Just another day

Where the demon's at play

Ripping and tearing

My soul to filet

Just another time

Where I turn to rhyme

Trying to find a way

To just pass the time

How many times

Will I feel like a failure

How many rhymes

Until I'm free from the jailer

Suicide is no fun

At the end of a gun

And I know there's no hope

At the end of a rope

So what's left is pain

Stabbing into my brain

Leaving me with no illusions

That I stand to gain

So many days

Stuck in this malaise

Watching and waiting

With a ten mile gaze

Staring in the abyss

In ignorant bliss

Trying to figure out

The reason for this

No answers to find

Even I'm not that blind

Still an ignorant slave

To a fragmented mind

But as I write this

I rise from the abyss

The power of these words

Helping me to dismiss

All of the rage

And all the sorrow

So I can be ready

To live for tomorrow

You know that feeling

That sends you reeling

When the void in your chest

Won't let you rest

When all of your rage

Makes you rattle the cage

When no amount of expression

Can alleviate the depression

When it feels like the whole world

Is coming unfurled

And you can't shift the mood

Because you're coming unglued

And you push everyone away

Because you know in your heart

You're not feeling okay

And can't do your part

Those are the days

When I write these things

To clear the malaise

And the anger it brings

I may be a big guy

Who's got a foul mouth

But I'm just trying not to die

From hanging myself

The voices in my brain

They keep getting so loud

I'm going insane

Just want to make people proud

I keep hoping for the day

When I find the right words

To take away the pain

And take away the concerns

So I may lose myself

Every once in a while

But the reason I do this

Is so I can smile

Doused in gold

But nonetheless cold

A world where you

Are expected to grow old

The endless pits

Of double shifts

And the hazardous rhymes

Of these troubled times

A troubled world

Where we'd rather be sleeping

Than having to deal

With the monsters that are creeping

A world where dying

Is better than lying

About who we are

While we watch from afar

Where wars are endlessly fought

For reasons we've long since forgot

Where blood is easy to shed

And we never learn from the dead

A people who cry out in pain

While others just try to stay in their lane

When even reaching one hand out

Could free them from their doubt

We see all the little ways

That our inner demon plays

But don't forget the angel within

That could break us free from the sin

It's easy to get lost

In all of this sauce

But try to keep in mind

It's not the end of the line

Don't just live for tomorrow

Live for next year too

Don't lose your hope

To this chaotic zoo

They say that when

The shadows are darkest

Is when the truth

Is the starkest

That the last glimpse of light

Being swallowed by the night

Is when it all comes together

And you fight against the nether

That it takes until the very end

To truly comprehend

The right was always within the wrong

Like the hopeful notes of a dreary song

And when you begin to fight

Against the ravenous abyss

Is when it starts to come to light

That it was never better than this

All the things that drag you down

Should never be enough

To hold you down until you drown

Because we humans stand tough

When the hallowed end calls for me

It should know it'll have to fight

Because even in my darkest dreams

I still stand against the night

I dream of worlds that come and go

Where I know I don't belong

But every day I wish to leave even though I know it's wrong

I see the places in my mind, the people that are there

I want so bad to leave my world and live without a care

It hurts to think about the ones that I would leave behind

But I think that they'd be better off without my neurotic mind

The person that I could be

If I could find a way to free

The spark inside of me

That no one else can see

I know it's not the right thing, for me to cast away

Everything I could ever be, just to go astray

Always I can feel it, the ever present siren song

It calls to me and says it's okay, even though I know it's wrong

I can never find it in myself to answer it's seductive call

But if that ever happens, and if I ever fall

Just know I'll love you always, and it will never be your fault

This world, it may not be for me

But for now I am still here

I will do whatever I can and I will always be near

I don't want this to hurt you, I just need someone to know

I always feel this weight on me, even if it doesn't show

I know it shouldn't be this hard, to just be here and exist

I guess it tends to help when I know that I'd be missed

Anyway, it's getting late, the dreams are calling me

Maybe now I'll get some sleep, since I've set my feelings free

I'll always love you father, I hope that's never been in doubt

I'll leave you here, but never fear

I'm okay, peace out✌

An ever-burning sun

Isn't much fun

My anger is something

That I can't outrun

It's seems like it's more

Like an endless war

That's being fought in the bowels

Of my mortal core

What kind of god

Would make me this way

Put a demon in me

That just wants to play

To cut and to hurt

To watch the blood spurt

Sometimes it's easier

To just go inert

So next time you see

A quiet guy like me

Keep your comments to yourself

And you'll avoid a killing spree

A thousand eyes

To see through lies

A man that can never

Be surprised

A mind that knows

When the end is close

But is no longer chained

To feeling morose

A heart bereft of any fear

That emotions most sincere

Will take away the ones I love

If I don't hold to my thin veneer

A soul that once was tainted black

Will no longer be held back

Frayed by sin and hateful thoughts

No longer poised for addled attack

The man I am is drawn to this

To the man that I could be

Someone who helps to find a way

To finally be free

They say a lot of things about dying. The things you feel, the bright light, the memories of your life that bubble up to the surface like spiteful little temptations of all the things you never got any closure for.

Waking up standing completely upright in a green meadow cast in golden sunlight wasn’t what I was expecting. At least, not for me. It surprises me.

As does the woman whose very being radiates calm and serenity so strong that for the first time in years, I feel nothing. But not the normal kind of nothing born of world-weary apathy and a subconscious need to stay afloat in a world full of endless emotion. I feel like I’m just another part of this world. A natural part of existence, not struggling to stay afloat, but rather finding myself experiencing effortless…being.

I try to examine her features but it’s as if they keep shifting, over and over. Each time becoming more and more comforting. Matronly almost.

“I’m sorry about the method. I know that must have been quite far from pleasant.” she says, and her voice almost moves me to tears. As if she were the very manifestation of the peace I had been seeking since…forever. Longer than even my conscious memory could divine.

“Where am I?” I ask.

She smiles and I feel the faint streak of sadness dissipate entirely, as if it were never even a possibility.

“There are many names for it. But I believe there is a specific one that you would be most familiar with.” she says, her voice like golden silk.

“…heaven?” I ask.

She smiles again, sadness bleeding into it this time, and nods. I feel my knees buckle and I fall to the ground. I suddenly feel like I’m being ripped apart from the inside, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I’m sobbing through my hands before I even know what’s happened. My family, my life…gone in an instant just like they always said.

I flinch as I feel her kneel down and grab me in a soft embrace. Its like a cross between being hugged by my father when he talked me off the metaphorical ledge, and basking in the sunlight of a spring afternoon.

“Why?” I croak.

“Because you have a destiny that is not contained to just one world.” she whispers sweetly in my ear.

“I don’t get to stay?” I ask her, my voice sounding hurt and pitiful even to me. “What about my father? Is he here? Can I see him?”

She pulls away and looks me in the eyes. She reaches a hand up and strokes the side of my face, and just for a moment I swear that her features turn to that of my mother. “You will see him again, one day. But for now, you must be on your way.”

She lays her hand on my chest and pushes me back. The world before me lurches as if I’m suddenly falling a great distance away. I reach a hand out in reflex. The tranquility of that world leaves me all at once, drowning in all of the pain, with nothing to anchor me. And for just a moment it feels as if that will be my entire existence for eternity.

And then I hit the ground.

I, Phineas Kalengrad, have been alive for quite a long time, even among the standards of mages. And there are many questions we ask ourselves. Why are we here? Where will the future take us? What do the gods, should they truly exist among us, expect from their mortal progeny? And among those most presumptuous of questions that I myself have asked, is this.

What happens to a god when they die?

Do their worshippers simply continue on, blissfully unawares of a deathly wind blowing through the golden halls of the divine? Or is it the death of the worshippers that may cause the undoing of a gods very divinity? Or, perhaps most sinister of all, do the gods themselves make war upon each other? For what are we if not the children of the gods? And what do children do but watch and learn from their parents, mimicking and recreating their actions and choices. Their virtues and sins.

For is it not said that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children? We have made war upon ourselves for centuries upon centuries. Perhaps we like to view the gods as better. Their supposed perfection, something to strive for.

But I ask you, prospective students of the arcane, this most blasphemous of questions.

What if the gods are no less imperfect, no less lost to their baser instincts, than we?

-Phineas Arcturus Kalengrad

Professor of Arcane Philosophy

Royal Academy of Kadamn

The taste of blood on my lips should be a clear sign that I should have just walked away. But, for better or worse, I don’t have that in me. I never have. Which why I’m in yet another fist fight with another man that I don’t even know. Because I can’t do what everyone else does. I can’t look away when I see something that I don’t like. Something that is objectively wrong.

For instance, watching this piece of shit, berate the unfortunate young girl behind the counter because his coffee wasn’t sweet enough. What the fuck that has to do with her mother or this supposed assumption that she’s a drug addict just because she has a tattoo, I have no idea. But I’ll be god damned if putting a couple holes in his oh so perfect smile and staining his crisp suit with his own blood didn’t feel good.

Unfortunately for me, this guy must be one of those stockbrokers with a weight set in his office, if the sledgehammer blow of a right hook he levies my way is anything to go by. Don’t judge a book by its cover goes both ways, I suppose. I was never very good at taking my own advice.

I spit blood to the side and straighten up, glaring daggers at him as I do so.

“What bitch?! You want another, come fucking get it!” he shouts.

The barista is already on the phone, probably calling the cops as we speak. Everyone else is either watching us like we’re the only show in town or trying to make a swift exit while being noticed as little as possible.

I inwardly sigh. I really don’t want to be arrested again. Then again, that thought would have been a little more useful a few minutes ago. So, fuck it. In for a penny…

“What are the fucking odds? I said that exact same thing to your mother not an hour ago.” I say with the best shit-eating grin I can muster.

He doesn’t say a word. He just lunges forward and before I know it, I’m on the ground getting my teeth knocked in and doing my best to not black out. I’m not the biggest guy, but I’m sure as hell not small either. Having said that, I barely hear the sound of the cops arriving through the sound of my own head being knocked into the floor over and over.

Even through the haze of pain and a possible concussion, I still manage to ask myself how the hell they got here so soon.

A few minutes later, and I’m sitting in the back of a police cruiser with my hands cuffed behind me, once again questioning why the hell I only seem to exist to pick fights on behalf of people who couldn’t give any less of a shit about me and my pseudo-heroic tendencies.

Then I remember that I don’t actually care about them. I mean, I do, but…

I used to be different. I wasn’t always a useless fuck up. Shocker, I know. I had aspirations and dreams like any other. I wanted to be a writer. Write stories to uplift people, show them that they weren’t alone. That I, we, saw them. Really saw them. I was pretty good too, at least according to my professors. And my father.

But then one day, I get a call. My father, the guy that had been there for me through everything; my depression, the suicidal episodes, the clusterfuck of a so-called relationship with my mother and everything that she had put me, us, through, was dead.

He took a razor to his wrists so deep that the coroner likened it to the grand canyon. Everything he had told me, all of the building me up and trying to put his fuck-up of a broken son back together, and I never had the decency to even notice the shadows that had gripped him too.

My brother and sisters were distraught, my mother was shattered. And me? The ice-cold void in my chest that had once tempted me to darkness, had turned red-hot. My depression turned to anger, and everyone around me started to slowly dissipate. No one wants to be around, when the rage inside you could burn down a house. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

It’s been three years since then. I’ve been in and out of prison a couple of times now. And now it’s starting to look like there might another all-expenses paid trip to the iron pen in my near future.

To be perfectly honest, the only thing keeping me going now is…fuck, I don’t even know anymore.

Twenty-seven fucking years old, and I haven’t done shit. No career, no savings beyond the $17.23 in my bank account, and definitely no romantic prospects either. Nothing that could really go anywhere anyway.

I’m just throwing punch after metaphorical punch at myself until I notice that the road has gotten a little bumpier than usual. I look up through the window and see cow pastures. I frown.

“Hey, Poncherello, get a little lost or what?” I say to the cop in the front seat.

He doesn’t say anything. My frown deepens.

“Hey, seriously. What the fuck?” I insist, getting right up on the cage separating me from him.

He still doesn’t say anything. After another minute he pulls off on just about the shadiest looking road you’ve ever seen, and then stops the car. He gets out and then opens my door and pulls me out.

“Hey, watch it!” I say as he throws me face first to the ground.

It’s when I turn over and see him aiming his sidearm at me that I start to actually panic.

“I’m sorry.” he says. Then I see tears start to run down his face. “She said that I have to do this. You have to go to her, and then she’ll be safe. She’s my daughter, I need her to be okay.”

I don’t even know how to begin processing everything that he just said. I just slowly hold my hands up in surrender.

“Okay officer, it’s fine. We’re fine, right? I don’t know who you’re talking about, but I can promise you that you have the wrong guy. I’m nobody. There’s no reason-”

“NO!” he says and puts the gun closer to my face but still too far out of reach to even try to get it away from him. I flinch. “She said! I have to do it!” he yells at me.

I may not be good at fighting, or at least not trained in any actual fighting style. But I do have one thing going for me. Something I got from my dad. And the irony of this particular skill isn’t lost on me either. I know how people think, a little too well actually.

And I can put things together with relative ease. Context clues and what not.

I’m the kind of guy that would accidentally figure out the secrets my friends and family wanted to try and keep under wraps, and then feel the need to hide it until they actually told me. I never really knew why or how, but for some reason I was really good at that. It was part of what made me a great writer. Making believable characters do believable things.

So, in this moment, I try to call on that, hoping that maybe I can use it to get out of this situation that I still can’t even believe is really happening to me. Hoping that its more useful now than when it might have helped me save my father.

“What’s your name?” I ask. He hesitates, because of course he does. “I just want to know the name of the guy whose about to kill me. I’ll be taking it to my grave anyway, assuming you plan to even dig a hole that is.” I mentally kick myself. I talk when I’m nervous, and the last thing I need is to say something stupid and piss the guy off.

“…Travis.” he says after a minute that feels like a year.

“Look Travis, I don’t know who told you to kill me, but I doubt that your daughter would want to know that her life was bought with murder. By her own father no less. There has to be some way I can help, man. I’m here to help. Just tell me what I need to do.” I tell him, but the stress in my voice is evident.

He swallows hard, then shakes his head. “No no no. I have to. I have to…”

“No, you don’t. Please Travis. I have family, same as you. Don’t do this. We can-”

The sound of a gun being fired fills the air before I can finish, and I drop to the ground. It’s strange, because I swear that I can feel a breeze skating across my insides. One second I’m looking up at the afternoon sky, and the next I see Travis standing over me. Tears are streaming down his face, and landing on mine. “I’m so sorry. So sorry…” he sobs. I see him slowly raise the gun in his hand and aim it at my head.

And then nothing but the same black void I’ve known for years. I guess it finally got me.

There are so many times everyday, where I lose myself to a daydream. So much detail, so much emotion. Like it could be truly real if only I knew how to reach out and make it so.

And then I'm dragged back, kicking and screaming into a reality where I've already given up most days. Where I'm just a guy with a head full of stories that no one can ever truly know.

I feel like if I really knew how to show them, people might be able to draw strength from them. To learn about themselves through the eyes and tongues of people they will never see. Places that agonizingly only exist in the naive and twisted psyche of just another human artist among infinite others.

I'd like that. I'd really like that.

But the war against myself takes up whatever time I might spend making my reality the kind of dream that I live out in my mind every single day.

A war with rules, no limit on the way that my mind commits untold war crimes on me every single day. The weight of every possible mistake multiplied by a margin so large that it loses meaning.

What kind of god would create a being that exists with the talent to bring impossible tales of wonder and growth to life, but is chained and tortured by that same talent, left alone on the outside of the things they create?

A stranger looking in.

Maybe I'm just another egotistical asshole. Who knows...