Shylmagoghnar Transience 1. Transience Visions envelop us warm and dear Afflictions nurtured, unfathomable depths Its art form leaves us sullied, smitten Born from our mortality Brushes stroke sanity never so gentle Lost; deranged in a crippled mind Scratching the surface – nuance denied Devoid of spectrum – here we are blind Worlds bare and stricken (beckon me) Fears beyond counting (lost within) Trapped in the core of our sanctum Tell me, where is the purpose? Lost in the half-lives once spent On fading memories and times that never were By nature this hellhole will persist Fed far too long – now festers within This part of me that is not me Yet without which I’d cease to be Nightmares consume, futures unfold How could we rest with such stories untold? We may be mere human; from what we have seen Beyond this vessel there are worlds between Behold, as I watch from the shadows A stranger looks back from far away realms An altogether different hue Surrounded by maelstroms of wistful tunes I am locked in an aura of dissonant chords Hear them die on the searing winds Caressing hands they sculpt a resonating void Familiar whispers and mocking throats Mimicking the unsung vowels flowing from the heart A counterweight here made flesh Where time fleets and seeps in a purgatory of meaning and structure Forever lost within and without, through the nothing and nowhere Harnessing the madness I swore would be the end of me Turned ashes into glory to last beyond my time Striving for perfection I turned the very stars Still it’s not enough – forever unfulfilled Trudging through the path, step by torturous step Insight waits for me; emptiness made real No sight, no senses, no feelings, no more Climax closes in Buried underneath – all that should have been The guilt of non-creation Grueling is the search for the master’s piece Ever so slightly out of reach Mournful statues wail; empty sockets judge “Father, why have you denied us eyes?” The past is but a fading shroud Now let go and stride with sure step through these halls Visions struck me blind - I have no need for eyes Here I am the one who dreams the way Enigma at the end of all A sapphire cruel, so radiant and vast As I reach out to touch it crumbles, as do I I am reborn and closer to my transience 2. The Dawn of Motion 3. As All Must Come to Pass Time is a beast, inadherent to rein Trapped in its hounding, unbreakable frame Few, few are we - impossible the odds To witness as mortals the fabric of the gods I never saw what came for me And yet it lives within my dreams It whispers from a restless void Sleeps with eyes wide open The deep and slumbering question rears its head once more Is it reality that dwarfs the dream? Or a realm of illusions that rules supreme? I’ve seen too far beyond the veil and peered into its soul And once it answered once I was complete Witness the birth of legacy, of sacrifice In pursuit of paths still veiled In the shadows of a great unknown Our desperate covenant was made All must come to pass Time is my foe and I wonder: Was it worth to be bound in this ravel of dreams? The vast Stygian labyrinth lives on Traversed only once we are gone From the lowliest worm to the cosmic scale Sum principium fines omnes Shrouded in luster from trivial to grand In the hollow we are made whole Woven through birth and demise Struggling to grasp the patterns of An essence leaks from every source Transcending human concepts Lost within the awe and splendour of all That slipped between our fingers As a bastion of wings appeared to our needs Mold ourselves to be Threads of future, yarn spun between Ever elusive – never in sight Fools presume to see the knots in the ever twisting chaos Lost in a maelstrom of folly and unwritten paths Multiple strains move beyond comprehension In a strange familiar place In a murder of wings I beheld the fate of all Of all that is as it becomes And our cruel lineage From the birth of time we have wandered Primordial depths we have dwelled From an abyss of worlds we venture Through the shades of a great unknown Long as time was abstract we have wandered And sought solace in turning of tides Mere threads in the grand tapestry Cursed envoys of a lost legacy 4. This Shadow of the Heart Life is a canvas laid bare for all to see Man is a mirror imprinted with lock and key Dichotomous gates lead to dormant ways Where every path was split in half We wander 'til we fade Time confounds and mystifies Awareness cuts like a blade The duplicitous curse of the gifts we share Soon lost on wasted days Let senses draw blood - drown in their flood A maelstrom of sweat and cold regret Life’s paint seeps from our veins Through the portals that we left Our shades will follow through Embrace the struggle Learn to grow with your pain Hope lies in the solace of a dying dream Beasts trapped in a corner fight fiercest of all Does the light not shine the brightest in the depth of night? Once our souls moved softly And tiptoed through the world The Atlas weight a gentle ache But this could not be us A slave to wretch nature A rag doll to our hearts To relish burden like a fool while shadows tear at our mind We have shaped our sorrow and became the forge Infernos that consumed us once have wrought a tempered flame But bitterness does suffocate and stone breaks all the same Our sculptor’s soul, though marble-made Eclipsed by the shadow of the heart Beasts trapped in a corner fight the fiercest of all Does the light not shine the brightest in the depth of night? 5. The Chosen Path 6. No Child of Man Could Follow Wanderlust in my heart Restless blood- fiery veins As grim ghosts of my past came haunting Seething with doubt I could sparse hold my ground Searching for signs when a raven struck down Judging my soul with an ice cold stare Ages of wisdom Ageless black eyes A soul laid bare before those pits Bereft of want and fancy Of aspirations made by man Fool's gold- false glory Relish in the dream untold Within it grander paths unfold What once was dear proved meaningless Our need is far beyond So meet me on the winding road where only the desperate dwell Behold in me a vision three They shape the flow of all In days of yore I craved release Now must decline death's invite sweet It was far too soon our paths would meet Yet part of me is still there For I was damned with clarity A path of thorns and agony Transfixed in eerie silence and overwhelming woe Existing out of space and time it spoke with not a word: "I'm here to give thee counsel... But never consolation..." And worlds I knew came tumbling down in crumbling ruins and ashes Dead planets and extinguished stars as far as the eye could see Did fill my soul with ecstasy and nigh inhuman glee Did shatter all that had been thus far, for the first time I could see Then in the cry it uttered That shattering banshee's wail A universe within enclosed did lay, proclaimed in unknown tongues Yet my heart, it understood each poison word Did strike the anvil of my soul Of my soul And every road entwined did graze Adrift where lost souls wallow On pathways where my answers lie No child of man could follow Cosmic storms swept all I was The end of my existence Within I braved a horror though never did I flinch For in these dreadful eons my essence was reforged An influx of wisdom blinding the virgin retina Witness to damnation Shepherd of the end My despair is hollow It heralds of rebirth "Rebuild then in the places Where only thought exists As the others taste but ashes In the furnace of your will" A mighty fall, now forced to be A vessel for purposeless misery In remembrance dear I once lived more Mere shadow of what was before Such rigid sight, a puzzled past Of what should be yet could not last Not here nor there yet lost between I am trapped in the eye of the Raven It was the sound of rustling wings Tore me from my vision grand Defeaning silence pierced my being Like a storm of nails Lifeless, torn and broken The beauty of my own demise I collapsed unto myself And plunged the heart of the abyss Drifting Lost in a timeless void Cursed to eternally behold The mirrored path unfold How I howled and wept Laughed and cried Lived and died I was empty- whole and perfect A creature most fulfilled 7. Journey Through the Fog Gone is the flame Smoldering the ashes A flickering fades into my eyes Pursued by the howling of life The shadows cast by fading pyre At the hour of twilight stand guard For creatures lurk in deepest dark Waiting for the light to grow sparse Their hopelessness, the endless mist As long as I breathe they are mine So I beg of the wind for a whisper to my fallen kin But their shadows on the trees are nothing but a fantasy So distant the calling of forgotten dreams, How they yearn and beg for release I stand idle as they all are crushed by the turning of destiny's wheel A nomad of the wasteland journeys through the fog Where my feet have trodden, deepest are the bogs Where the wind is howling its song I wade through the snow A journey of the heart, no path can take me where I go I am a withered wanderer, wayward are my goals Lost in ancient forests, crystallised by souls Was my burden once an honour, it's reduced to plight In this fortress of the mind I have been haunting all my life Beyond the great golden divide A cadence frail so warmly strikes For whom it fades the soul divides Forever gone to where the daylight died Fixed on the horizon ever is my gaze Bitterly I stride on, blinded by the haze Is it dawn or will the dusk fall, I'll never know For the darkness that surrounds me is reminiscent of my own The mist envelops ruins, (their) purpose lost in time Statues in seclusion, empty are their eyes How I long to find a reason this world to endure But all I see are corpses of those who were lost - Before... The cadence frail now slowly fades A formless pale steps from the shade And whispers to my mind: "The time has come to leave your shape behind" Oh flame of life, mother regret Have mercy on this fallen wretch Grant me the strength to travel on And reach the hall to where the raven guides My body's too cold to move on, in one final act of defiance My feet stand steadfast in the snow but the frostbite takes its final toll I heave my hands towards the sky and sound my final forlorn cry I plead and beg the sky for mercy As my heart is freezing slowly, I embrace the storm And as I die I see the veil lifted by the sun 8. Life