Digital Alterity

“Don’t you fucking understand, Fordring?! We’ve failed!”

Hemlock felt the rage, the bestial wrath, welling up inside him, and he felt no urge to stop it. His heart began beating faster, a tribal drum summoning the darkest violence in his heart. He took the tiny ring the dying crusader had given him and threw it directly at the paladin with enough force to make Tirion Fordring wince as it hit him in the face.

“Bridenbrad is dead, paladin. All your precious Light could do was offer was a light show. He died all the same.”

The rage was no comfort. Nothing could shake the paladin in front of him. Those damned calm and accepting eyes…That look of understanding concern on his pale human face…Hemlock wanted to punch him squarely in the face if that’s what it took to get a reaction from the aging paladin. Did he care so little for his comrade that he could face his death with such a lack of passion?

Hemlock fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Crusader Bridenbrad in the fight at Crusaders’ Pinnacle as the Scourge attacked in countless waves. The still forms of the beaten undead fell at their feet in numbers sufficient for Hemlock use them as cover as he burned down the ghouls with a frenzy of rifle shots. When the vyrkul came, Bridenbrad didn’t even hesitate. He leapt after them with his giant warhammer held high, drawing the beasts’ attention and shielding the other defenders with his very body.

Was that when disease first took hold? Did some ghoul bite him in that struggle, infecting his blood with the ichor of undeath? Or did the infection take place later during his honorable actions during the siege at the Broken Front, when Bridenbrad singlehandedly drug a dozen of his unconscious fellows back into territory held by the Crusade? If he had fallen in either of those battles, it would have been an honorable death – a warrior’s death! Warriors didn’t have to turn frail. Warriors didn’t have to cough their very life fluids out onto the frozen snow. Warriors didn’t have to have their very strength eaten from the inside.

Damn Arthas! And damn the humans that spawned him!

Hemlock sank into a crouch in the cold snow, and his wolf Fenrir licked at his green fingers sympathetically.
When Fordring calmly picked up the fallen signet ring, Hemlock wanted to strangle him. When the aging paladin calmly walked over to him, he could feel himself quivering with a mixture of rage and grief. When he felt the human’s hand come to rest on his broad shoulders, he wanted nothing more than to pull away from the touch, but something kept him quietly there, feeling the heat build in his face and seeing the blurriness of his own eyes as he gazed intently at absolutely nothing.

“He should have died a warrior’s death, Fordring. He should have died on his feet, dragging his foes with him to the afterlife.”

Fordring said absolutely nothing, and he made no motion to take his mailed hand off of the orc’s shoulder. The hustle and bustle of the camp seemed miles away. For one endless moment, there was only the orc, the paladin, and memory of a soldier who they had both fought so hard to save.

“You will take this ring, Hemlock. You’ll take it, and you’ll honor Crusdader Bridenbrad’s memory. You will strike down the unliving things precisely because he can’t anymore.”

Hemlock felt his fingers reach up and grab the ring. He felt the cold metal of the ring slide down over his finger, but none of those actions felt like things he actually did. Everything felt dead and cold and pointless.
“If you stick with me, I swear to the Light – I swear on the graves of the fallen – I will point you in the direction of every cult enclave, every servant of Arthas wearing the bodies of our dead.”

Hemlock wrapped his hands around the cold steel barrel of his hunting rifle, felt the cold trigger under his index finger, and blinked away the blurry moisture in his eyes.

“And then, my orcish friend, I will stand with you as we cut down each and every one of them, so that brave men can stop fighting and dying out here in the cold. And maybe one day, soldiers like you and me will be merely the legacy of a hell that our children will never have to live through.”

They stared out over the frozen wastes, two soldiers in a war that seemed like it went on forever. The biting cold felt good. It felt numb.

The storm came on suddenly and violently over Feralas. The lush vegetation on the jungle floor seemed to shrink from the rain’s heavy assault, and the tree canopy threatened to be torn asunder by the gale force of the wind. All the wild creatures of the earth had found whatever shelter they could manage and hoped that the storm’s fury would be as brief as it was violent.

Rokhar Soulflayer wished nothing of the sort. The white-haired orc scrunched up his wrinkled face and concentrated on the sheets of rain. Good sleeping weather, he mused, A good night’s rest will mean an early and effective start to the morning. Silithus was still many days’ journey from this little outpost at the Southern end of the jungle, and from what the initiates of the Earthen Ring had told him, the Silithid population was increasing with each passing month.

Something, however, simply didn’t feel right. About the silithids. About the undead plague that ravaged the land five years ago. About the blood elven king heading into Outland. The world had gone mad, but the madness was bitterly familiar in some unfortunate way. The madness felt distastefully comfortable, and for the tenth time this week, Rokhar remembered with shameful longing how simple the world seemed when in the throes of the blood fury.

The old shaman sighed and looked down as his wrinkled green hands. How much blood belonged on those hands? How many souls had come to rest in those palms? How many draenei would never laugh, cry, mate, or dance again because of the terrible energy those hands called forth from devils all too eager to supply power, hate, and rage?

Shaking his head with some force, Rokhar crossed the small room in two quick strides. There was no point in dwelling on the past. The spirits of water had been very clear from the outset that nearly all taint could be cleansed with time and effort. Giving power to the past was taking power from the present moment and ignoring opportunities for positive action. The ancestors could no longer speak to those still walking the earth, but he felt certain that his honored forbearers wouldn’t approve of such maudlin weakness. Picking up the chipped and faded stone mug from the table by the hammock, the old orc whispered the briefest of chants to the fire spirits and began heating the water within. Taking a leather pouch loose from his beaded necklace, the orc sprinkled sacred herbs into the now boiling water. This would be a night for sleep and hopefully, if the spirits allowed, for a vision journey as well.

***

The winds blew crisp and fresh over Nagrand as Rokhar look out over the land from atop the sacred mountain Oshu’gun. Far below, he could see the clans setting up for the Kosh’harg celebration. He saw the banners of the Frostwolf and Warsong clans and strained to spot his own Dragonmaw clan amongst the throng. The gentle touch of a mockingbird landing on his shoulder focused his attention immediately back.

“Why do you hold our gifts away from yourself, Rokhar?”

The mockingbird spoke with an echoing, forceful voice and fixed Rokhar’s glowing red eyes with an insistent but not altogether threatening stare.

“Brother bird, I must be careful not to grasp the power you offer. The elements are not a power to be controlled and bent to my own will as I once commanded the fel magics. If I grab at my desires like a mewling infant, then I am not worthy to wield any form of power.”
“You are afraid.”
“Am I not right to be afraid? I proved my own weakness years ago. I turned my back on the spirits and gave in to…twisted and horrible things. I must take care not to lose myself in the hatred again. Every battle is another opportunity for the madness to take hold again.”
“This is not what you are afraid of, shaman. You are afraid of losing yourself.”

Rokhar felt a white hot fury build up at the mockingbird’s words but tried to soothe the rising heat gushing into his limbs from his racing heart. A few moments of quiet meditation looking out over the beautiful green hills of Draenor calmed his heart and left his mind distanced from the furious beast he threatened to become.

“See, Rokhar? You distance yourself from our gifts.”
“You did not gift me with with the blood fury!” the elderly shaman spat out in a trembling rage, “That is my curse. I drank from the chalice. I gave into the mindless wrath. I wielded the green fires of the Burning Legion. I tortured good and brave men to death and painted my face with their very blood.”
“Do you know nothing of the spirit of fire, little orc? Water is a blessing, a necessity for life. It washes away filth and gently soothes, but too much water will merely wash life out to sea. You have forsaken balance, Rokhar.”

For the briefest of moments, Rokhar saw Nagrand not as it was then but as it was now, littered with fragments of the land that had been quite literally torn asunder.

“We chose you to be a healer and a wise man, yes, but we also chose you to be a warrior. We chose you to be a white hot flame, lighting the way and cleansing away the disease that has taken hold of our land. The shadow is coming, shaman. Fight it with all the fury you can summon or all living things will fall never be reborn.”
“This madness…It’s all connected, isn’t it, Great Spirit?”
“Sometimes, Rokhar, all it takes to start a terrible avalanche is a whisper.”

***

The morning sun filtered through the canopy, evaporating the rainwater and making the day even more humid than normal. Rokhar looked at the image of the old man staring out from his mirror with a mixture of pity and disgust. The white locks of unkempt hair fell over a withered face of an old one simply waiting to die. With determination, Rokhar grabbed a dagger from his belongings and began fiercely cutting at the locks of hair, and he didn’t stop until he once again looked like a proper orc warrior. Damn the silithids. And damn the Lich King as well. There was a madness behind all of this, and Rokhar was going to find it and then end it with his warhammers.

I found God last Tuesday at 6:38 PM. Actually that’s a bit of a dramatic statement. Depending on your viewpoint, God either found me or we just sort of found each other through a quirk of fate at the pub just down from my office. I didn’t know of course that I had found God. He was looking to break up a ten-pound note, and I happened to have a pocketful of change from the bar. We got to talking about one thing or another. He asked me what I did, and I said that I was a business analyst in the city. I asked him what he did, and he explained that he was God.

Curiousity piqued, I couldn’t help but ask, “So what are your job responsibilities like…errr…”
“You can certainly call me God if you like. Of course, I’ve been called all sorts of names in my time, but you know. Feel free to call me something comfortable for you,” he said with a comforting and easy smile.

Impressed for a minute by the absurdity of the spectacle when I looked from outside my own perspective (which of course I quite simply can’t do), I paused for a moment before adding, “Well, to be honest, calling you God feels a little strange.”

With just the slightest of quizzical looks, he said, “Well, then. Call me Nigel then.”
“Nigel?”
“I’ve always rather liked the name.”
“So then, Nigel, what’s work like?” I said slipping casually back into our conversational pub banter.

With a motion to unbutton his top collar button, he said, “Oh, I do practically everything. Practically everything. Which is really nothing at all. Nothing at all.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Well, it’s sort of front-loaded work, you know. You sort of set up the environment with all the right variables and then let the thing run. Not really that many corrections to the whole thing, so it gets much easier with time. From a linear perspective naturally.”

I nodded my head knowingly. “Don’t I know how that works. Same thing with business analysis really. A lot more iteration though. Gotta correct the problems with workflow and such,” I said just as it hit me that of course Nigel knew because he would presumably know everything there is to know.

“Well, yes, I do of course, but it feels rather boorish to constantly know it all. So I forget things all the time. Mainly for politeness, you understand.” He punctuated his statement with a generous gulp of his pint. “You’ll have to excuse me for reading your mind a bit there. I forgot that I was trying to forget to do that. Meta-forgetfulness really.”

Nigel of course reminded me of someone I had seen before, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. He had a rather nondescript face, was roughly middle-aged, and wore a rather comfortable looking grey blue cardigan over the top of his now loosened tie and white collar shirt. His pants were a rather standard-looking business casual affair with a pair of nicely worn creamy blue canvas sneakers.

He apparently noticed my cursory examination of his attire because a spark of recognition crossed his face, and he said, “Oh, I only wear this when I’m off from work.
“But you’re God! You have to be working all the time, right?”
“Well, to a degree, yes. When you’re omnipresent in spacetime, both space and time tend to mean very little. I’m simultaneously infinitely working and infinitely resting. Except for Saturday. On Saturday, I watch football.”
Sensing an opportunity to learn more about the universe, I asked, “Well, who do you support?”
Without hesistation, he said, “Beitar Jerusalem. They really are my chosen people.”

I felt betrayed by the fact that God wasn’t, in fact, a Gunner, but had scarcely a moment to wallow in this before he added, “But I support Barcelona in the Champions League. I was pretty thrilled with the final this year of course.”

“You! That offside first Barca goal was your doing, wasn’t it?”
“Hardly. That was a referee not seeing the situation. But honestly now, you didn’t have to be omnipotent to see that the free kick that gave you that first Sol Campbell goal was down to pure diving. In any event, I never get involved in football matches. They’re too important for divine intervention to foul up.”

The conversation sort of faded after that as such conversations are often wont to do. Nigel headed to the bar for another pint, and I headed off toward home for no reason in particular. Pulling my to-do list out of my weekly planner, I deliberately put a check mark out beside, “Find God.” If only all the items on my list were so easy.

One of the most frustrating challenges for me as a writer comes when I start writing a creative work with an idea or theme in mind and then find about halfway through that my original idea is no longer at all where the work is headed. I started writing a story about EVP a while back and honestly my original idea was to delve into the realm of horror a bit. Wouldn’t it be interesting, I thought, if EVP were actually caused not by dead relatives but rather by evil forces seeking to deceive the living into giving them awareness and power? In a matter of minutes, I had worked up a rough idea for a tale in which a young scientifically minded woman suffers through the death of her husband and ends up trying to record communication with him using a tape recorder. She ends up finding words on that tape, believes it to be her husband, and unwittingly gives power to an ancient unspeakable horror that has tapped into her sorrow. I found the whole idea to be deliciously tragic. After all, in the tradition of Lovecraft and all truly good horror, my heroine wouldn’t see the error until fate had already damned her.

Over the course of several days, I wrote the beginning framework for the short story, and I was really digging the results. I felt like I had really tapped into the feeling of despair one would feel after the loss of a recently-married spouse. I really felt the pain as I was writing it. In fact, at times, writing it was so intense that I had to put it down to pick it up the next day. The only problem came in when I finally got into the supernatural aspects of the tale. They just didn’t seem to fit. It wasn’t where the story was going, and I got immediately so annoyed with myself that I put the story down for a few months now.

Writers have this way of personifying their work. Anne Rice often talks about how her characters just kind of tell her what to write. I’ve heard other authors talk about how there’s a flow to a story that takes on a life beyond that of the writer. Unfortunately, my story is telling me that when my heroine finally overcomes her hopelessness and plays that tape, she’s not supposed to hear her dead husband whispering to her. No, she not supposed to hear anything. There’s supposed to be silence. As written, my supernatural elements just don’t belong. The story as it stands is a tale that reveals that no matter how much we want to bring the realm of fantasy into our lives to change unpleasantness in the end there’s only the concrete and the real.

It annoys me, I tell you.

Now I have to decide whether or not to let the story stand as is and change the ending to the one the work seems to want or whether I want to attempt a re-write of what I have. I always felt that the EVP was a cheesy mechanism for the larger tale, but I’m still reluctant to just drop my original idea. The story and I are at an impasse, and we’re not on speaking terms right now.

It has been ages since I’ve felt at all inspired to write a poem. Just now, compiling a list of song lyrics for my friend Jen, I started writing a poem that tumbled out of me so effortlessly that I had to post it immediately after finishing it.

There are mornings when I feel the universe breathing—
a gentle thrum that assures me that sometimes existence is its own goal.
There are nights when I see the transitory nature of all things,
and I can almost forgive myself for things I never did.
I may have never seen the world in a grain of sand,
but I’ve seen the meaning of it all in a baby’s eyes.
I’ve heard choruses of angels in the sobs that made my shirt
wet with broken notions of how my dreams should be.
I’ve felt the subtle rhythm of the whole thing
dancing alone on a noisy dance floor.
I’ve understood the mercy of watching foolish dreams die
at three a.m. with no one to hold you
but nearly everyone ready to hold you up.
I’ve known the completeness of existence itself with
a purring cat on my lap and a warm cup of coffee beside me.
If the world is truly in a grain of sand,
then is saving the world all that hard?
I’ve saved the world at five in the morning,
walking with a friend whose world had just crumbled.
I’ve saved the world at midnight,
paying for a dinner that no one could afford.
I’ve saved the world at noon,
quietly carrying boxes to help a friend start a new life.
I’ve saved the world at three in the afternoon,
hooking up jumper cables to a truck that only poverty could afford.
No moment is really any better than any other moment
because the whole damn thing blends together into something
so perfect and beautiful that you finally understand the true meaning
of divinity, infinity, and the universe itself.
There are mornings when I feel the universe breathing—
a gentle thrum that assures me that sometimes existence is its own goal.
There are nights when I see the transitory nature of all things,
and I can almost forgive myself for things I never did.

I don’t know how long I’ve been staring out this window, but God knows that it has been years now. The backyard changes very little. In the summer, the grass grows more quickly than we can mow it down. Sometimes there are dogs running around, and only Dad knows how many of them are buried under that grass. The swingset is slowly turning to rust, but the chain link fence will surely outlast us all. Funny how I don’t remember the little screened-in porch even though it’s right there in the way. The wasps fly around the eaves in the summertime, and I swear I can sometimes still see your old long-dead cat sneaking around the woods beyond this land that never belonged to us.

How many tears have I shed at this window? The window itself has become a cause for tears. I rarely remember the pain anymore, and I routinely thank providence for that. We came damned close to insanity in front of the window. Ask me what we saw on the other side of the glass all you want, but all I remember is seeing the three of us weeping the tears of broken dying old men as if I were somehow a third-party observer looking down on all of us. Children never cry like that. I’m not prepared to deal with the cause anymore honestly. The imagery itself provokes enough sorrow without bringing what happened into the matter.

Out there in the grass I played with my action figures. We went swimming in that pool over there that hasn’t been there for years. Your cat had kittens in that little pump house. We planted sunflowers out of birdseed over there in the garden that hasn’t been tilled in over ten years.

I don’t blame you. I want you to know that. We’re diamonds of the same cut, you and I. We both need to be loved and hate to be needed, and I swear there’s a certain spiteful pride running in our veins that makes us both irresistibly beautiful. If the situation were reversed, I’m ashamed to admit that it could easily have been you shaking uncontrollably even when all the tears had fallen on the cold linoleum floor in front of the sliding glass. It could have been you lying alone in the bed that we used to share, unable to sleep and sorting through mountains of might-have-beens and if-only soliloquies. I’m no martyr. My own sins keep me from dying for the sins of the world, thank you very much.

I have a lot of regrets, yeah. There are words I wish I could take back. There are words I wish I could go back and say. Who can I confess to ultimately? Who would want to listen to such absolute drivel? Do you see why I don’t think about it all if I can avoid it? It makes me like this, and I hate being like this. It feels too much like a funeral. If I had half the eloquence of Robert Smith, then maybe it would all be worth it, but every time I sit in front of this window to write, I start sounding like a petulant little child.

The dogs killed all the kittens except one. I wanted the dogs dead, but everyone calmly assured me that you couldn’t hate a dog for what was in its nature. Find whatever meaning you choose in that.

I never mourned for you, you know. I’ve been living with your ghost for years. Sometimes I look in the mirror and see your eyes looking back at me. Sometimes I read something funny and hear your laugh. Sometimes I hear a few bars of a church hymn and swear I hear your whispered voice singing just beneath the piano melody. Sometimes I pick up a book and you’re there in my mind reading each word and helping me sound out the ones I don’t immediately recognize.

I don’t know how long I’ve been staring out this window, but it’s getting dark now. The light hardly ever works out back, and I’ve never liked looking out windows after dark.

I was in a mood to write today and just couldn’t get anything started. I decided to just ignore writer’s block and write something anyway. This little short story/narrative is what happened. As an aside, it’s quite difficult to write a story dealing with gender issues when you’re not the gender of the narrator. At least I found it difficult.

November 11, 1998

What is there to say that I haven’t said a thousand times before? I went back and read all the entries in this diary from six years ago, and I think that I was a whiny twit. What is it with teenage girls and our tendency to write about our latest crushes on guys who we know in our hearts to be total assholes? Each page was some kind of verbal tribute commemorating a different asshole who for some reason I thought was dreamy or some such shit. It was like a parade of jerks, ne’er-do-wells, and vehicle-obsessed closet homosexual rice boys.

Thomas, the tall gangly boy who drove the old Mustang to school everyday even though it needed to be taken out behind the proverbial barn to be put out of its misery at least ten years ago. I’ve come to realize at the ripe-old age of twenty-three that teenage boys must have some sort of superpower that allows them to totally ignore little Asian girls who virtually throw themselves at them. I mean, Jesus, do they actually think that we listen to all that bullshit about fixing up their cars because we actually give a shit? Do they think that we go grab fast food from the local McDonald’s every day at lunch because we enjoy the food ever so much?

Adam, the asshole jerk who cared more about his guitar and his “band” than actually having a relationship with a real girl in lieu of nocturnal fantasies about Playboy centerfolds and surgically-augmented “actresses” starring in the bits of Cinemax that can be seen through the moving stripes that appear when your parents don’t exactly pay for the channel. You know, I don’t blame him for rejecting me really. God knows he was at least the thirty-eighth guy to spurn my romantic overtures. What I do blame him for is the way that he told all of his little buddies at band practice about how the “little chink girl” was all into him and how he’d never go out with someone so ugly and pimply. For the love of everything sacred, I’m not Chinese; I’m Korean. If you’re going to insult my ethnicity at least get your racial slurs straight!

James, the polite Southern Baptist boy who thought that I went to church with him because I finally realized that Jesus is going to send all Catholics straight to Hell when they die simply because of some sort of grudge because they aren’t Baptist or something. He looked so disappointed in me every time his pastor had some sort of invitation at the end of every service (wherein he vociferously implored all the sinners to turn from iniquity and receive the love of Jesus while the entire church sang what sounded like a funeral dirge about how wonderful it was that Jesus loved them) that didn’t end with me weeping on my knees in front of the whole congregation in realization of how “lost” I truly was. Last I heard, he got married to some chica he met at Bible study. She probably knows her place as the clear subordinate to the church-sanctioned male head of the household and vacuums the house wearing high heels and pearls. Oh boy, I sure hope that God has seen fit to bless their marriage with little screaming diaper-clad shit factories already!

Somehow when I think back to high school, I filter all of that out and just remember the fun I had in my English classes along with a vague sense that I really hated every other aspect of the whole charade. I swear, if you believe television sitcoms, high school should have been a zany romp with fun-loving scoundrels like Zack Morris. Well, either that or some Degrassi Junior High after-school special where every week someone gets laid, knocked up, or busted for using drugs in the school restroom.

Not that college was any better really. After getting spurned early on by Brandon (the RA on the fourth floor of the guys dorm across from mine), I rebounded right into the arms of Ryan, the really nice guy who said all the right things and gave all the flowers, candy, and attention girls are trained by Teen Beat and Barbie to want. It’s a real shame I didn’t realize sooner that I was nothing more than a means for him to eventually in get in my roommate’s panties and roomy D-cup bra.

I tried being a feminist for a while, but my heart really wasn’t in it. It’s hard to be all happy and excited about women when you can’t help thinking that the vast majority of women are absolute bitches. Most of my feminist “sisters” had trouble comprehending my career goals—namely that I don’t have any. I like to write, and I flatter myself to believe that I can do reasonably well at doing so when I try. However, I was never really clear why I got my journalism degree “because of the better job prospects than a liberal arts degree in English” since I never really wanted to be a journalist in the first place.

I’ve never really fit in because I’m a huge contradiction, I guess. I want to do something really important and cool, but I could care less about being one of those career-driven types who is willing to work fifty-hour workweeks in the name of getting ahead. I want to be a mom someday, but I don’t want to be one of those June Cleaver types whose only purpose in life is to raise children. I want to be loved, but I scare most guys away since I’m almost exactly the opposite of what their church and/or their porno-derived fantasies have taught them that a woman should be. I can’t even cash in on the Asian chick fetish that guys seem to have because apparently that particular kink doesn’t extend to chubby Korean girls who speak and write English better than most caucasians but are too shy to hold a decent conversation.

I just feel so…abnormal. Everyone has these convenient boxes that they want me to live in, and I don’t seem to fit in any of them. I’m not the outgoing socialite who can hold a conversation with anyone. I’m not the goal-oriented career woman who takes the world by storm and those across the table from her by the balls. I’m not the pretty, thin Barbie with big boobs and winning smile. I’m not the coordinated athlete who wins games and sells shoes made in third-world countries by women who the world finds just as unmemorable as me. I’m not the quiet little woman who nods politely, defers to her husband, and always performs her wifely duties with nary a complaint or expectation of an orgasm. And sometimes it just pisses me off that people expect any of that from me. Other times, I just want to pick one of the categories and be normal already.

Boo hoo. Poor me. I just took a minute to read back over this entry, and it’s so damn whiny. This is why I don’t write anymore. Every time I pick up a pen, it always comes out as a total bitchfest. Maybe this is the mark of post-college 20-something writing in much the same way that writing about secret crushes is the mark of teenage journaling. I’m sure that I’ll look back on this whiny, bitchy narrative someday and think “My God…I actually used to write like this!” and it will all seem so immature. I’ll be embarrassed to show people that I wrote such garbage. I wish that I could just decide to get out of this phase though. I wish that somehow I could just go on and move to the next stage in life—whatever the hell it is.

I’m really tired of wanting so many things and having no idea how to get them. Wasn’t I supposed to find myself somewhere along the way before getting a degree I had no intentions of using? Shouldn’t I know how to reach my dreams and expectations by the time I’m twenty-three?

This poem was unknowingly influenced by H.P. Lovecraft. When I was a kid, I bought a horror magazine spinoff put out by the folks who produced Cracked magazine. One of the stories in it was a comic adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Outsider”. I was thinking about that little comic when I wrote this. I didn’t realize that Lovecraft had ever influenced my own work until I actually read “The Outsider” last night.

It is not my place to
interact.
I can merely
Watch
The interactions of others—
Instances of
Birth.
Divorce.
Unrequited Love.
Failures.
Successes.
Happiness.
I would give
a thousand of my lifetimes
if for just once I
could be on the inside
looking out
at all the poor fools
like me.

This poem was a real turning point in my life. In the middle of writing this poem, my whole perspective changed. I stopped seeing just the darkness in the world and saw all the mundane and absolutely beautiful things happening all around me. In that moment, I realized that a great deal of what happens everyday is heart-stoppingly beautiful. I didn’t write another poem for about two years.

alone cry fade
weeping and drifting
with revelations of nothing.
visions of grey hopelessness
silence
trying to speak
silence
fragments of dreams, visions, and imaginary quests.
pioneering nothing
writing the same tired poetry
creating the usual
why bother?
No more.
I will become
Mystic of the Everyday
Poet. Visionary. Creator.
I must create my own visions.
Search for my own reality.
Find my own poetry.
Return to the third.
Touch the new epiphany.
See the angelic.
Hear the music of voices and rhythm.
Taste the flavors of saintly visions.
Breathe in the beatific.
Know that there is something beyond.
There will be something
even if I must create it.

I went through a period of about two years during which time I wasn’t inspired to write poetry at all. I wrote this poem about a year after graduating from college, and it comforted me a lot to know that I could still write.

Merciful prayers for nothingness go unheard.
The pain is exquisite now,
and within veils there is the realization that there can be
nothing more than this shifting death.
The grey nightscape haunts what used to be real,
and you can’t help but ask yourself
an unending torrent of hyper-real answers
of long-dead philosophers.
You are unimportant now—
just as you have always been.
Your only life is the life you give others.
You have become—and always were—
nothing more than one big responsibility
to an invisible god in a host of myriad beings.
Your tears have never meant anything,
and you sold your soul long ago
for excuses with a side order of heartlessness.
Tears always fall in darkness.
Sometimes we just fool ourselves
into thinking that there is light.