I am 16, standing upon the beach where once barren earth was dessicate and desolate but if in the womb of God, surrogate Father of a humankind so plaqued by bias and the gluttonous bigotry of subjectivity, relativity. I note that there are just as many occassion for song as there are for silent suffering and weeping. But if I dream only while asleep, I am always, sleeping. There is something within me. There has always been something within me that knows that I am greater than the sum of my parts-and even greater than that. Yet knowing this merely increases my agony and further stultifies any ecstasy. They say that angels gather on the shores at sunrise and that they hear music we cannot, and that they dress in flowing robes of black and billowing white, and that they always know the difference between wrong and right. It has also been said that the one thing they cannot understand is how human mortalkind often seeks just as much solace in Hate as we do in Love. They say that angels walk the earth without ever feeling it beneath theit feet, cool, firm and inviting, instead feeling the "gravitas" of the world only within their hearts. They say that when angels are nigh, we rarely even know it. They also say that angels are among us as we speak, secretly wishing, they were us. This much, at least, we share in common.

     But of the demonic? I often think we are better acquainted with this unseen, dark principality. I have just commited another murder. The blood still teems upon my hands, my blood lust having grown far more compelling than any exalted divination I can draw upon within my animus. And as I stand here, kissing Fear upon the lips, the tongue of Rage enters, my eager orifice shuddering with la douleur exquise, as a primal scream instead escapes, now having found perfect pitch and harmony with the morose choir of a legion of demonic quartets, shattering the fine membrane of the essence.

     Standing here kissing Fear upon the neck, shards of that shattered essence are hurled, piercing the jugular-I, now taking heed, for Fear bleeds, filling the Void to overflowing, a thorough purification, dirtying the means. Standing here, kissing Fear upon the collarbone, a trembling boy with the body of a man, the bone and marrow jutting forth, jagged and weary to cut the lower lip of indifference, releasing a gradual drip of bear-hugged release and a loosening of the jaw, as it falls silent, gracious, to rest upon the charged air. Standing here kissing Fear upon the breast, the Ultimate Symbiosis with the immortal Earthly Mother, who coaxes all to gluttony upon her fecund loam of rancid milk and love of money, the oozing, eager mind splattering all sooty and black upon the heaving bosoms of all One-Nation-Under-God-Indivisible-Figureheads-On-Standby.

     Standing here, kissing Fear upon the navel, a build-up of fire-hazardous lint, clings to the hot, tea-stained incisor, as the ever-livid tongue remains flaccid and imbecilic, and the violent vocal instinct has its say, nonetheless. Standing here, kissing Fear upon the knee, exalted through denigration, as the masochists of intagible and endless archives are filed maniacally for past, present and future use en coda upon the amygdala-all limbic systems a-go, sending a mercurial blood rush to the capillaries, pupils now constricting, vessels dilated then broken, as the kneeling rewards only those who feign submission while living in hypodermic anarchy, and it peels away the tender, bruised flesh of the human Soul, a fat feast of substantial portions.

     Standing here, kissing Fear upon the foot, the unapposable hallux, hairy with arrogance, gives one last whiff of this chemical warfare, a solemn truce of passive resistance is made, a callused heel is raised and I am kicked straight-forth into transcendent absolution. All of my life it has been the very thing which could have destroyed me that has, in the end, been my Saviour. And yet, it is often the things which I thought would save me, that have systematically sought to destroy me. And thus have I worshipped, only Paradox. For I have lived by its laws and creeds. and miraculously, am still here to testify to it. And I often ask how much darkness we must let into ourselves before we can see enough to be enlightened for good. For where the Light is brightest, how the shadows do loiter about, screaming out relentlessly for our acknowledgement, traipsing at our heels like mad, stray, starving orphans, until we succumb to some benign sense of perdition for daring to put Joy before Despair and Living before Dying.

     For truly, what is the cure for the human condition? There is none. This is the remedy. For those who insist upon walking backwards and blind always fall to their deaths. Thus have I sought at all costs to be fully what I am. Yet I, and those like me, have been deemed unfit for public consumption, for the truth is, that most choose to dwell in Lies and fear-even abhor Truth. Yet it is only the Truth which sets us free. It is only within the shadow of the light that we are truly seen and fully found. And she was the only one who understood this. Hence, did she become my one and only accurate mirror-my soulmate. Hence did she become life itself to me, and I underwent a kenotic dying unto her daily. For Beauty, by its very nature, is indiscreet-it can be no other way. For though the world may loathe Beauty and those who seek it and possess it with a seething Envy and Contempt, it also seeks them with the same urgency. There with her, it was a slow, sweet swaying slaying of Self. Of her, the angels and The Divine spoke without rebuke. Oh Soul of emeralds brought forth from the most barren mine, she was the Lost Oblivion.