Back At Cosmic Station 2025 / The Desert Queen

I am in agreement with the Back To The Future trilogy in that the future was ten years ago. Now is simply the far future. There are just too many absent for me to call this the present. In a lighter note, Clara really did blind Doc with science! Great Scott! I suppose that my younger self would be surprised that older me has absolutely no fear of death at all. That no longer existing self would also probably not understand the route that led me to this lack of fear. While many obtain it through belief in God and Heaven, I have obtained it through the simple knowledge that even death itself could never hurt me directly anywhere close to how it has hurt me by passing me over while taking others. Death hurts the ones it leaves behind. So.... No. The reaper himself does not scare me. I'll stand toe to toe with that sonofabitch and try to get in a few punches on my way out. I have a bone to pick and a score to settle. Death itself does not scare me. Only aspects... Anything painful, scary, prolonged, and some of the things I watched my dearest loved ones go through, now that scares the plum hell out of me. But death? He's a punk and I will kick his bony ass all over the lot. I dare you. Don't sing it. Bring it. I double dare you... Otherwise, how is your Saturday? It's a bit nippy, but the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and if this were a Disney movie, I'd break into song. If I could be the end sum of all the attributes of everyone I have ever loved, I think I just might be consider myself to be worthy... Of whatever this may be. But... I think the very aspect of each and every one of them being able to be those very things I couldn't be, beyond what I believed myself capable to be.... Is what made me love them the most.... for their courage, for their strength, for their resolve, for their devotion... Like the wise scarecrow, the courageous lion, the compassionate tin man... They just awed and inspired me... Just to be little more than I was... To live up to their image of a son, brother, or friend, and is also that impossible contradiction.  For that was what I admired about them.... What they could be that I could not.... Of how I feel such a lesser being without them beside me for context... For that part of myself that lived within their being.... And so lost without them..... All we have is time and each other.... But it is not in infinite proportions.  Am I making any damn sense? Probably not. Either way, Live From Cosmic Station 2025, It's Saturday Night!



The Desert Queen

 (A warm-up exercise number 3)
 

I have been walking aimlessly through this sparse place where the sun, that mighty red eye of Ra, rages and takes back what it once so generously gave. How many days since THE DAY (that final day)? That very last day anything long ago ever would mean or matter again? How many days have I been out here? Can I even call them days? If such a thing still exists, these have been like none other, yet still I can't tell them apart, having blended like the surroundings, divided only by the cold stillness of the night, by the unwinking stars, by the time warp of exhaustion that always summons the new day. This tag team of different punches, the blazing sun, the stark night, have left me seeing stars both day and night, mourning each morning the death of an illusion, wandering the desert, wondering just how I could have been the one foolish enough to fool even myself. Yet, you still see me looking back to the east, because I can not bear to be without the vision. There was once a queen who came from out of the desert, who gave all the creatures pause, making even the viscous King Cobra retreat in awe... There were once eyes that spoke of a far away land, diamonds set in a face that outshines even the blazing sun of that place. Many a dying man in endless search of water thought himself transferred from out of this harsh place. But where? A vision? Heaven? An Angel? That final oasis? Or is this just the final delirium before everything goes forever dark? She was the anti-Medusa, turning an ancient heart of stone into flesh once again, a countenance that could make the desert bloom with flowers no traveler has ever before seen (or ever would again). She could open gateways to universes of brilliance that make all here seem so pale and in shadow. And if such visions would only stay, all would have been all I could have ever needed to see. But the vision fades, for the very moment she would turn away, everything is left to be stone and sand once again. It was once said she could make the dead forget and think themselves alive again, that indeed she could make the old feel the brightness of youth long forgotten, alive once again. Was she born to a mother and father? Did she descend from the pantheon of the gods? Or was she just a ghost born of a reaching mind and a starving heart? And have others truly seen what I can never forget? Or am I just a dying man, hallucinating, dreaming, fading like every color in this dreaded desert? Have I ever seen anything at all or am I going insane? Did I not see every ray of light bend around those features. Did I not see even the harsh sun softening its light to a golden celestial mist simply to match the very shadows with the light that she herself brings? Did I not see even the mighty lizard bow, knowing the true royalty of this desert had arrived? Have I truly been deluding myself this whole time? And if so, why? It would be wrong to blame the desert for the mirage, or even the mind that conjured it. There are things in this barren land that benefit no one, could never be blamed on anyone. The sand just is. The rock just is. The lizard just is. The desert just is. And true so too for the heart and the soul. It is so easy to blame the gods when they are found to have been only human all along. Some say peace is silence, as if tranquility were the absence of senses, but I know better, for I have seen, heard, and felt true contentment from the simple presence of all of my dreams. Peace is not silence, but a heartbeat, of hope and future long lost to me, long relegated to the grave, yet born anew before my very eyes to touch the sun again. Peace is not silence, but a voice that moves like a song, like the sun whose light and warmth revives my very soul. Peace is neither an empty room nor an empty heart. Peace is what heals even the brokenness I have long forgotten. Peace is what reminds me of what it is to be whole, and I find it in all of my dreams.