Dancing in the Ashes---Selections

“I have faced this seemingly endless agony for over three years of interminable torment. For this establishment has become my home, my prison. These hands, once dedicated to the insuperable prospect of peace have been re-baptized into the hateful craft of war. This tongue, which once spoke for the redemption of man, now speaks of the blasphemous schisms to which this so called society has been dedicated.
         When I speak nobody listens, when I cry nobody sees my tears; for great is my sorrow and euphony null. Can you not weep for a wounded warrior? Great are my burdens, deep my lacerations and meaningless my pain. Woe to the bloody city and all her sorrowful inhabitants, for when the time when spears clash and the cannon’s dreaded roar is trumpeted she will receive none. 
         For I hate their superficiality and I hate their stagnant lives. What can we do but wait? Whom can we trust but ourselves? Is there no understanding, can the maiden shed but a heartfelt tear for me? How one despises such levity!
         How often have I, consumed with rage, lay awake in the dead of night, asking God why. Why have you forsaken me? Am I not your son? I stare at the ceiling all the while into the early hours of the morning when sleep finally claims me.
         Too skinny, too fat, too smart, too stupid; what do you want me to be? Tell me O’ artifice what doest thou wanteth me to be? Is there not enough acceptances in this world to be me and still be desired? For when we enter this school we put on our masks and hide our poor bleeding hearts. When we enter this school we loose a little more of ourselves. When we enter this school we die.”


                                                    ***

We had reached the extremes of our efforts; food, water, all gone. We had departed that morning standing tall; our eyes proudly gleaming to the effect of the sun. Realized what a different person I had becomes since our exodus from the iron doors so man eternities ago. There aren’t too many of the old hands left, many are dead, many are wounded; some because of a legitimate loss of strength, others simply lacked the will to progress. Those that chose to continue onwards do so halfheartedly, pushing onwards in their threadbare garments; for they were a motley crew indeed.
         The afternoon is fast approaching; morning would be recollected as but a vague blur in posthumous nostalgia.  We sing exhausted choruses as we march to keep us from falling asleep, still this does not alleviate our burden and quite a few fall helpless by the roadside. The guards do not come as often, they assume that most of us are dead, and rightly so; for whom that has witnessed such carnage manages to discard such nightmare?
Not me, for I shall remember.
         The camp seems more of an illusion than a destination now, still some hold onto the hope that we may someday reach it. The snow has stopped, melting in some places while simply continuing to blanket others. Who can forget snow drifts as tall as men?
Not me, for I shall remember.
There is no longer some great mystery veiled in shadow, for the truth now gleams in plain sight. Forgive my foolishness, my irony, my fatuous disembodiment of human virtue; for who that has witnessed such mystery can forget?
         Not me, for I shall remember.
For I long to escape to a place of fairy-like grace; a place where our dreams don’t need wings to fly. I have never seen this place, I have never heard of this place; yet I am convinced that it exists nonetheless, for my heart leads me magnetically onwards. Life will pass away, there will be love in enigmatic aqueducts, and ultimately a new establishment will be inherited from the faded remnants of old virtues. Some day we’ll all just be people with our own little lives, able to laugh at our decadent origins, surrounded by the emancipated faces of our friends and family; a better place, a sweeter time.
         I have heard the maiden speak to me long after the midnight hour hath expired;
“Onwards to life eternal!” accompanied by the crystalline melody of Fur Elise.
This is not the end of the road; it is but the thinning of the paths before coming about the cobblestone walkways.
         We shall be creatures of Eden in this new place, able to fulfill even our most subtle desires with only one triumphant sentence “We showed the world that they were wrong.” But what if we are unable to rise above all the hate and temptation? For there will always be a Lorain, long after we are dead and forgotten; what if we are unable to abandon our own ways?
         We will never be much to the establishment, just faces and numbers; to them we will always be the bastard children, incapable of thinking or even breathing without instruction. I smile and vanish into the conformity, for nobody, even the wisest doctors and philosophers, know what is in store for the greatest of hours.
         The guards, they harass us, but I quickly disregard their aspersion in favor of more optimistic news; for life can never be made too hard on us.
         The food is bad, he administrators worse; yet I make light of us; savoring the more tantalizing desire of future years.



                                              ***


So there I was, yet another nameless victim to Kingdom Death. A witness to the seething of souls and the friction between hate and absolute lunacy. Never will I forget those faces, so many young, innocent faces cast away in the single most maddening event recorded in human history.
It is my own will that sets me free. Here my oppressors are rid of their jurisdiction and men are free to live as they were always destined to. It is the will that no chains can bind and no force can overcome, the gates of hell can’t hold my soul; nothing save the sheer will of God can abdicate my sincere desire for justice.
As long as I can still breathe it shall be used to speak words of our sacrifice in tongues of flame. As long as can still hear it shall be used to transcribe the countless reverberations of those who were so senselessly hewn into the fires.
For it is the cancer within us, the festering flames of hatred can be doused within the context of our hearts, but only if we learn to love; love alone will redeem us.
Love knows no such thing as race, gender, beliefs, customs, or religion; it looks at us through the glass and sees a marvelous creature, a creature so adulterated by hate.
Time is but a swift, uninterrupted march; for it comes to us as the ghost of Banquo at Macbeth’s banquet, a lost memory, a forgotten acquaintance. Some things that should have been remembered were ultimately forgotten, washed away from the grainy sands of time by the much vaster ocean of discarded memories. Then there come things that are worthy of never being forgotten, the life I bore up in flames is but a mute testament to the unsung millions who grew up knowing only prejudice. Those who were summoned away by fate, bound to the very kingdom of death
Whenever a child is comforted it is by the very sacrifices made by the children of death’s kingdom; whom we are all a part of. Whenever a weeping widow is comforted it is I, for there comes a time when humanity will set aside their differences for the betterment of not just one person but for us all.
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.
My indefinite love for humanity remains one the same.. Dictators are but a passing shadow, for they free their own amenities but enslave the free will of their people.
This world is small but beautiful and we as a human race should stop and love the little things in life a little more and let the big picture take care of itself.  Those who murder and rape will drown in their own blasphemy, rest assured.
My life is dedicated to giving a voice to those whose own were muffled by a merciless oppressor. I expect only to live once and any kindness I can do on the way will be greatly appreciated.
Nothing is more admirable than those who live in the darkest of times yet laugh in the face of death and defeat. Life is too short not to find something to love. So many of us act as though we will live forever but that could change so fast and only then will we realize how little we have accomplished in so long a time.
Tell the world of this sublimation because right now I sit in the safety of my home but one really doesn’t know what tomorrow may bring. Evil is but a passing shadow, and soon we will be able to look over the mountaintop and see greener pastures. Why then try to find greener pastures when you could plant them yourself?

God is still there, we just have to find him.