My heart aches and my pen bleeds

I stand precariously at the edge of reason hoping with every sip of my whiskey to be pushed beyond it. I stammer, I totter, I nearly almost fall but - I don’t.

Fuck.

This side of the divide I have discipline, responsibilities, sense, maturity and a million other traits that every gifted, intelligent human possesses.

The other side, the foggy, dark, tantalizing side I have – me. I have the nonchalant, devil may care genius. I have the poet, the writer, the dreamer, the arrogant proud warrior with a sword in one hand, pen in other, bleeding from a thousand cuts yet smirking at heavens refusing to genuflect let alone die. I have the lover dipping his quill in his blood and pouring his heart out on his parchment. I have the knight defying his Lord and I have  the monk defying his God.

This side I am sensible. I am a professional. I am mature. I know what to say and to whom and I know when to keep shut. I know how to play politics and I know when I am being played. I know when I am the pawn, when the king and when the king maker. I know what is expected of me and I know how to fulfil my responsibilities. I know when to pull which string and I know when to give in. I know my work, I know my business and I know which way the money will move. I am reasonable. I debate and I do not argue. I disagree yet commit. I observe the members sitting around the round table and I make a mental note of their names, their strengths and weaknesses. I devise a strategy to pit them against each other. I make a plan. I know who hates whom and I know who will be my common friend against a common enemy and who will be my enemy against a jittered friend. I wait for the right opening in the discussion and I interject with an argument laden such with platitude and empty verbiage yet with enough intelligentsia and business acronyms so as to confuse everyone else and prevent a decision that isn’t to my liking.

The other side of the fog I stand with my sword dripping crimson droplets on a crimson ground held oblique in my hand. My hair bellows in the wind while perspiration and blood bring a sweet irritation to my eyes. Where my hair bellows in the raging wind and my tongue tastes the familiar metallic acrid stench in the air. Where I slowly raise my head to the heavens, smile and blink once to clear my vision. Where I extend one foot gracefully in front while I bend the other knee slightly to shift my center of gravity and with my taut sinews I bring my sword parallel to the blood soaked mud keeping the hilt perpendicular to my arched body. Where I ululate the ultimate cry of war while I enjoy the violent headwinds whipped by the charging hordes of enemy beasts. Where I enjoy the anticipation of inevitable bloodbath. And when it arrives then with every formidable step of mine the earth reverberates and with every arching slice of my greatsword I cut open hoards of charging infantry of humans and beast alike and smear myself with blood, guts and intestines. Where I swing and buckle and parry and thrust again and again as I laugh the hysterical, maniacal laughter of a man possessed of heartache of love of hate of indifference of saint and devil alike and of a million different emotions that consumes him burns him and turns his raging blood to a mountain of lava desperate to explode from the infinite pours on his body. Where once I win let both my knees touch the ground as I arch my back and raise my chest upwards while I raise my head to heavens and let my victory cry reverberate across the heavens. Where I finally raise my blood stained sword and utter my war cry one more time challenging the Gods to come and face me if they so dare.

One more sip, one more swig. I totter more. I nearly loose my balance. My head accidentally dips across the fog and my nostrils pick up the stench. My heart beat flutters and my muscles tighten.

I shake my head, I bend my knees and regain my balance. I pull my face back. I shake my head and look at my feet.

I take another swig of my whiskey. I close my eyes. I sip more. My knees falter. A tempting tantalizing whiff crosses the veil and reaches my olfactory senses. With a half drunk mind I see her angelic smile, I see her hand materializing out of thin air across the veil. I see her exquisitely manicured finger tempting me, suggestively prompting me to take a step, oh just one step forward. I hear her voice echoing in my conscience, reverberating across my skin and echoing in my head, pleading me to cross over.

I swig more.

My head hurts. My corporeal essence is tearing. I am transcending beyond my 

metaphysical existence. I am going to do it. I am going to take a step forward and like a phoenix rising from his ashes I will once again be me. My knees bend. I look at heavens. There is no bellowing wind, my hair isn’t whipping, there is no acrid, metallic stench in the air. I fumble. I fall.

I close my eyes. The glass shatters. The whiskey spills.

A familiar, fleeting voice whispers in the recesses of my fading being – It isn’t over. I am not leaving you yet. You will rise again. You will cross that veil again. And when you do you shall transcend through this fake realist and then in the truest dimension you will once again know the strength of your fingers and when you do the Gods will fear you. Come the day of judgement you will not be judged. You will be avenged. When the eternity arrives, you will make the Creator bleed.

And the fair maiden screamed “Who cares!” and slammed the door right in his face. For a moment he stood there, whiplashed from the sheer force of slammed door, bunch of Marigold tied neatly with a ribbon in his hand, bottle of wine in the other a perplexed look in his eyes and feeling like a right idiot for not having a hand free to be able to stop the slamming door.

Not someone to give up he gulped hard put the bottle down, ran a nervous hand through his nervous hair and raised his fingers towards the door-bell. Again. What a daredevil. Fool but what a daredevil.

Chimes! The mellifluous chimes. Oh how that mellow door-bell chime wrenched his insides with trepidation. Will she open? Will she scream again? Will she throw a glass of water in his face? Will she tell him he is biggest idiot she has ever come across in her whole life or will she finally let him say his side of the story for once? Ah the agony of this terribly wait gutted him. Nervously he fidgeted shifting his weight from one foot to the other cursing himself again for bringing two things which tied both his hands and for million other things that went wrong in the past.

Hours seem to have passed since he heard the chimes. He was just about beginning to give up and ring the bell again even though he knew it would be throwing fuel to the fire. But then what other option did he have? This had gone on long enough. He knew she had a reason to be mad, hell he knew he had a reason to be mad but someone had to “care” enough to at least try once. Giving up is always an easy option but if the whole world simply just gave up in face of difficult times, what kind of a place we would be in?

Alas! Finally. He heard the echoing of the footsteps again behind the closed door. He straightened up, twisted his neck a bit, positioned the flowers slightly in front of his face (well what better shield to a projectile of flying water eh?) and waited. The echo came closer and closer. He heard the latch unlatch, the door know twist and instinctively he took a step back. She was on the move and coming for him. Careful now he reminded himself. Very careful. She could be as tempestuous as a storm in a tea pot when she gets going. Keep breathing, make eye contact and don’t rock the boat too much he reminded himself. You are not going to get a third chance. This is it. Sink or swim, make it or break it, you know her, you know how terribly this can go but then you also know she is worth it so buckle up and say honestly what you came to say and then so be it.

Lo and behold she opened! She stood there, arms crossed, feet crossed, one eye brow raised and…..and nothing. She just stood there looking at him. This was definitely not how he saw it going. But then this is the mystery of her. Always unpredictable, always mesmerizing, always a hundred steps ahead of him. He realized he is doing a Ross. He is standing there, not speaking. He is not speaking. Time is ticking and he is not saying anything. Nothing. Say something you idiot, anything. She is here, she is listening, she isn’t yelling (at least not yet). Say something!

Crawl my dear friend. Crawl. Let those chaffed, broken, bruised, torn fingers dig in the soul of this scorched dilapidated earth and pull you closer iota by iota. Crawl my dear friend, crawl. Let the eyes shed the tears of sweat and blood, let the teeth grit and let the soul loosen a war cry of ……? But crawl my dear friend, crawl.

For there, beyond the edge of purgatory there lies you nirvana. Your moksha. You crawl to live a life beyond this realm beyond the manifested dimensions of metaphysical and karmic definitions. You crawl to leave yourself behind and be with yourself in a whole new entity unforeseen by all yet elucidated by the few who transcended that barrier. The being exalted in salvation in paeans in prayers and holy scriptures. You crawl to Him.

So crawl my dear friend, crawl.

Let the limp limbs hang lose behind you. Let the gnawing beasts dip in from the hell above and rip again and again into this mottled mass of blood and flesh that surround you. Don’t give up, not just yet. Fear not the raging fires of hell that erupt underneath you charring your flesh more. Fear not the cruel winds that pushes you further away from that illusive edge of the cliff. Fear not the elements, fear not the demons, fear not the hallucinations of life, sorrow, pain and death conjured by this myth of the universe. Fear nothing, ignore all.

Crawl my dear friend, crawl.

What is left of me now that I have bled my essence? My coherence trickles out of my astral conscious while the crimson droplets trickles out of my physical self.

I can see it happen, I feel it happen. My each sense screams its own end as it comes but I am unable to articulate it.

I am done?

He was burnt. His ashes scattered across the multitude of this time space continuum, across the infinity of this multiverse. His essence sliced and diced and shredded and finally spread ever so thin ever so precisely that he lost his sense of being.

Aloof he spun. Across countless ages, across countless eons. He floated with the cosmic dust, got burnt by shooting comets, was consumed by gaping black holes, vaporized by exploding supernovas until finally he was lost somewhere within the fading memories of time.

He entered his purgatory.

Then he heard it. Something somewhere deep within what was once him. A call. A faint yet distinguished cry. His name. Something somewhere in one of his countless distributed ephemeral specks of dust stirred. It called out to him.

And the multiverse laughed. A deep guttural throaty laugh. A laugh laced with pity and drunk with its own supremacy. It echoed from the gaping, yawning icy depths of the the Malebolge where the dark forces stirred too. Ever so keen to indulge in the carnal pleasures of feasting on a soul lest that soul should find its path again - they laughed, they danced, they sharpened their hooves and their claws and their fangs. They lit their fires, the waiting pyres yet again. Overjoyed. Waiting.

The speck spoke again. It said one word – No.

No.

Not again. Not this time. No.

The narrative was faint, weak. Merely beyond a whisper, barely an audible. Yet that No reverberated. It resonated. It permeated the ether of this cosmic energy and it entered the hum of creation. It disturbed the patterns of destruction. It found matter and anti-matter and dark energy and forced them all together within the confines of a singularity. It was merciless, unstoppable and like a star collapsing under its own weight it tugged at every bit of me all across the infinity.

Carnal. Visceral. Nigh feral. Of the tug at the strings.

Slowly but firmly his ashes came together. Bound together and drawn mercilessly by the resounding echo of this one oh so negative a word they flew as one towards the speck which spoke. The worshippers of Lucifer oh how they shied away. They cowered, they hushed. They sliced themselves open and drenched the lit pyres with their satanic, demonic blood lest they draw the wrath of this one speck, this ever growing entity that is now submitting everything in its path to resonate with its own rhythm.

He was forming again. Bound in part by his name and in part by the single No he was coming together again. Slowly, gradually the ashes took his shape. Still fragile, still ephemeral, still bleeding yet somehow they stuck together.

And then it peaked. The disturbance, the resonance, the hum of this energy. It reached its crescendo.

With the force of countless stars it exploded annihilating the entirety that it touched. It fused matter and energy into one amorphous creation which it pushed into his faltering silhouette.

He drank. He soaked. He gaped and gulped and consumed this combined medley that was pushed into him. 

He let it flow through him. The pain was searing; burning. Rivers of red hot scorching lava flew through him fusing his name together into a concrete shape.

He was reborn. The last remnants of the molten red pools glowing softly in his eyes He stood in the deafening silence of destruction.

He was complete. Fists clenched, head bowed, eyes shedding blood and taught sinews and rippling muscles glistening with sweat - He was ready.

Phoenix.