The Burning Theory

From the shore I watched the scene unfold.... And I hesitated.

Now she will not stop because I have failed and I can see the towers burning from here. She is my Kali, my destroyer goddess. The very air burns with her fury. They should have never turned their affections from her. Her rage has become tangible; I can breathe it in, taste it on my tongue. It is as bitter as ash that falls to the ground in a terrible flurry of torched flesh and cinder. She is my cinder goddess.

I hesitate. I stand on this shore frozen in my own dramatic inertia torn between my urge to return to the sea and to rush into her arms. Her terrible arms, that hold many swords and many severed heads. Her victims stare with slackened maws gaping at her bloodied hands holding all their pasts and futures like a crushing vice. She was their mother, their lover, and now she will be their destruction.

They should never have turned from her. Never have forgotten her awful beauty. They had once cowered in temples filled with lilies and chrysanthemums and the smoke of a thousand perfumed pyres; they had scraped their knees and soaked blood into her sacred ground. Her womb grew heavy with their seed and she rebirthed their world a thousand times; she fed the world with her own flesh, turned it, brought the sun to them, coaxed the crops from the ground, stood the moon still and filled the rivers with fish and bounty.

But they turned from her, they tore down her temple stone by stone and salted the earth with their ungrateful tears. One by one they forgot her silken skin and delicate feet. They lifted her veil of hair and toppled her idol from the center of every city. They grew indulgent and fat on their own importance. They forgot her. They forgot the horrible truth of her existence; her ability to turn the rain to acid with her kiss, the sharpened cruelty of her smile, her eyes burning since before the time of ancient gods, her hand upon every heart ever born into this world or the next.

I have been her lover for a thousand of a thousand years. I have lain in her many arms when the world was still. When the air dare not touch her for fear of its own death, I would slide my hands down her skin to the hum of her eternal songs. She would lay her swords aside to cradle me against her breast. I bore the stars for her to claim her love and laid kisses upon her brow to calm her troubled sleep. I folded myself to her chest and listened to the many heartbeats of the dieing dreams of a universe of crumbling civilizations. I ran my fingers in the miles of her flowing hair and drew her to me. I swore my eternal adoration and meant every word I uttered.

But now I hesitate on this endless shore because I know I have already failed. She slipped from me as they forgot her dark divinity; as they forgot just how much they needed her. I could not hold her as her rage grew no matter how hard I tried to soothe her with my gentle caresses. They have robbed me of her love. She will burn the world clean now with all the fire in her belly. The tremors of her wrath will be felt in the space in between every quivering sob and I will never lay in her arms again. She is destruction. My lover, she is destruction. And they will pay with flame and flesh and pain and suffering for ever being so bold and arrogant as to turn their backs on her terror and beauty. They have become the designers of their own deaths and the catalysts of my eternal loneliness and sorrow.

I turn away and hesitate as the towers burn down around me and the screams fill my ears across this sea of my great and terrible lost love. I lay my head in my hands and I begin to weep. I think that I shall never stop.

Fury in Love

I am slow with you. Like poison. Every move is deliberate; calculated. I am sliding into your veins. Even from this distance with another woman asleep beside you; you can feel me pulling at you. Pushing behind your eyelids. Pulling at your strings. Come on, little puppet, dance for me.

I am a quiet killer. An assassin in your dreams. You try to rise up, angry, and you try to scream. You want to stop me but I have destroyed all of your predecessors. What makes you think you will succeed where they have failed?

Can you see the demon inside me? This thing that has taken me over and replaced every spot of light and love that ever existed behind my eyes? My own anger rose so high and my hatred became so acid that the demon found me. I had been waiting for it all along. It knew where I was. It could feel me pulsing under the weight of my own rage at ever allowing you to enter me. Letting you in again and again to try and kill me with your slippery smile and soft words. The demon invaded me through every pore of my body until it infected the very cells of my being moving along the pathways the hate had laid down in my heart. It made me what I am. I am monster. I am damage. I am Fury.

Weep for what you have made me. Quiver on your knees at the realization that this weapon I hold has your name upon it as I have your name upon my lips. Know that I have given up my humanity to become this for you. I will bury my love in you up to the hilt. I will kiss the blood from your lips. And I will hold you as you die because I still love you and everything that I ever was is dieing with you.

It was all just a dream...

I was dreaming about you last night. You kept showing up in all the places of my secret mind; the lake by the highway, the apartment where I had never been, a park I think does not really exist. You were there. You were mysterious and brooding like when we were young. You had a long black coat on and your hair was blue and black. I think you were waiting for me but I was never going to be able to reach you with all these obstacles in my way. I knew someone else (someone prettier and thinner than me) would find you and draw you away before I could ever make my way to you. Why does this highway never end? Why are you always walking away? If I scream will I wake up?

I've been having nightmares. Every night I dream I am in a darkened room and I desperately need the lights on. I can feel something in the dark waiting for me. Waiting to reach up and grab me. Something bad is going to happen in all this darkness. I try every light in every room. They glow and flicker for a moment and die. I'm still in the dark and I can see faces peering at me illuminated from somewhere under the skin. I know they are ghosts. Who are you the ghosts of? Why are you here? To distract me from the mass of arms and hands reaching up behind me to drag me down? Where is the head of this many limbed monster? I want to tear it off so it will stop clawing and grabbing at me. But even when I get it's sharped-toothed head between my thighs and dig my fingers into its neck and twist and the flesh tears away until I holding it's monstrous form in my hands-- all those arms still grab at me; choking me, dragging me. Where are they dragging me? I scream for my mother and wake up.

Tonight I am in a very old house. It's Victorian form looms over me. It twists and turns and the walls change as I pass from corridor to corridor. This place is shifting; breathing, living. At the top of a stairway that wasn't there before I find a haunted room. I can feel the spirits twisting around me; disturbing the gossamer curtains covering the windows that cast the room in a filmy light. Did you die here? Or did I die here?

Maybe it is you who is haunting me. Sending me these dreams to invade my mind so I will never sleep again. I will become a waking dream walking through an enveloping fog in the really real world. I will be the ghost. People will pass through me with a dim recollection of touching something soft; something warm. I will run my hands through their minds. Touch their memories. And stream my fingers through their hearts. Whatever is coming to pull me down will grasp at my feet and my shoulders and will find itself passing through mist. It's many arms will mean nothing.

But it's still waiting for me. It's eyes are glowing red. It's hiding in my dark room. Please turn the lights on. I need the lights on.

The Last Time

The last time I saw her she was standing in the doorway of that derelict building with her high heels and stockings in her hand, the gun in her other hand and the rest of them dead at her feet. The light spilled from the doorway behind her illuminating her form into a sharply defined silhouette. Even as she picked her way through the pools of blood, careful not to splash any onto herself, she maintained her feminine poise. Each footfall carefully planned to sway her hips with delicate hypnotizing ease. I could not stop starring. I desperately wanted to tear my eyes away to survey the carnage at her feet but I could only see her.

She lifted her hand and pressed her finger to her lips, mouthing "shhhhh," as if the dead men on the floor were only sleeping and we dare not wake them. Each of her footsteps made no sound even on the creaking ancient pine floor; like she was a cat with silent bird-stalking paws. The gun in her hand stood out in stark hardness to her inherent softness; the gentle roundness of her hips, the sloping curve of her shoulder, the delicate bow of her lips and her fingers curled around that hardened steel. The gun seemed to be a man-made abomination to her organic movements and illuminated skin. The precision with which she wielded it, however, and the ease with which she now slung it into her waistband, unnerved me. I started to shake ever so slightly with the horror of it, but still I could not take my eyes off of her.

She glided down the steps of that house, now tomb, and covered the distance on the rocky ground in her bare feet as if she was moving with the currents of air. The wind seemed to shift around me as she neared. I could smell her faint floral perfume mixed with the metallic scent of blood and gunpowder as she picked up her skirt to avoid dragging it in the dust. I saw the glimpse of her shapely leg which I knew would feel like silk if I were to trace my hand up her thigh to the lace panties she wore. I glanced at the dead men who had saw the same flash of flesh. They would never touch her.

She now stood in front of me; not a single droplet of blood on her carefully arranged outfit, no shards of bone in her meticulously styled hair, she hadn't even smudged her eyeliner with the exertion of what she had done. She lay her hands upon my face and then slipped her arms slowly around my neck. She held my gaze steadily as she pressed her body so close to mine that I could feel her breath through her ribs. I traced my hands down her spine until I hit the cold lump of metal in the small of her back. Before I could think of that instrument of death and her ability to play it like a harp of destruction, she pressed her lips to mine and darted her tongue into my mouth.

Soon my vision clouded with the halo of her perfume and sweet breathe expanding my chest like it was the only thing keeping me alive. I sunk into her arms and drank her kiss like I was dieing of thirst in a deep hot desert. I laced my fingers into her hair and drew her closer to me; hungry now for her taste. When she drew her mouth away from mine, she slipped her hand down my arm and grasped my wrist...

"Come on," she whispered, "it's time we left..."