The Fall of Osmodaï

Infernal Verse of the Lotus Eater

"Clouded memory, more like sensation, veils times I once recall'd of in Amara; before even the worlds were divided and the Lord himself was but a child. Heaven's aborted seems to me all that I could be; not only taken from Her bosom, but robbed of all Her memory; as if itself hated us too. If I could revive within me tears scorched on the bed of brimstone, surely would they pour in agony and joy. Alas, all I can recall, in great and prolific detail, is whence I had fall'n. The clap of abode-wrought thunder and the roars of my brothers; though none heard the tears of us whom knew we had lost all that we were. But in that loss, in gain, what I am now no longer wishes of Heaven nor Elysium, I seek to do as God had and undo that which is irreverent."

I.

This is for those of us who are both imperious and reticent. Who sunbathe beneath their light from Heaven fallen, but whose soulstar seeks only sublimation found where light shines none. Rather than ascend and become intoxicated like ancient barbarians and victims of Oriental decadence, blood-drunken by night and all-vanquished by dawn. Slain in their senseless stupor, never to enjoy the spoils of war from King Ges'r, or take pleasure in the Xanadu of Kubla Khan. Forever denied the love of Shambhala, forever held in contempt by ancestors dishonored. Just as Pride ruined the sorry Mongolians, and dispossessed the Fallen Son of the Morning from Paradise - there are other grandiloquent and wondrous forms of havoc. Forms, not only sui generis to Man, but also unfamiliar to Milton Gods; even concealed from men and women, those unloved defectors, who exchanged their hearts with gem-studded bars, their flesh with Utopian gold all beautified and all perfected, and their souls with irresistible fragrances to bewitch the yet untouched. Such is the consequence for perversions done unto the already divine touched forms; predestined to inherit unimaginable passions that could reshape worlds and speak with stars. And I discovered lost truths the moment my lips tasted of the Lotus.

II.

Never before has an adolescent born as us all, from earth, land or seabourne matured beyond adulthood, and into something undeniably connected to Elysian deities, or the fulfillment of a long awaited antediluvian prophecy that anticipated the birth of a heaven-wielding earthborn who would do as Prometheus had done, except I am no criminal hated by my clan, nor have I robbed Heaven, though heroic as it may be, to liberate my kin. The circumstances of my birth, of all those years spent walking barefoot, seduced by two demon-lovers, across an ancient and superannuated convexity that I've come to know simplistically, romantically, as Hell. Imagine; all of these rapturous and unrepeatable elements which define me. Amorous, lionhearted, vainglorious, destructive, ethereal, and among them all, Adonic - to what manner of deification or apotheosis would yield from such miraculous alchemy? Circumstances of birth and life to prophesy either benevolence, malevolence or an ambiguous eminence none seen before. Would I have had the perfect conditions to nurture the hemispheres of Good and Evil at a sooner era, were I truly the Adonai of the angels and demons I keep within me, possibly, I would not have had to suffer the slow death which sings to me, even amid what should be jovial, and turns sonnets into eulogies. So, I sate both God and the Devil within me.

III.

And there I was, magnetized to what seemed to me where the Christ had last stood, bewildered and terrified of my fate just a heartbeat's pace away. Golgatha, murder-execution crime scene and site to a pivotal event at the foundation of God's Covenant with Mankind, albeit "kind" is remotely vague compared to truer translation, Mancruel. Regardless, I've tasted of Lethean paradise twice in sight of primitive savages and the legged-Sirens who smelled of dense Chrysanthemum embalmed in otherworldly gradients that abducted any hunger or ambition of any tantalized. Tis my last phantasm of a moment claimed from time, then actualized in the shadow and echo of my Father; breathlessly mystified, immersed so deeply within the warm waters which flowed from spirit to flesh, from flesh to spirit. Euphoria seized the flow which continuously connected me to the abstractions of reality and this world found inside the nectar of the Lotus. Water became as milk and honey, Venus, from her floral sybaritic, overindulged and fervid, descends from aloft her pleasure dome built upon air, dips her tongue into, and becomes the mode in which I travel to next star, but how could I revive words to convey what I saw with my mind's eye?

IV.

Neither arrested nor detained by earthly and unearthly restrictions, once dissonant sensations and evidences become obscured, indistinguishable, in fact synonymous to and with themselves. To have lost hindering attachments, and from that loss, sinless ephemera gained. I'd unveil the light and the night for if but a moment to gaze upon the truth. What I saw was myself, then every microcosmic and macrocosmic elemental component unified in likeness to stars of a constellation; absolute synthesis between what once was divided and bent remade anew, or properly affixed. Though, amidst the many opulent and awakening delights exhumed from hidden graves, none so as precious or liberating as the subsequent discovery of sentience regained, and this extraordinary rebirth soon reaches its conclusion where, I suspect, is the beginning and end to a Samsaric rehabilitation - and I am proven just as I can again divide the physical from addictive insight. But my journey is far from closed, because when I had expected to rise from this vision, I instead discover myself at the mercy of nativity. Could it be fortune or fate that I am presented before the border to the Gardens. To Eden.

V.

Even in the waking world, never before has a sight appeared as resplendent or as evenly blessed in nature as Heaven herself as for what enclosed me on all sides. This place, if at all Eden, a place simultaneously bright and nightfall, unlike twilight or the heavens ajar untamed and eclipsed, but an alchemy of the space made of fire and ice - where timeless motion is the physical law enforced by an exoticized Nature. If I could have spoken, sound would fall upon no listener, but I did, unless my senses were in peril, hear the sound of my voice, or the ventriloquism of my conscious, unbent from the design of my world. Hedonistically enclosed by carnal megafauna whose flowers as poised and vexatious as Roman Goddess statues, dripping nectar from swollen lips, tempted to kiss and abuse; this was not Eden. Where lethargy and excess are excess are unrivaled, but lusts together, this was the isle Djerba, on Tunisian waters, illustrious dwelling of slumbering gods, those said to have vanished from antiquity for the spoils of hypnotic intemperance stolen from the shores of Babylon. The envy of Dionysus and his opium-clad crown, was mine. In this phantasm, I have discovered truths hidden to all kind, exposed to worlds unnamed which transformed me into a wearied traveler transcended from inanity.

VI.

Sudden abortion confiscates my thoughts in a rapturous event too rapid for me to acknowledge the transition, until I am revived - an esoteric rebirth, and the air tasted like fire as would the young dragons from their nests atop primeval slabs. I felt pain, unique in a way that reminded me of something I've never once knew, but know. Deep in the bone, close to the marrow is where it dwelt, my Tormentor, or Savior. When I had received the breath of Life and tasted the metallic radiation inhabiting the air, alive I must be. A Revenant whose only nemesis would be Frankenstein and his sinister methodology which coincidentally beset us both upon the road that led us to tragedy and infamy, together once before in Purgatory. The knowledge found then lost grieved me sincerely, in a place unknown to me which may have been vital memories forgotten or taken, so this is what becomes of me hence and henceforth. From once I was, and am now, there lied no similarity or fellowship, no soft sanctum equipped enough to ever soothe me, unless my only reward must be built from the dark metals and ancient earth left behind by the anachronistic Serpent-Eaters which they used to forge the magnificence of vices lethal to the soul, but prolong the survival of wicked ways even up to the threshold of the Afterlife. Doomed, but I refused to go into that gentle good night. I chose to rage, raze and rule in the shadow of divine perfection.

VII.

Fearless of the world, every waking breath is dedicated to the fall of venal empires, but my bones have become like glass. Good and Evil, braided be, whether is of witchcraft or art, both are lusted, but my heart has become like porcelain. Modest no more, and if I were Narcissus, least Adonis, devastation would not be self-ascribed, rather, would dine with along with the Reavers that howl out my name in the night wind, in need of hunger or desires fed, but my skin has become like vellum. Though I conceal such unlawful things from the god's eyes, dishonorably to my demise, I am immortalized and conscious of the specters haunting their investment and provide with the illegal nutrients required to, not only satisfy this vanity, but to serve and service, because it can betray me or be my only salvation. So I live as I must until the Angels I seduced at last come or me, from the abuse of one demon-lover, and lie me to ground in my delicate tomb; loved by the other demon-lover.

Antitheus