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[theyoung-oldrambler]

Soothing Souls

My heart burns, my soul aches

The light hurts, the dark takes

I sob alone, in a quiet room

I can’t breathe, I feel doomed.

I tell my love, of my pain

He hurts too, but not the same

I pull him close, and whisper peace

He cries, and I weep.

But he calms, and turns to me

Takes my hand, speaks sympathy

Now it’s gone, quick as it came

My fire’s out, replaced with rain.

Yet he still aches, deep inside

I have no cure, to provide

His smile’s weak, when he asks

For my kindness, a simple task.

Now we smile, soft and slow

Held in eachother, hearts aglow

I can burn, he can fall

But rain will come, and love will call.

[theyoung-oldrambler]

Conviction

When I was young

Younger than I am now

I thought I understood love

.

I didn’t

But that didn’t stop me

From promising it to people

In reckless, dangerous ways

For you see, love —

That emotion which is more

Than a feeling and

That force which is greater

Than any one word

Is not something you can

Contain

I did not know that then

(I know it now)

And so I told them —

Her

Myself

That I would love them

In anyway they allowed

Even if

.

That allowance was barely

Anything

I got lucky (mostly)

And was not told to —

Leave and

Never come back

Never speak to them

Ever again

Instead I was told

Gently

That my love was far too much

To be given back to me

In kind

I didn’t know, then

If I would hold to my

Convictions and not

Give up on loving the

Way I promised to

.

.

.

I have not given up, for now I understand

Exactly

What I promised.

[theyoung-oldrambler]

Unconditional Love

There is something terrifying, something utterly soul wrenching, about the realization that no matter what a person does, you’d keep loving them.

It’s not comfortable. It’s not even necessarily a good thing. But it’s there, and it’s true.

This is not to say, of course, that you would let them hurt you or abuse you and not fight back or even hurt them in return. Because loving someone does not sadly thankfully truly mean you wouldn’t hurt them or push them away, it just means you love them. That it hurts you in return.

Sometimes it’s your child, loving them in that one particular immutable way that only a parent is capable of — where you can see that they are a monster and know, doubtlessly, what that means yet still hold them in your heart and in your soul. Sometimes it’s your sibling or your best friend, the person who you will stand beside and burn with and even burn for even (especially) if they’ve done nothing at all to deserve it. There’s a million ways to love someone, and an equal number of ways to do it without restraint or limit.

For me, it’s my lover boyfriend closest friend love of my life soulmate partner. He could do anything, could do the most horrible things, and I know down to my bones I would still love him. I would not forgive him, perhaps, or trust him, or even like him if he did. I would leave him, depending on the act, and let him know just how horrible it was. I would not coddle or shield him from things like justice or righteous anger. But I would love him.

I wouldn’t know how to stop. And I don’t want to.

[theyoung-oldrambler]

Sometimes other people’s love hurts. Sometimes it stings or burns or chafes. Sometimes it inspires jealousy or envy or want.

But sometimes ... it’s sweet and warm and the kind of thing you can just bask in, like the light of a Van Gogh or the sweetness in a Degas.

And moments like those, are the most precious of all.

[theyoung-oldrambler]

I want to cover myself in words, in whispers, in promises.

I want the two Shel Silverstein poems that shaped my middle and high school years painted across my rib cage

I want the vows I’ll one day speak to my beloved swirling across my skin

I want the wonderful rule of the above and the below stamped onto my thigh like a puzzle and a key

I want Kaiidth sweeping in graceful and alien calligraphy down my leg

I want the motto of my clan in it’s determined repetition on our badge to be stark on my calf

Others can keep their art and their pictures and their barcodes and their portraits — the most poignantly important things to me will always be found in the soft embrace of language, and one day I will decorate myself with them as often as I please.

[theyoung-oldrambler]

Obfuscation

Humans had a truly marvelous way of distorting the truth, managing to turn molehills into mountains and lizards into dragons with nothing but a few exaggerations and seemingly harmless embellishments each time the story was told. Give any piece of fact a thousand years among humankind and it will most certainly come out the other side fascinating, terrifying, and utterly, utterly false. Take, for example, the afterlife. It certainly does it exist, and some unlucky (or lucky depending on how you look at it) souls have certainly been there, but all the ideas of Heaven and Hell and Purgatory and Limbo? Of Bad Places and Good Places? Of peaceful eternities and dull viods and whatever else the human race has chosen to interpret it as?

Largely bullshit.

See, back when the Earth was made, or, well, formed is a better word since no one actually crafted anything, a very large chunk of a planet that once was (and is no longer, has not been for so long any name it did have if it had one at all is lost, even to me) crashed into it so violently part of it popped right back off again like a droplet of water in a bowl. The Planet That Was had had life, had been bursting with it, and when that chunk came crashing in, the life began again on Earth. Buried so deep, so far, into the new and scorching planet that life began to change, and grow, and become.

But, the life growing in the depths of the Earth, in the sea of stone and sulfur still so hot it glowed like the sun itself and flowed like water, was not the only life to come to this small and exciting new rock orbiting a still young and volatile star. Life that had developed not in the embrace of rock and hold of gravity, but in the cool and pulling void that flowed between the stars and the planets, growing in the same dusty nurseries of the stars themselves. This life, too, grew and change as it settled itself over the young Earth, dancing around the dead and quiet piece of the Planet That Was that had popped back up into orbit, and slowly helping the oxygen and hydrogen gather around the earth, watching as the light from the star filtered through it and gave energy to the things now happening on the surface of the cooling rock.

Gave energy for new life, life that hadn’t happened yet, life that knew nothing of the creatures a thousand, ten thousand years more at home than they were right beneath their feet. LIfe that new nothing of the prismatic and ethereal life above it that ate up the rays from the star that would kill this new life in an instant if left unattended to. And so, back when the Earth was just beginning to spin out of its infancy -- three different, three new kinds of Life were growing all around it, and one of them was so much terribly younger than the others. Hadn’t even begun to cross the barriers between the layers of spacetime and the fifth and sixth dimensions, and wouldn’t for a few billion years, the wee infant Life of the surface.

The Life Within grew and grew, created grand caverns and winding halls that stuttered and slipped between four dimensions out of six at a time, grew itself into great beings harty enough to withstand the great pulling of gravity at Earth’s core and the great heat that surrounded them, and fast enough to jump and twist like shadows and flickers of light when the dimensions around them did the same. This was the nature of the Life Within, ephemeral but undying and ever twisting and turning around corners before they even manifested. Curious to the last, because they must always be prepared for the unexpected which is to come next.

The Life Above grew too, but differently, as they did not have to change for new accommodations, they had no need to be anything but the slowly pulsing and shuddering beings they always had, capable of coalescing in each and every dimension at once, or softly sliding among them like honey across a comb. No, The Life Above learned something peculiar as they grew. They learned to Create, to take pieces of themselves and make them into Other Things which could exist in Other Places, like the surface of the earth. They, thus, Created all manner of little things and great things and unchanging things that now litter not only the surface of the earth but the Above as well. They especially enjoyed Creating things which could fit like puzzle pieces alongside The Life Upon, filling in the blank dimensions that young life had yet to reach. For this was the nature of The Life Above -- they played and they meddled and they wondered very little for change to them was not a concept it was merely what one did when one was bored, it was both a habit and an impossibility for to truly be changed one must not so simply change back, in the way The Life Above always did.

Some five thousand years ago, The Life Upon began to poke and prod at the other dimensions which they had until then been so ignorant of.

Some three thousand years after that some genius decided The Life Above was Good and Holy, and the Life Below was Evil and Wrong and gave them the silly and impetuous names of “Heaven” and “Hell”. So, like I said, it’s clear that if you leave humans with the truth for too long they inevitably bend it into something else -- and that is the nature of The Life Upon, to Change things, always, and to Never Change Them Back.

[theyoung-oldrambler]

The Tired God

Not far from the high school, about a block or two down past the baseball field and the pick-up basketball courts, you can find him. In the park, you walk right past the stoner’s gazebo and the kid’s new play ground that was built some 3 years back, past the pond and you take a right into the small woods when you see the drainage pipe. There’s a path, if you know what you’re looking for, that leads to the old playground. Not the one that newest one replaced, but the one before that. Back in the nineties, the local parents and park administration or whoever deemed it unsafe and not up to standard for the kids to be playing on. Tall monkey bars and what’s left of course wood chips, with two rickety and rusted metal slides, and the big tower like set- that’s where you’ll find him. A tree, twisted and not all that pretty, found it’s way through most of the play-set, covering the whole thing in leaves in the summer, and bony branches in the winter, that’s where he’ll be.

If you want his help, or his favor, you have to bring something. The offerings from past kids who, just like you, went looking and found him litter the steps and platforms that lead to the small inner room where he sits. Cans, bottles, thermoses, Tupperware, and wrappers lead the way like a parody of candles and rose petals. They say that he likes it best when you bring him a new flavor of drink- not just any drink though, it has to have caffine. Coffee is a safe bet, especially a Stauff’s blend or other local place, but Monster is good too. Stories will say that the best offerings are done in threes, but I’ve always been fine just baring a large can of Mountain Dew Kickstarter or a glittering new Monster Rehab flavor. It doesn’t hurt to be careful, though, so bring a drink, a candy bar, and something edible and blue. Three offerings, of the three things people give.

Of course, he’ll take whatever’s in your pocket’s too, if that’s all you have. A spare jolly rancher will do the trick if you’re desperate enough, but only if you’re desperate. He doesn’t like disrespect or disregard. So you find him, and you leave your offering as close as you dare to go. You’ll feel it when he accepts it, and he usually does, and that’s when you can ask.

Tell him what you want, what you’re needing so bad you came to a legend in the forest to get. He likes the details, the stories, and reasons; if you can spin a good enough tale on the truth, or speak compelling enough on what it is- you’ll get it exactly. Doesn’t matter what. But don’t lie, he isn’t a fan of that either, you won’t get what you want hiding your intentions. And you’ll get much worse if you try to trick him. But if you embellish the reasons, stretch the tale from something small to something noble- he won’t mind. Even be more giving to those who can lie without lying, the legends say. It doesn’t have to be something tangible, or uniform, ask for whatever you need. Tell him your problem and ask for a solution, or plead for a power that will give you an edge. Ask for him to take something away, or to fix a broken part.

When you’ve asked, and said all you have to say, remember to thank him. For listening, for giving a chance. He’s powerful you know, and likes not to be slighted. Once you’ve said your thanks, turn around. Walk straight back the way you came and don’t turn around. Don’t glance over your shoulder, don’t turn half way down the path to convince yourself that it really just happened, don’t pause to think that you forgot to say something. Walk back past the pipe, the pond, the gazebo, and the playground, back to how ever you got to the park, and leave. When you get home that night, settle in to bed and go to sleep early.

If he thinks you’re worthy, if his thinks the offer was sufficient and your question of quality- you’ll wake up in the morning with it answered.

This is how you find the tired god in the woods, and this is how you ask him for help. He usually answers, and doesn’t mind if you come back, as long as you bring him something to drink and a story to hear.

[theyoung-oldrambler]

One day I’ll tell enough truth that my lies are but puddles as I stand on pillars of stone.

But today, I am drowning with the meager sand far, far beneath my feet.

[theyoung-oldrambler]

Sometimes your own silence hurts you more than anyone else’s rejection ever could.

[theyoung-oldrambler]

Assbackwards, Upsidedown

I love him. Them? Him.

I’ve loved him longer than I’ve known what love is, and certainly longer than I’ve known that that was what I was feeling. I can barely remember the years of preschool and before that when he wasn’t in my life. Then again, few people remember most of those years anyways.

I loved him when I was assbackwards about who I was and who I loved and how my life was going to go, (I’m not an astronaut preparing for the Mars mission I’m a pre-law student, or married to Brock Withers we haven’t talked in years, or a young female pilot I’m not female at all for that matter), when he was also entirely clueless as to what a sense of identity was and why the two of us just couldn’t stop being the-two-of-us.

I loved him when I had the world figured out and life spread out before me like an all you can eat buffet and endless choices of where to go and who to be and was 100 miles away from him and obligations and the past that loved to sneak up on me when I wasn’t looking. When it would have been reasonable, logical, utterly and entirely a smart choice to let him go and never look back; I loved him. And I didn’t betray him, or that love.

Now the world is upsidedown. My life is upsidedown. Gravity is tugging me in directions it never has and we’re further away than ever in space, in our heads, in our hearts. His entire self has changed so very very much in the last six months alone. He’s not the same person I fell for to anyone else but me and the one friend we both share (and have shared and will share till the lot of us die, because she too is a tale of love that makes no sense but hasn’t given up out of sheer power or possibly spite; even if it’s a different sort of love with a different kind of ending) and he’s not even the same person to himself these days.

Or well, persons. Multiple personalities, OSDD, whatever. It’s a real bitch when it seemingly crops up out of nowhere until you’re looking back and realizing even single pebble that’s been thrown into that bucket of water known as as sanity until it’s burst the pucker cup we’ve all taken for granted.

So now, assbackwards and upsidedown and utterly, utterly lost — I love him.

My instincts say “cut’n’run”. It’s the advice I’d give most people. My instincts say to abandon a sinking ship before I drown. Maybe they’re right about that. It’s perfectly logical after all, I’ve got my own problems, my own vices. I’ve lived without him before (and I know I could do it again).

But.

Love doesn’t give a damn about logic. I don’t either, frankly, now that I’ve thought about it.

My life is assbackwards and upsidedown. My love...

Is sure-as-shit pointing to true north and has alwaysalwaysalways known which way is up, and left from right.

So, I love him. And I wouldn’t change that for anything (even though I could).

[theyoung-oldrambler]

Terrified

I’m terrified of the power I have.

I don’t know where it came from.

I don’t know its limits.

I don’t know its downsides.

I try to worship only the good. Follow only the pure. Give to only the benevolent. Open myself to only the positive.

But I fear the darkness I could so easily touch.

Would my power leave me if I did?

Or...

Would it consume me? Grow and grow until it’s too big for this body? This mind?

I step closer and closer every day, grow more and more each passing week, gain confidence and wisdom and skill.

Is it enough? Is my will steeled well enough against the urge to tarnish it? Is my soul bright enough to stand against the inky stains that wish to creep in on it?

The power I have is mysterious and acts in ways I don’t understand. It terrifies me.

Do I terrify it too?

[theyoung-oldrambler]

I was born on blood soaked ground and I’ve got no where else to go, so I’d rather learn my history and avoid it’s repetition than continue to fight an imaginary war.

[theyoung-oldrambler]

My heads too loud and my minds too quiet

[theyoung-oldrambler]

A Little of What You Fear

I used to be afraid of the dark. No, scratch that. I am afraid of the dark, but not the way I used to be. The monsters still lurk, the faces still haunt me, the shapes still dance when I close my eyes.

But seven years ago, a little bit of darkness, came to me. Big now, less inky than she used to be, all I need to do is say her name — she protects me. From the monsters in the movies I regret watching. From the demons that come from my own head. From the anxiety that pools in the black like vipers.

“Abby” I whisper, and there’s a jangling of a chain and tags, the soft double beat of paws, the whipping of a tail through the air, the brush of fur against my thigh as she sidles up beside me.

I’m not quite so afraid of the dark, when my big black dog stands next me.

[theyoung-oldrambler]

They had many words for what I was, none of them were kind

But these words are echos of my past, not whispers of my future.

[theyoung-oldrambler]

There is only one story I wish to tell, but I will tell it a thousand different ways

[theyoung-oldrambler]

I think that I forgive things and people as readily as I do because I’ve known the unforgivable, and have not forgiven it. But because of this I also don’t take being crossed or hurt lightly, and rarely forget that which hurt me, forgiven or not.