Foreword: The written word speaks to us on many levels. When put together they can communicate to the reader the writers memories and thoughts. Memories of love, happiness, sadness, longings, warnings, regrets and life experiences. The list is endless but depends upon how the writer weaves those words together to create a picture that the reader can visualize and follow in his mind. Some of us have a special ability to go deeper into the written word and they create beautiful Poetry. Poets could be seen as memory keepers, they have an ability to mould the written word into a form that is long forgotten and rarely used in our busy lives.
In times past, people who could write were a treasured commodity and were employed as record keepers. What would it be like if we could remember our past lives accurately and bring them into the present with the power of the written word.
What you are about to read is exactly that, a writers words and memories penned into an Epic Canto, which unfortunately isn't complete or finished and I doubt ever will be as the moment of writing has now passed. However, it's contents give a unique glimpse to those who are able to read with an open mind, into a past and persons we cannot currently verify the reality of and I present it to you the reader, with full permission, to judge for yourself the authenticity based on my knowledge of the author.
The author is James Horak, someone I am very close to. I have made it my business to know him and as such, I know he doesn't lie nor embellish and is a rare and unique person in that respect. I trust that he would not, as a writer, a man and poet, pen something so important as this Canto that didn't give us an insight that we should take heed and notice of. I was granted access to this Canto freely within only days of meeting James, they made a profound impression upon me then and continue to do so every time I re-read them and they WILL require numerous readings in order to fully grasp what James has written. Please read them in the order they are written and let the mind find it's own order.
Victoria Baron Copley
Consciousness is not limited by anything but underdeveloped expectation... JCH 2010
Canto I
What shall follow are non-chronological segments of a tale whose authenticity you will have the presumed audacity to pass upon. Take heed that you do so wisely, neither out of incredulity nor spite.
Otherwise your lot may fall, as did mine, upon countless ages of unrequited good works still yet to satiate the pressing need to make amends to Gods your awareness still waits to apprehend...well.
Canto I
In the land of terraced stone pyramids pointing to an ever
blood thirsting sun...
I am Quetzechoatl.
He who rides upon the Plummed Serpent, thought to mark one
Ending its New Beginning.
But I am not.
These people call me that, that I would be but another part
of what they paint their dreams
Relentlessly:
The copper smell of endless steaming blood tracing down altar
blood grooves
to mix with oceans.
No, I have come to offer new metaphors for what they make of
the Meanings
that frame their Works.
And I will either set them free of this blood fever or.....
present them with new masters
that will.
It is only at such times and for such Purpose I come to Fallen host,
cast out island planet
where failed souls
suffer aimlessly
to try purpose
well.
Copyright April 2001 James C. Horak
Additional Notes:
I intend this to be but one Canto of many. I may present some of the others here, but not all. Even though the "tale" is not complete without them.
JCH
Canto II
Rome had not fallen. She was pushed, bruised and battered from the inside, her precious substance trailing to Byzantium like the dying pig dealt the dirty slit in that final run to lose her insides. Just to save a little work for teaming slaughter.
Giving those flying the Red Cross something to sack to save the same effort and avoid the Saracen, some nine hinging centuries later. *Give or take a century or two.
Malthus had not visited her in time...nor had the wise of her enemies.
All of whom had her blood, not just on the outside, but the inside. Bravely and lusting so much alike...all to come to commonly inevitable ends.
And I, her Patron, had deserted her?! Hardly. Count the lives I gave her back. Count those maddened hearts I quieted, Sulla, Caligula, Nero...to name but a few. Just so that I might entertain the rare splendors of Augustus Caesar, Antony, Cladius, the mighty clans that shone through the squalid bickering of Patrician arrogance.
Men of grandeur, men that knew vanquishing a foe meant to make a whole race indelibly an enemy. Granting citizenship and favor to common men of brave heart.
Not even Sparta had shown such wonderful council. An eon and nothing so wonderful had blessed the earth. Wonderful enough to give a dying soldier's spilled blood meaning.
I am her Patron, unknown to you, highest God of the Etruscan Priest Caste.
God, in that I am strong enough to strike down even the dearest when they would defeat themselves...if for no other reason than to save them the final despoliation, shame.
Lament of the Fallen to God
It makes no difference,
Water has washed under the bridge.
You have stoned me--yet,
Water reforms the gap
And the stone's smooth-likeness.
It is my best to know this,
Not to prod memory further--
Further than forgiveness comes
And where kindness is out-paced.
Let the water wash past.
Not so long ago, still
I sat at Your table.
The room seemed larger than before.
Inside the walls whispered.
Even when Yours was One Voice repeated,
One of, among...with the others.
Honesty darkened with Your Brow.
For whom do You reserve the Word?
Outside they laugh, the others laugh.
We have known of the others, You and I.
We have never known What We are
(For We are not like the others)
And cannot see Ourselves but in each Other.
--To know and be helpless to remedy,
Instead, to seek stones
For mutual targets that are...
tragically mutual.
Water washes, will always wash.
Copyright � May 2001 James C. Horak
Canto III
The tradition began there. Of those that could see the blue flame.
They came to that smooth oval surface knowing full well without words it was of and about other worlds...what they called of the Great Spirit.
Some of them had room for knowing, so I gave them something to take away.
I had been a long time there. Reckoned in eons.
This place I kept with fused silicate and armoton metal put together under pressure
as a gas then taken to a solid without ever losing integrity as a liquid.
It could not be broached, and I might stay until called again.
The day I began the tradition Yahpuah came. Placing his hand on the glassine surface,
he asked to know how to help his people.
He would give his blood for them, even go into the strange slave bondage of a war captive.
Pleading, he described the fever upon all the children and old women.
Could he take it all upon himself?
I broke with my own. Giving him just a little of what had sat so idle all of these countless ages.
He received what he needed, and I, now a Lord Jim among savages.
My great uncle, the last of the Old World.
Knew what stood before him that day...in the cave.
It had pushed up, all the way from just above earth's mantle.
In moments, sheathed with the uplift of Tatra Mountains,
it came from where it had been placed.
Like the spire of some mammoth cathedral of glassine strength
that nothing of this earth might mar.
Wonderful engine, playing moon motion still, holding with its
others the parity to hold moon to earth...the alien moon
Taken from its Martian cradle to perform as it had there,
to bring life to one and leave death for the other.
We build...for nothing comes solely of time. Anything living
has been our nurtured.
We protect...nothing stands alone against fusion star, more
ambivalent in its wake, than earth human in his deed.
We provide the mineral, wrested from the firmament and drenched
by the sun so its substance becomes manna, promise of all life.
Among those who can compress time began Purpose.
And what vacuum must be to think so much from accidents come!
Copyright April 2001 James C. Horak
Canto IV
The Abroyt were wonders of their worlds...almost as far as the warmth from their sun could touch.
Even in stellar infancy they had not sent their own atop Roman candles into empty black of off-world night. Little wonder that when it finally came to adventuring beyond their realms, realms that bordered on the edge of vast gravitic anomaly, they would bio-tech-engineer the very beings best suited to do it...to travel into empty night and have no relent for what they left behind.
In their early nomenclature the USAF gave away they knew of these bio-engineered entities.
It was inherent to their designation of them, EBE, Extra-Biological-Entity.
They had their own use for these hapless creatures, now derelict from their objective...
with the Abroyt long gone almost an eon ago...especially now they could make them.
But then it happened, the EBEs went berserk.
Nature is our Protector, whether as moral guide or provider...whether as Creator or White Goddess.
But we cannot be protected from ourselves. Nor from the acquisition of vain self-image the EBEs contracted from man as he trafficked with them unwisely.
For now the EBE would be a specie, having sensual and reproductive ability. It would have desire...
It would have soul. Even if it had to take these things from man.
Even if one endless gruesome experiment after another would be performed, age after age after age.
The Abroyt, however, were still involved, long gone but still involved. Not wishing to overstep boundaries, they had made a creature with no genetic number that could be specified.
That could never biologically reproduce, that could never contain genetic knowledge.
That could never possess a soul.
Vibrational Integrity
I heard you just the other day,
the brave words, remorselessly given,
That still won't go away.
To you, all of these disturbed "illusions"
were but created, needlessly spoken,
Challenging one favorite delusion.
That madness exists without cause.
Copyright May 2001 James C. Horak
Canto V
It was not enough to take what they had and humble them in the streets before man as I will you, before God. Even ripping away babies at breast to behead their powdered skin mothers.
Dancing in the streets with sightless eyed heads upon poles.
While your Marat bathes in their tubs waiting to be shaved a little too well by a wench tired of living.
Only the genius of a Blake or Sir Hugo can find any beauty,
separating what little justice and/or mercy that remains and telling us, by doing so,
we might still have a little grace left, perhaps even...a few more centuries of such folly.
I am Gabriel now, but my sword never thirsted for so much blood.
Let me relent but a little...just to find something that might temper this fury shaking its fists
all the way to the Gates of Heaven.
The Resurrection
The light of early morning fell through
the garret opening with warmth to touch,
arouse, to tender. Mingling with window bars
it sent their image with itself, along its
downward course. The smoke of mist it raised
gathered on the glass to pull the air's last
restraint to day, the frost, and inward still
crept upon the corners least its showers for
the panes be lost.
Swollen near a hand might move to kindle
yet its own...and inward, too, a tribute owed
that a new warmth paid.
A face would raise, a tear would fall and
mingle with the dust as scaffolds would
upon the panes presently adjust.
Copyright April 2001 James C. Horak
Canto VI
When does the secret yearning we have for what touches our dreams and reaches beyond the daylight world, know our soul?
What challenges our faithfulness to promise, and holds answering lust to more stead than knowing love?
How will fear for the future allow us time to pursue something more than to but digress,
again and again, away from a course that comes to these answers?
These are questions more important to us than the brevity of lifetimes.
Lifetimes that recreate the same failures and where we learn the value for not
failing only after the value is diminished.
Would we view life as some carnival ride taken on a dare...new to possibility,
with the resolve to try that next level of testing our courage? And when the rider
could be even more brilliant by grasping the unknowns haunting the past with doubt?
Just by venturing, without weighing one single thing but to know something new.
Child Wonder
Nothing is more astute than thee
meddlesome, brazen little gnome.
Head too big, feet and legs unsure,
Incredibly frightened to be alone.
Testing everything, then back again...
to pull kitten's tail and puppy's ear.
Punishing the air and whatever else is there.
Never questioning that exhuberance....
until you're murderously told to.
wow..
ReplyDeletethese are great james!
teloc