Voukah [Voo-kah]; home

Throne of skeletons

A vast, vague, vexatious mist of war. Remnants of a listless civil war of insurmountable regret and chagrin. None of this makes any sense.

But you fight. You fight for a causeless cause. You fight because you have been told to. The weapons you were given will make widows, but there are no opponents except yourself. You cannot widow yourself; you have no one to mourn for but yourself

Petty qualms. A wave of ashes swirl in between your fingers like a acrobats performing a technical routine. All of this is routine to the human psyche.

Sitting on your makeshift throne of skeletons you have created. Once-flesh beings of nature incinerated by passion; incinerated by lust; incinerated by wrath. The fullness – the plumpness and silkiness – of skin is only a mirage, for you, too, will emaciate yourself from the lack of nourishment. The lack of psychological invigoration. The lack of sanity.

Reminders of beautiful flora: hydrangeas, lotuses, epiphylla, vanilla and cherry blossoms. One moment of exhale and they will finally wisp away from your consciousness. You’ve held your breath this long, ruminating about the feeling of petals – so succulent you could feel them sink in your teeth once more.

Take a deep breath. Don’t need to blow down the little piggies’ houses. Just let it all go.

A woeful dance of ashes as they waltz into evanescence. A last vial of tears. They’re all gone.

This wildfire you’ve created is a blasphemy. A sacriligous desire. The end of your asceticism.

So bare your red robe so you may once again feel light against gravity of the world. And let the throne you created dissolve into oblivion as you raise yourself out of your seat.

For after every wildfire, flowers shall bloom.

Light may never come back to you, so compress it, conserve it and live by it.

I live in a time when penicillin still works.

I live in a time when only one of two locks is still sufficient.

I live in a time when only half of us are tolerant of the other half.

I live in a place that allows you to homogenize in a melange of people in plebian and business attire.

I live in a time when rules are placed but are unevenly enforced.

I live in an era of imperfect transitions. Fragments piecing together like solving a puzzle of bloodstained glass after a cracked skull of an unfortunate unmarriage. In the name of what god, exactly?

A taste of milk and honey. Synthetic honey, no less, dusted with arsenic and sodium chloride. Die sweetly, you’d be told. Rows of paraffin impaled upon a chalice. A night of desire, or a night of mourn? A relic of the past, or a necessity? A contingency, perhaps.

A pen is only mightier than a sword if you’ve left your sword to dull. And if you devote your faith to your mind instead of another’s.

Petroleum. A sweet bitterness. A smell of death. We take pleasure in vapourizing the dead and profit from it. “Economics” is the common excuse. But could we be bartering our time to be appeased?

Nausea. Close your eyes to adjust. Open, and the sky turns pallor. Darker. Keep your eyes pried. Peeled. Don’t blink.

I live in a time when time can no longer live.

Mute

I am a broken set of characters.

A lentient lexicon.

I live for alliterations, yet alliterations do not live for me.

A penalty of words.

Like winning in a grand amphitheatre for a pyrrhic victory against yourself.

A dischordance of stanzas.

Such living on a porcelain spine bound by the fray of short circuits and instability is surely uncertain.

A sanguinary evisceration of thanatos.

When streams become rivers and tears become crimson.

An ashen autumn in an eschatological world.

Follow the path

Where does it take you?

Is this road made of cobblestones or gravel or clay or asphalt? Is it wetted by the tears of disgruntled, dreamless beings? Is it entrenched in the blood of hopeless desires and noosed benevolence?

Do others accompany you? Are these beings unconditional or fleeting? Are these beings fair and bright with unceremonial daggers under their cloak? Are they disheveled with blood on the corners of their smile and decorated with a scar under their eye? Are these beings here with or without cause? Are these beings real?

Are these paths decorated with flowers, or were the flowers paved over with a path? Does water tear the path into fractions, or did this path rape the natural aquaduct? Can you see the sky on the ground, littered with stratosphere and the milky silk asphixiating the light? Is there water at all?

Will there be obstacles? Will there be guides? Will there be a mighty morphing jester that changes shape to entertain you while you are hindered in your progress? Will you climb mounts or hills or valleys, or will the sheering wind prune your existence away?

Is there snow impeding your path? Will the blistering hot burn the light out of your eyes?

Is there even a path?