Mountain-Fall

The mountainside, thronged with cloud

The sun shining down,

Its bastioned edges thrust,

High into the sky.

Its fickle turns of coat,

Its picture-perfect smile,

Its many-pillared halls,

All turned upside and down.

Oh to be a mountain,

Carefree and resolute,

It fears none save itself,

For in itself is its own fiery death.

The Vulture Man

For all ye men
I am yer bane
I slay and then
I shave yer mane.

I live off death
And harvest rubble
With weed and meth
I cause yer trouble.

The sun has died
And gone to rest
But in the night
I count me blessed.

For deserts howl
And rivers roar
This cloaking cowl
Will hide me no more.

But I'm the scum
Of the blasted earth
No kingdom'll come
There ain't no more birth.

The Fallout of the world inspired me. I hope things won't come to this.

The Shepherd

The tears I hear are calling
At the heart of my door
And the trumpets of the Lord
Are blaring evermore.

You told me once that you're so ashamed
That the world was laughing still
But the world knows not whom to blame
For its sins upon the hill

I'll draw my cloak about you
And hide you from the world
You'll see naught but darkness
And the comfort of my warmth

For you are so precious to me
And you are like a sea
And the sun whose rays scorch you
Will be hidden so by me

So don't hurt any longer
For I'll be your loving shepherd
The wolves will never find you
And you'll never want for fear

This is a response to the poem 'Sorry.' The author will understand.

Captive of the Golden One

They cannot see their way
The light is not of day
The flashes are for the flood
Heralding, steeped with mud

The shell is closed round me
I cannot shake it loose
I will not try to flee
For the world outside's a noose

My heart is closed for fear
What I want I cannot find
Even when you draw so near
I turn you out from my mind

It's not a fault of yours
I am just like this way
You knock on all my doors
But my thought is far away

Sometime I wish you'd crack me
And set me oh so free
But in this mount of madness
I hope you never find me

For though I'm here and breathing
She's always far away
And though I'm here and breathing
She lives in another day

So don't come a-calling
For the snow has washed me down
And I no longer wander through these halls
And I rest in the Gold One's mound.

This is not about anybody in particular, before you get too excited. It began as such, but seems the words have gotten away from me....

Madness...

Where does fancy flow?
Where do waters go?

On the tip of my dream
is anything real?
For everything does seem
like an ether
caught in a stream

Are those sounds the sounds of light?
Or birds caught in flight?
Does that clock on the mantle there tick
Or is my mind clouding over thick?
Is this warmth the warmth of cold?
Or am I getting far too old?

My mind has wandered far
reaching for the cold star
Into mounts I climb
Hanging on to vines
For in the darkness shines
All the light of my wandering time

In the room I lay, thinking of all things
You too were there, ringing on the wings
The clouds were fairly thick
Your hair was raven slick
And through the door there came
The man who I once blamed

But now my mind is gone
Down there in the twilight Grond
And ever since I fell to you
I never said the things I thought I knew
And you have driven me over the edge
My mind is gone, my weakness pledge

And I see all that was before
And all that is, I hear come to call
For I see the day that draws so near
The cold war, it is so clear
And the day that will close all men
Will come to you; but until then

I'll sit upon this cloud of mine
Till all the world does rob me blind

Skyfall

Here we thought we'd be,
Lights over rooftops, the visions of sages;
The chorus of the seraphim,
And the workings of the ages.

Cut loose from our moorings,
We drifted out to sea;
The new days were dawning,
Though we saw through heaven, we're so lonely.

Clear out to the golden wood,
We held our white salvation;
Far away on the shore we stood,
And saw our machinations.

Into the depths we swam,
And saw the lonely rain;
There were ghost town from where we ran,
The crops harvesting sea-grain.

These eyes were cast to me, seeing all that was,
I held my breath in vain, seeing I could fly;
I don't think I am lost,
And then I fell into the sky.

The Hilltop

The howling wind o'er ragged rock
Tore across the darkened moor
The hardened man of grimmer stock
Watched the ones who came before.

The howling wind cried out in fright
And the man responded in kind
But the howling wind gave up for night
And the man was struck down blind.

The man who fell went down upon the rock
And rested in the blackening mist
The wind fitted its key to the lock
The frightened door made a furtive hiss

The night wasted further away
Upon the grassy slopes
The day then came out to play
The flowers rose out of the ground
And the rose and daisy elopes

The man came to and shook his head
His ragged toussled mane
He wondered where he had made his bed
And what was the secret of his name?

Cloak

From my last summer-breath
To the ending of the age
When the hills close above
and the sky rains down flame.

But in the end
I'll be who I will be
Though until then
You'll be secret to me.

Out of the snow
Comes a Dark, mishapen form
I fight, high and low
Until the breaking of the dawn.

Until the last, I remove his hoary head
And at last I know, and see
When I lay him to his final bed
The monster's face is me.

If you do see this poem, it's for you. It came to me, and I think in this sense it is appropriate. Gollum inspired me, and I hope he rests in peace.

The Feather Maiden

Beneath the leaves of the wood
Like snow from a highland dale
Shone its faint beauty
Ever white, ever pale.

The porcelain of the dark-lit enclosed lanes
Like the soft flight of flower-beams
The moon-petals glimmered ever the same
Like a maiden, lost in dreams.

The Feather, light and airy
Fluttered in the dead-night elder wind
Like a messenger from Faerie
And on them the stars above grinned.

The Chained god

In the dusty room The Watcher languished as he always did. His face was ashen as ever, and his beard was the colour of snow. He sat upon a great ebony throne, which was engraved with no characters, but was set with several pale gems all around its mighty head. His robes were of a light grey, the same colour as his face and in his eyes flickered a strange fear. He shook, for he always trembled, and did nothing to staunch the cold sweat that glistened on his skin. He sweated and shivered so because of the fears and troubles those were forever buffeting his mind. He himself could not even tell whether or not he had gone mad. Perhaps his mind was above insanity, but perhaps not.

His mind was now feeling the woman in Shaz Khurichan who wept under the whips of her oppressors. He felt her raw terror, the searing pain of the whip on her back, and the blinding sun that dazzled her pale eyes and dulled her senses. The heat of the midday smothered her like a furnace and the sting of the whip enflamed her back even more.

He wept. He could not help her. He knew what would happen to her, for he had experienced the pain of millions of women in such circumstances before. She would be ravaged first, how many times he could probably tell, then discarded, to die in the gutter, or some disused catacomb, or a derelict alleyway somewhere in the masses of people. She was naught but a piece of meat, a filthy rat. None cared, it seemed, but one chained figure, miles from anywhere, and he could do nothing. He wept again, for he could do nothing. He knew the woman’s life story; from the moment she was born by the River Eskulan, to the murder she was forced to commit in order to preserve her life and virtue, to the long enslavement to the cruel fashir. Now she had been sold to the man Thalus Nagu, the Farseer of the West, and she was dying, dying, dying. He knew every detail of her life, from the small round stones that she played with by the riverbank as a child, to the crush that she had on one of her captor princes, where she was thrown down past her own station as a slave as a consequence. He knew of the smooth curls of her hair, and the scar on the side of her hip from a whip three years ago. Soon her life would be extinguished under the whim of a fat, cruel man, with nothing more in his life than the ear of a fashir.

All of this flashed across his scorching mind in an instant of mortal thought, for crowded into his sorrow were the sorrows of countless millions. He saw the woodsman of Helsor as he fell beneath the treacherous rocks of a snowy ravine, and he was at least glad that his end had been swift. He felt the heartbreak of men and women rejected by their lovers, for such was a common hurt. He felt the silent broodings of troubled men, unsure, uncertain, and still grieving. He glimpsed the unfathomable depths of the wiles of women, and wept with their own pain, and understood them, as only he could. He raged at the unmeant sorrow caused by either sex on their counterparts, and moaned as he perceived the confusion wrought by both sides. He saw the man in Nimil as he rode away from the great city of Argondale, not knowing whether his woman would even remember him when he returned. He felt the uncertainty in the man’s woman as she tried to hide her fears, and the pressure of other men, and her fear of betraying him.

He felt the terror of the sailor that crouched upon the deck of the ship Alesandros, which was being buffeted by a cruel wind and cold waves. He knew that the sailor would be dead within a half-hour, swept overboard by a clutching wave, and dragged to the bottom of the dark ocean, that Nameless Sea which had been loathed, but a vital part of the ship’s trade route. The Watcher wept for the sailor, and for his young wife and small girl that had been left at Cyrandar. She would need to find other ways to feed herself and the child, and though the men of The Galgost were for the most part virtuous, he knew that if her plight was desperate enough, she would seek other, less desirable places to ply what would become her disgusting trade, and he feared for what would become of her if she sought to establish herself in the immoral and evil cities of Xotolnan, Ehng-Shabuk, or Daatangor.

He felt then the shipwright of Mothmond who had fallen to an evil wolf-spirit in the wooded slopes of that country. The wolf would tear at his body in grim and revolting ways, as was wont of his disgusting race, and the man would suffer before his final breath. The wolf would feed, but leave a trail as its fat and bloated body would stop it from fleeing swiftly from the scene of its kill. The woodmen-shipwrights would find the remains of their comrade, and there would be much weeping in the Hidden Villages, for much skill would be wasted for no good reason, and the woodsmen able and willing would depart on the trail to track and slay the murderous beast. They would track the wolf to its lair, where it would attack them, strong after its feast, though the men would cut its head off, though not before it would wound a great many of them and even kill one of them. Thus would two lives be wasted needlessly.

The Watcher then felt the brave soldiers on the borders of Lochslodan, who fought against the wild Kurzhim on the outposts of the north-forests. He saw and heard the shouts of sorties, battles, and ambushes. He felt the agony of the young archer as he fell beneath the blows of the savage lion-men of the North, and the cruel strokes of their clawed limbs that tore his skin. He gasped, hanging onto life grimly, and fell, his severed torso bleeding, the pulsing veins slowly ebbing out, and then failing. His life had ended, and there was nothing else. The lion-men began to set to work among the line of archers, though they fell inexorably, and as they panted for breath the archers took the both of them down with many feathered shafts impaled on them. After they cried out in agony of their deaths, three more archers were dead at their feet, and the rest were badly shaken. Many of them had not encountered death at such a raw level, not in such close quarters. The Watcher knew that before the sun set; twelve more of their number would be dead.

This is a work in progress. I don't know if I will be able to finish it; for I don't know where it is going, for now. Apologies for the formatting, I have no idea how the heck it happened!

The Wind is a Cruel Master

Today my imprisonment continues as it always has. The wind howls outside the castle even as I write this, and I lie awake at night listening to it, imagining what monsters might lie out there, waiting for one such as I to foolishly venture out into its wastes.
The trolls keep me entertained as ever. We play chess, checkers, draughts, and backgammon in our spare recreation times, and I read in the quiet of the libraries. Such activities calm me, and take my mind off the reality of my incarceration. I eat roasted flesh in the huge eating-halls of the King, while the trolls feast upon the raw flesh of gargantuan beasts. With all the luxuries that are lavished upon me, I feel like a visiting prince, though it is always present in my mind that I am merely an inmate here.
Today I climbed to the peak of the south-battlement. Were it not for the window-glass, the wind and the snow and the cold would make being up there unbearable. All the land surrounding the castle is a bleak wasteland, fit only for the most savage and tough of creatures. There are many jagged mountains all around, and the ruins of towers and entire cities dot the landscape. It is wonderful and horrible at the same time how it seems that towns, even metropolises rise and fall with the whims of the wind. I wonder what towns they once were. I must ask Kaldugor, my friend in the courts.
The snow drives so heavily against the castle walls. I cannot see the gates from the battlement, for they are buried in the white. And the wind, oh the wind! It was all I could do to keep myself together, for the noise was almost unbearable. It shrieked like a dying woman, yet for all its crying, it did not die, but kept hammering against the stone and glass like a relentless tide.
I marvel at the design of the windows; for all the onslaught of the wind and the snow the windows do not crack nor chip.

As per usual, this is a work in progress. There's more that I will add later.

Ode to Salvador De Forenze

The blue sun beat down upon the weary man. his beard, half-shaven, was grey, and his dusty, black hat was torn. His darkened eyes were strangely bright, and intelligent, and his neural implant showed that there would be water soon. he could see the heats and bones of the wild-threnk, their furtive, scuffling movements invisible to a naked eye. But nobody wore their eyes naked anymore, just as nobody wore their bodies naked in this day and age.
His jacket weighed down and made him sweat, but he could not cast it aside, for then the hunters would find it, and would know that he was a man.
All around him the creamy, golden expanse sprawled. He knew that he must not touch the poisonous Picazon Arbusto, otherwise his hand would swell up and he would have to prick it with the tip of his knife. In the sky, again the man looked to the blue sun, Archangel II, the centre of the solar system, and a cruel master. S.L.D. was a lonely moon, far from the populace of San Esperanzo, or indeed even the almost-civilised, grey-washed, bleak streets of New Berlin. He thought of his last visit to San Esperanzo, and of the colours, the smells, the sounds, and the women. He thought of their bronzed bodies, their bright-coloured tiaras, and the sweet perfumes. How he wished to be back there! How he wished that he had never visited that bar! Now he was hunted. He had not been himself when the Domingo Jugo had been inside him. No, he did not remember striking the soldier with his knife. But when he had looked at the knife again, when had woken up, the dark blood was still there, and he had been a wanted man. Now he was hunted.
He had never killed another man before, except in the Old Wars, but then he had been a part of a crew, so that had been different. Nobody in San Esperanzo, or New London cared anymore for the Old Soldiers anymore. They were forgotten, downtrodden, and unwanted.
Oh, how his vision fluttered! Were his hunters using depth-perception jammers to block his eyes? If they were, it was low, and cruel. How cruel were the worlds! He was not cared for; he was only a worthless murderer, as far as anyone else could tell; a threat to the greater public. Now he has hunted.
The scorpions of the desert lifted their tails in apprehension. The weary man did not heed them, but wearily strode onwards. Rocky crags and shaded caves yawned invitingly, and the man was sorely tempted to rest in their cool recesses.
Looking back, his eyes fluttered again. His peering gaze pierced the hot Nada Seguro, and seeing the hunters who tracked him, twenty-three miles before. The hot winds were naught in his sight, and the hunters were the same. Their blood aura shone like a beacon of light in the dead darkness of space.
The old man thought back to his earlier days, of his expeditions, and of the assignments that he had gone on in his war days. His ship had been named The Alabastar, and had been apart of his soul, as well as the soul of his crewmembers. The ship had been shot down in its eighteenth year, though, and then he was out of a job. Many of his buddies were dead now, either in the Wars, or dead face-down in a ditch. Now he would join them. Their ghostly visages passed over his fading vision slowly, and the man wondered whether he was going mad. But no, it was not his madness; his neural implants were faulty. But why should he have his neural implants any more? He would be dead soon.
He reached behind the top of his spinal column, and lightly touched the nerve ending. The plasma vial slowly ejected itself, and he took it out and held it in his palm. All his recorded memories were held in this tiny canister. He noticed the water for the first time. A small stream trickled from under a rock. In the distance he could see the beginnings of the great Samuel Mountains, and even now the great deserts were beginning to recede, and the foothills were already upon him. The rock was so inviting, and the man was tired. He was already dead. What good would walking do him? He was already dead. He would sit under the rock to await his ending. He was already dead

The old man sat beneath the rock. He wondered what things he might have done, and what things he might not have done. He held a fine golden chain in his fingers. There was a cross and a ring both on the same chain. He rubbed them both, for there was a fine layer of dust on both small amulets. Each had a story, but the old man did not cast his mind back to that. His life regrets meant nothing now.
In the distance the hunters began to appear. The first man, and the second man, and the third man all wore long Krashnek robes. Their headgear was of leather, and they wore strange goggles that filtered the desert sands, and could find the blood of the desert animals. The fourth man was seated upon a grey horse. He wore strange goggles as the third men, but his robes were swathed around his head, not just his body, and he carried a long-nosed rifle. The third man spotted the old man, and chattered excitedly to the mounted man. He lifted his head ever so slightly, and said something quietly. As they approached, the three men on foot circled around the old man. There was no escape for him. It did not matter. The mounted man took his rifle in his arms, and dismounted. he strode to the rock, and took out a small slip of paper. With an electronic voice, he began reading.
"You, Salvador De Forenze, are under arrest for the murder of seargent Gerald Van Althrust. You will accompany us to the aid station at Heilige, where you will be placed under custody."
The old man shifted, and reached underneath his shirt.
"No you will not." He pulled out his knife, and threw it at one of the men. It found its mark, and the man toppled over with a strangled scream. The mounted man pulled out his rifle, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

Two years later, a traveller passed the rock. Her dark locks fell over her neck, and her delicate porcelain skin was sorely scorched by the cruel sun. She stopped for a moment, then noticing the cross, still clutched in the cold bone hands of the man, took it. Then, she saw the small memories cannister in his hand, and took it also, triumphantly. Slowly, she then turned and walked away.

Cold

If it weren't so cold
I'd send a message to you
I'd tell you all the things
That we could do.

If it weren't so cold
I'd send this letter away
Oh, so far away
Just so that you could read it some other day

If it weren't so cold
I'd tell you how I feel
and if I did
I'd tell you while I kneel

When the wind howled
And the window-panes shook
I'd tell you all the things I've thought about you
You were here, on my mind
You were something I thought
I would never find

But it's cold tonight
So I'll tell you some other time
But if it weren't so cold
I'd say the things I've thought of all my life.