To love and lost some say is better than not

Perhaps for some but for others its false

Have they loved at all to believe this rot

Better to lose your heart than some harsh farce

To pretend that loss was worthwhile to bear

The eternal hardship to endure, love

So sweet yet bitter, a dance so so rare

Elation soaring high on the winged dove

It is worth it to love and hold, not lose

To fight for what can never again be

If lost to the void of time so we choose

To continue this dance never to see

The end of it, for the infinite grace

Can never be lost and will not give up

The strength to never surrender the race

Stand strong before all odds our paths throw up

This is what it means to never give ground

The price we must pay for the gift we found

The shattered Blade of Asgard at half guard

The Valkyrie cries and the shield shatters

Stand fast the battle lines strike fast strike hard

Roar Niddhog roar, Yggdrasil falters fails

Tree uprooted, world in hail and frost

The winter comes, hunger stabs, life drowns in hail

The endless cycle, Ragnarok has shone

Upon the Ida plain we meet again

To be born again from this place of home

The realms to rise and fall the cosmos spins

An endless tale of man and gods to weave

A fabled tale where none may claim to win

For none can win the endless games to come

Spiraling into Infinity's grasp

Again the horn sounds the end to us come

How shall the final battle play again?

Never the same and never different

To play out anew to all once again

This the trial, the alchemists tempest

To turn the dross to gold and purify

To prepare the final crucibles fire

The golden Creed shining light 'neath the halls

Of silver bright paid in blood, misers

Hands to change, yet all the same show the walls

To keep the peasant out, early risers

To toil for the scrap of bread and mead soiled

By the Creed for the lords of the high keep

The people under foot grow to a boil

Stricken with hunger for the light that seeps

From beneath the halls of silver laid bright

The lords of the high keep do the whips crack

Tables turned and shackles do now bind tight

Lords turned peasant, stricken now to the rack

The cycle turns the Creed lives on in heart

Blackened by lust for the dragons great trap

To take for the hollowed empty heart

Spelling doom for man and beast, darkness wraps

The world in the claws of the golden Creed

To no end in sight for the Creed of Greed.

Part I

The Final Breath

Light reaching down through black waters above

Burning, sodden, choking in vain below

A new light reaching down to me above

Leaving it all behind me, the past below

Floating soft upon bliss and agony

Upon these Stygian waters flowing

Fulfilling the final ceremony

The last breath of life, the final showing

Oh Hades, take my hand down this river

Where to Elysium or Tartarus go

To the final Rest Home I come hither

Cold pervades, the body falls behind lo

I see around, the panic flees my chest

All laid bare before me, leading to rest

All that had been forgotten brought to life

Even as life fades from this tired vessel

Heat blooms on nonexistent flesh a rife

Breathe life once more into this the vessel

The light fades now from dying eyes, sight gone

The ethereal glow of the empty mind

The spark still remains feeble and soon gone

A cry of final fear echos through the mind

Final surge of clawing desperation

But these black waters, cloying treachery

Drag me down down, the great realization

Time is up, the great failing treachery

Potential flung far and the end to come

I pass, a pawn in the great zero sum

Part II

Stillness

The warmth is gone now, the cold is gone now

Sight has fled, light and dark long gone away

An empty field stretches ahead, gone now

Whispers no more, the mind has gone away

No more to taste the sweet nectar of life

The final veil stilling the animus

Parting the detritus of mortal strife

The loss felt no more unanimous

Secrets of Lethe to rid of sins past

Secrets gone, joy and sorrow, all washed clean

The Asphodel petals upon air cast

Those who drift seeking again the past gleam

Upon the meadows forgotten to wait

A light to Rest Home guide or trickster’s bait

A gleaming memory disturbs silence

Time unfulfilled, those held most close and dear

Great sorrow upon the soul does violence

Petals of the flower not for me dear

To seek the last strand most tenuously

The fleeting spark that guides the drive

To breathe of life once more strenuously

To return and once more and seek to strive

Time has yet to come, eternity gone

Stygian nightmare, heavenly spectre

The fear of the living come, no more gone

The flicker of light to guide this spectre

Rest Home, the sirens call reaches to me

But my time has not drawn nigh do you see

Part III

To Breathe Once More

Not for me is the sweet wine of Rest Home

Nor the Elysium plains or the clear springs

The ambrosial fount will wait I go home

Peace will come another day and bring spring

Time will call the appointed hour yes

Of a life well lived when all is satisfied

I will wait the day of the last call yes

But not this day as I fall sanctified

To rise like the damned from the black waters

Fading from my mind the final Rest Home

To brave once more the turbulent waters

To claw and drift through the world to roam

The final rattle, not quite so final

The shuttering breath to draw until the final

Bright light as the stars above pierce the night

Eyes open dry and burning, flesh prickles

Lungs sodden and the head far too light

Gasping the breath forgotten, sharp nettles

Meat on stark groaning bones shifts now restless

The howls of Cerberus, thoughts far too loud

For that which had been so still, now deathless

The final grasp recedes, a lifting shroud

The booming march of the hearts staccato

Rushing blood almost stilled in the chilled veins

Humble mind takes place of false bravado

Each day important no longer in vain

To breathe and savor what was once no more

Back to my wearied body life once more

The mind is a strange thing, a mysterious thing, nothing is ever certain except the uncertainty of thought shaped by perception. The perception of ones own perspective and the perception of the perspectives of others as your own would tell you it is. To see through the eyes of another, such a thing may seem impossible, our own egos get in the way. Our own ego forces our perspective onto those we try to look through. How then do we free our minds from ourselves and fly free to see? Is it through dreams that we are free of ourselves when we are away from the reality and everything is as uncertain as the mind? Perhaps it is and if that be the case then let me tell of a dream I had of the world through the eyes of another.

I wake my body heavy, head spinning as I stare up at the dingy ceiling above, rising to see the mess around me and find it fitting. I amble and shamble my way through the shack to a rack of clothes. What squalor I live in but why bother? Not like I do anything but sleep here and all is in its place for my needs. To live in the squalor yet find comfort in the familiar setting and musk. Who am I? My name is not my own, my body not my own, my face not my own. Yet it was all my own now. I could see words staring at me from a screen, a challenge and insult refuting me, something that must be answered.

Now I sat calls coming in on many lines. Surrounded by machines like me, “Hello how can I help you?”, those words forming an endless cacophony about me. We are nothing but living machines here speaking by rote scripts laid out before us. We speak words barely hearing them or those we talk to, it has all become routine, and those around me don’t care they are just machines unlike me. I tell myself that just as they must surely think but they aren’t me they are just like everyone else except that one that I find infuriating.

The day was done and I walk my way home under the hot sun. Checking those messages and answering more words from others on a screen of colored lights. I return convinced people were jealous and plotting that I was sure as I was before. Was it for the sake of drama and the amusement of such that I made those accusations or is it what I truly believed? Perhaps I convince myself even and fooled myself to their obvious reactions and meanings.

My words change from day to day but the patterns of my actions remain the same. As do those of others I realize. The dream starting to fade. The same traps often ensnare everyone, from such common connections can we begin to understand them, these things that affect us all with no regard to our own ego. To see through the eyes of others and understand those things that are shared and where things are different. The lives of others can be incomprehensible but through brief glimpses can some understanding be gained. Those glimpses of shared events allow insight into those parts we can’t as easily understand. We might not ever understand all of someones life or the things they say or do but letting go and forgetting we can in part understand.