We ride to our death, we ride to our demise,

We ride forth, forth, forth;

We ride to our life, we ride to our glory,
We ride forth, forth, forth.
Ever and ever to the greatest heights
Ever and ever to the darkest depths
Therein all our souls,
Therein all our hides,
May we never cease,
May we never halt,
May we always continue,
May we always chase,
May we always forth,
May we always ride,
To the glory of our King Murenit!

They rose like the thousandfold ants from the small, loamy patch of dirt, erupting
as lava, streaming from the unlatched bolts of the Kingdom in splotches of gleaming
red so fierce that, as they watched, those on the battlefield saw tongues of fire
shimmering here and there. The first line of swords shrieked, struck those who were
awed by those mails, those silvery glitters that cut through heads cleanly. Then,
the orcs and the goblins awoke and they knew to scramble forward, forward, forward
for the Dark Lord bid them. But their knees shivered and their limbs were screwed
loosely that they convulsed in fear, for those men of the Kingdom of Roen were
well-armed though they were built like thatches and twigs---the monsters thought
they were the dead, those people, for their faces sunk into their cheeks, hollow
and pale, and their eyes were dark and gray and fierce.

When things taste so very

foreign to us, when, before,
they were the only thing we
ever looked forward to,

there is a sense of longing,

a sense of yearning to return
to what---was. Before the fall.
Before the everlasting distance

was varnished onto the canvas

of human experience, we used
to be like those angels: we moved
without noticing anything change.

We try to understand everything,

tying experiences and feelings
down with words and expressions---
we never wish to feel only.

There always must be a removal,

an externality to our being:
we abstract ourselves from the
world and wonder why it is

that grief haunts us frequently.

And yet few of us would believe
that the world---brims---with
meaning: we could never bear that.
If, for a time, everything
was to us what everything
is to animals: joy would over-
take us. We would cease interpreting.

The divine spark is the greatest

gift and curse of mankind---
it categorizes everything and fits
them into neat boxes, obvious,

striking, mental. And yet---

that which makes us most
like God's image is that which
separates us from him.---Our vanity.

Man, the rebel, who, faced

with the chains and limits of
his being, gazed at Lucifer's
thunderous fall from the Heavens

and---admired the false light.

It was brilliant---more dazzling
than the Divine Principle
Himself. And our hearts went

out to that prideful one. So

the story ends with the same
denoument: God is God, we
are men---so we boil with hate.

Its features, mixed, masked, multiple---

frenetic. It gazed with serpent-emerald eyes,
skin bulging like a geriatric's belly diffusing
from his belt, a knoll erupting from his
stomach. And hair like the hair of
Aphrodite herself: ever-changing. Pink
streaks, golden streaks, azure streaks.
Eagle-talons, hooks for claws---would a
pirate have treasured it? Did it, parrotlike,
repeat everything that we intended upon it,
shifting, a glorious shifting, into everything
beautiful, ugly, godlike, demonic---into
everything we saw ourselves as not?

A tongue lolled out, pink, effervescently glowing,

licking the gray jowls of his dog-head that
looked like limericks personified: his existence
was God's joke, a glimpse into His jocund nature,
He created this beastly saint. Robes fell from him,
the same robes that monks wore when they
fasted and prayed, walked, contemplated, ascended.
On his shoulders was the whole world itself: Heaven
and Earth melded, contained by a womb, then:
let out! Below them, a river, grimacing, roars.
And the dog-headed saint's knees now linger
farther into the depths. They reached shore.
His lips utter surprise: the child was---difficult---
to bear. The child, graceful, smiles; that smile
is worth countless crosses. Now, he says, you
are redeemed, for, as I tricked you into carrying
me across, the whole world has been: set.

Countless bow to her feet: she is that which

bore everything and---struggled with it! Her
face, divine as the skinny dove's flight through
the invisible sections of the air: perhaps she is
like that as well: imperceptible, a vessel, a frame,
something that is overshadowed yet is as
significant as anything that can be seen. Femininity.
The whole world knelt at her feet, requested, asked:
she accepted with candor, her face a smoothened
sculpture of gold itself, a fire brilliant and pure:
purifying, destroying, reviving. She is the: change
that we can never see but always feel with us.

Heaven and Earth themselves made us.

The clay fashioned from the graveyard
of life: the ground; the breath from
the life-giver Himself. Why then
are we so afraid of death? Is it
not the thing that allows us to live?

A touch reminds us how faraway we are from each

other. Hands lock: seas erupt in between those two
complete beings, worlds in themselves, and a whole ocean
of impossible depth comes between them. Yet only that
union is true: incomplete beings can never understand
love---at best they imitate it badly, at worst they ruin it. An
impossibility arises when the youth, making everything
easy, rush in blindly to lose themselves in another.
In disgust, we crinkle our noses: bad air. The solitary
individuals reach what ordinary men must wait for:
the immense burden of our lonely existence---then
they'll fully know to love with one's whole being. Ecstasy.

There is nothing to do but...wait. To be alone.

Nothing has existed within men who have forgotten
to be solitary: frivolous relationships rot our being.
To cease convenience: to cease holding out hands
to those who do not deserve it. To begin being "I".
Sit in solitude and sing out with the pain it causes you.
There is no other way---there never shall be another.

"There were a lot of women then." He crushed the smoke; it skittered into cold
sparks. "But Nala---Nala was different. She was a girl you lost when you were
young, so you would know loss for the rest of your life."