt the gifts they gave me
would allow me access to the sky,
a vantage from which I hoped
I may dare to murder the hateful sun
and rain fire on her worshippers below.
These vain dreams led me astray:
though the sentries warned against my hubris,
I stole away, certain I could be their avatar to a land, renascent
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5. |
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As I again walked the wastes, my enemy in the sky punished me
for daring to hide from her view,
pouring her fire on my newly healed flesh.
And yet I mocked her vain attempt to dissuade me,
for now I had purpose:
to bring the knowledge of the sentries to the survivors,
that we may rise.
The first settlement I found was full of ill and diffident wretches,
shutting their doors and averting their eyes as I approached.
But I mounted a dais and bid them gather round,
and spoke to them the words they’d ever longed to hear:
“I was like you, my friends, but a brief time before.
Scared and without hope, cowering from the sun.
But every myth that you were spun as a child? Each was true!
We are the inheritors of a great and noble world!”
To the gathered crowd I told tale of machines and ideas,
relating the wisdom guarded by the sentries.
“Stand,” I said. “Take up the mantle!
For our forebears reigned o’er an empire,
with spires and swords to pierce the sky itself!
To create or destroy at whim like churlish gods!
And not all was lost when their world was put to flame!”
Enthralled, these survivors cast away what little they had
and followed on my path, as we sought converts for our cause.
In settlement after settlement, we preached our sacred words,
and our coterie grew to multitude.
And we stalked the wastelands, like a sea of locusts,
gathering all to our cause,
finding allies among the meek and cowed,
so fervent were we that we could barely feel
the fearful sun crying.
Intoxicated on our piety, we heeded not her admonitions,
even as her crimson army mobilized to intercept us,
brandishing their vermeil blades,
fearsome and brutally merciless.
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6. |
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As we forged across the wasteland,
towards a preordained altercation with the crimson horde,
those cultists of the sun,
surely I had discerned those among my retinue
who embellished our sacred histories
as they were told and told again.
Such discrepancies I paid no heed,
even as their lies eclipsed the truth.
Such ardor is inescapable, I surmised,
when one commands a legion
built on want and fervor,
the righteous indignation of those who, until now,
were forced to live in fear.
I held to this foolish notion
till that most fateful day I realized it was too late:
distressing news had reached my ears
that chilled me to the bone, tempering my desire
to lead this multitude, as I perceived what they’d become.
For my followers, to whom I’d preached of wisdom had,
in their zealotry laid waste to a settlement.
I went to see with my disbelieving eyes finding,
to my horror, a tableau of cruelty.
Bodies flayed and burned, hung like macabre trophies,
decapitated and torn limb from limb.
“What sin could justify such barbarity,”
I asked my devotees.
Eyes aflame, they replied:
“We bearers of virtue,
do we not stand above
these ignorant cowards
who reject your teachings?
Shall we not cleanse the wastes
of their impurities
that this land may be reborn,
lustrated by heathen blood?!”
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7. |
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Unburdened by my protestations,
my legions turned their wrath towards the horde.
As they marched on the cult’s citadel
The wastes descended to war, incessant.
I had dreamed of delivering we survivors from the fetters
of the crimson ones.
To outwit those who cling to their ignorance.
To crush those who make an idol of strength.
Yet, even in the depths of my darkest imaginings,
I had foolishly left unpondered that, between the horde
and mine own army, would lie thousands, sacrificed to a corrupted cause.
Sickened, I became, as my followers’ wanton cruelty
held aloft a dark mirror to my own arrogance.
For this was not the glorious crusade I had envisioned,
but feckless butchery by sadists and fanatics.
I observed in horror, as throngs clashed against each other,
like cerise waves of bone and flesh.
I saw, now, with clarity, that my role in this fool's game
was merely to vindicate what lay dormant:
enmity towards each other, long grasping for direction.
I gave this slumbering resentment violent form
through my grandiose proclamations.
The battles dragged on for days, then weeks,
before my despondency broke long enough
to query of myself: what of the sentries?
Those who had warned me to temper my pride?
I made my way to their cavern,
across scorched earth, drenched with blood.
Yet even these endless landscapes of grim carnage
prepared me not for the grisly scene
I discovered at the sanctum, for which only I bear the blame.
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8. |
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For the war, this clash of cults, had spilled to this sacred place.
Bodies piled up before the dark cavern's maw and set aflame
served as an ominous portent for the horror I'd find within.
The sentries, my mentors, who sheltered me from the sun,
I beheld them, crushed and trampled,
emboweled, and left to rot.
Their bodies, eviscerated, their faces frozen in fear,
the stench of death, lingering
like a shroud over this doomed shrine.
One sentry among the dead, still drew her last, precious breaths
which she gladly spent cursing me for unleashing this fate
upon the sanctum. She knew not who murdered them:
the sun cult or my disciples. Such distinctions seemed so
meaningless and futile now.
Then, from deeper in the cavern, the sound of voices emanated.
In terror I realized those who had slain the sentries
still remained herein
and, now, drew closer.
I left my friend to die alone, her blood still warm on my hands.
And turned to flee from the cavern I once called home.
Footsteps echoed, closing in behind me, as I made haste
to escape from the pursuing swarm.
Yet just as I felt the air from outside drifting in,
they ran me down and, screaming, pulled me into the sun.
With euphoric wrath, they crushed my hands,
splintered my knees and shattered my jaw.
Dragging my body across blood drenched earth,
their laughter filled my ears as they hung a rope from a tree.
Were these my devotees, turning traitor against me?
Or was this the sun sect, exacting their revenge?
In truth, I could not be certain
if they recognized me as the prophet,
Or if I was but an ironic victim of the madness I had loosed upon the wastes.
They hung me by my ankles, limp and bleeding out,
sacrificed to their aimless rage,
with my blistered face turned towards the sun,
left swinging there, to suffer in my foe’s mocking sight.
Gasping for air, I closed my eyes
to deny her the pleasure of watching me die,
yet she burned through my eyelids,
forcing me to return her scorching gaze,
as she boiled my flesh and choked the breath from my lungs.
In these, my final moments,
whispering my contrition to vultures,
her searing voice hissed upon the wind:
“Upon this corpse my conquest be inscribed.”
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Huntress of Stars Illinois
"Are those the stars, and not their furious eyes, that now before her coming chariot glare?"
revisionistwestern.blogspot.com
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