My first memories of conscientiousness are of being laid down in my crib for an afternoon nap, clothed only in my diaper it was so very warm.

These are my feelings engendered by the separation from my mother, and a lack of visual input from the world of wonder and discovery.

There was a jagged crack in the plaster ceiling above my head that was the only image I could focus on

The crack had many crooked legs, some sorter others longer leading to a central hub, the lines of striation, no real form but abstract.

I kept trying to make some sort of sense, some symmetry to the crack to give it form in my imagination.

Each successive time I was laid down for a nap, my mind wandered back to the crack in the ceiling.

There it was again, challenging my mind to make some form of it, to give it meaning and beauty.

Try as I could to make something wonderful out it, it resisted all efforts and imagination I could muster.

It had become an anathema to all my efforts, like trying to make sense out of a reflection across two parallel mirrors.

Then one day the riddle of the crack took on a more sinister guise, one that began to form into a threat of malevolence.

In my desire to make sense out of the crack, it grew into the only shape it could assume, having no beauty or symmetry.

My restless inquiring mind made its formlessness into the one thing left to my imagination, it made a void of chaos into an ugly monstrosity.

As this darkness grew in my mind, so too did its threat in nature, filling me with a nameless dread

Soon I was crying my eyes out for mother reassuring arms, though its newly perceived menace seemed to loom ever larger in my mind.

My mother came to my rescue eventually quelling my overactive imagination, but this will remain my first memory of consciousness.

More primly though, having only known my mother’s love, it was my first known notion of the emotion called fear.

Thank you for being such a good friend to me

For believing when everyone else gave up on me

For being there when I had no where else to turn

For accepting me with all my warts

For loving me unconditionally

For those small and insignificant things

That make up a world of difference

In a life of service to you, and all others

Thank you for allowing me to accept myself

For allowing me to forgive myself again

For making it possible to forgive all things

In this field of all possibilities

If I told you I was desperate and you were in a position to make me a king

Would you make me a fool for you, and make my brethren serve you as have so many others before me?

Could you cut from divine cloth, a garment so plane so honest, as to the hide the shame of this humble beggar before you?

Would you care if I went on living without sleep, nothing more than feeling my weakness of wanting you, though my whole being cries out to end this sorcery?

How can I be free, if my brother’s only freedom is to serve you?

If I gambled for their lives, the stakes of defeat too terrible to realize

Could I trust you to do what’s most noble, and let us leave this island of iniquity now?

Or must a kill you and return the roses, now dead in the vase, and no other option foreseen?

How could we mortals reconcile this dilemma and hope to win?

If the gods favored my every action as a warrior, renowned as a leader among men, yet cast me adrift on my ponderous journey back home.

Would you lament for my desolation, my hopeless wreckage washed up, and abandon to this purgatory.

Those who have delivered my company and I, to one who drinks from souls of men

What kind bride would you have become, to make for your groom?

There is tearing in the fabric of your being, you cannot utter the expression of your pain

There is chaos that rages inside your spirit, that drives you to the brick of madness

A duality of light and darkness, and a tempest of wrath most terrible

There is a lamb of love that dwells deep within that chaos, in the eye of that storm of misunderstood feelings, of all emotions rationalized by art, intellect, and symmetry

A poetry of motion, drama and intrigue

An individual crowned with splendor, clothed in a gown of sunlight waiting to be freed

Knowing liberty and justice, nurturing and maternal, and eternally you

This is your comfort zone that one you made to slip away to

That one you needed to be in so desperately

I needed someone I could talk to, you needed someone you could love

So we met here and now, so close to the end

You and your special interests, and me so into you

For creation burns here, my hopes and dreams

My dharma, my ecstasy, my lost and lament

Your recognition your struggle and your pain

A new day, and new night, by light of the reluctant stars

For the seed of creation exits beyond the mortal mind of men

I see life as an illusion, a projection...and yes a deception, but who can deny that it is our reality as we perceive it, real or imagined...lies are truth and truth are lies, as we cannot discern between the two...it is our faith that separates us from our deceivers

The burning love of flames, cries out to my heart

And I feel this earth shaking, pulse pounding in my veins

I realize I am insignificant, only my art and creation

My hope and love will sustain me

Your belief in me, my devotion to you

How can I make you understand how hard it will be to live without your presence?

Without your loving loyalty shining through all the corners of your love for me

Your adoration no matter how ill you felt that day, how you always put me first

And I can never repay for you undying devotion my loving pet

And when I was ill or agitated your eternal empathy always shone through my clouded mind

You were always there for me and give me reason to smile, to love like no other before you

You could always make me feel so happy about my life, so long as you were there for me

And throughout the years we lived together I would never have turn back the page never having knowing your sweet love

And though you only departed from me scant hours ago

I feel your presence here still tonight, and the ghost of your remnant

For months and years to come I see you and hear you all around me

Not because you haunt me, but because your friendship and love will never leave me

You will always be with me now and forever

It is gathering dust outside the home I grew up in, and several of us are hunting small uplands game birds with shotguns.

Behind my house is a steep gullied depression that leads on down the “wagon trail” to the river below.

Where we hunters are kindred spirits, we don’t necessarily know each other, and are spread out as if in an armed man hunt.

As we descend into the smallish gorge, it is a steep decline to a rounded triangular plateau, before a further descent below.

As we climb down to the plateau, the bowl is covered in a thick fog, at which there appears to be a bright glowing, orb that can be vaguely made out at the bottom.

Apprehension grips at our senses, as we get closer to the circular disc, glowing first dimly, then more clearly as we pass through the obscuring blanket in front of us.

We stop our decent hoping time would help us discern, what truly lay beneath the fog, in time the air currents caused the sheen to lessen in obscurity, and allowed me to peer behind the veil.

What I saw next decimated my concept of reality, and shook me to my very foundation, as a tremor crippled my heart, turning it to ice.

Out my mouth came the baleful quavering of a lost and tortured soul, and I heard my own voice gasp out incredulously, “I…I can see your face”.

Two ominous shadows back lit by the radiance of the orb behind them, emerged from out of the mists that had been previously shrouding them, to reveal an entity with a terrifying larger than human, elongated shaped cranium, accompanied by an equally long protruding chin, not unlike a beak.

If this wasn’t enough to make your blood run cold, the face was without doubt the horror of it all, resembling a shriveled prune, deeply etched with jagged fissures running the length of its face in broken oblique equilateral striations.

Its eyes were wide and oblong like its head, glazed, darkened with the absence of any eye lids, nose or mouth of sort. The whole visage was completely emotionally disturbing, and unnerving, to the point of total panic.

These other world beings were extremely tall, eight feet or more, the first of which was covered in what appeared to be long blue feathers, the length of his stature, the second one with the robes of a priest or shaman.

After my initial verbal outburst of fear, it was obvious that they were aware of my presence now, and in my most horrifying moment of discovery, they immediately approached my location.

Feral panic gripped me and the flight or fight instinct caused me to try and scramble up the steep incline below my mother’s rock garden above, only to find its slope had turned to mud, as I slid down the slope to the lower plateau again.

Next the inevitable happened, as I saw the blue avian and his shaman speeding up to me, rolling like on a train track, their approach far too swift and menacing for me not to misinterpret their intention.

Again the feral fight or flight adrenaline rush consumed me, as I lashed out at the shaman who was encroaching and within striking difference, I cried out “you’re a fucking witch doctor”.

My hand met the wooden wall behind my lower bunk, and not the shaman’s beak, and I realized it was just another night terror, as my heart pounded wildly subsiding into laughter.

I realized in my mad fear and misinterpretation of an alien contact, I had robbed myself of the understanding, and maybe the making of a lasting friendship of two star brothers.

I love to walk in my manorial garden, at dawning of a new day

Where the lime yellow sunshine streams through, the living green foliage

Where it ripples and scatters shadows and light

All about me, in the simplicity of its silent embrace

I love to walk in my manorial garden, under the noon day sun

And appreciate the abundance of life that grows all around me

To feel only like another of his most wondrous world of creations

Not better nor less important, to those whose eyes watch over us

I love to walk in my manorial garden, under the silence of the stars above

Where the evening breeze has the gentle touch, of a lovers caress

Where time strands still, and there is apple reason to reflect

And the clarity to see the path that lays open before me

I love to walk in my manorial garden, in my hopes and dreams

Where each step I take brings me nearer to your precious love

Where we are reborn as one, and never separated again

And learn to love, and be loved, perhaps for first time

It's not that I miss you

Fighting through all these lies

Your chuckle and your smile

The twinkle in your eyes

It's not that I feel your absence

Your love of country times

Your boot heels on my couch

Your spirit in my life

It’s the reason that I messed up

And drove you so far away

When I should have kept you close to us

And always here to stay

But it’s too late to tell you now

How much you meant to me

But I’ll just have to settle on

Your precious memory to me

But it’s not for your loss

Nor the ashes in my mouth

But can’t escape your memory

It’s your birthday again today

Come on baby, take away the night

Come to me now, make yourself right for me baby

Turn out the light

Ever since the first time we met

You've been a gamble, you've been a bet for me baby

Of this I've no regret

'Cause you know the truth, how I really feel

I'd do anything for you, 'cause you're love is real

You say the word, and I'll come runnin' home

There ain't no reason I can see for you to be alone

Drowning in silence, here without you

Nothing has meaning, there's nothing that true for me baby

What can I do?

Well don't want to hurt you, but I can’t understand

What it is that I've done wrong that makes me just a man, oh darlin’

Keep me in your plan

'Cause you know the truth, how I really feel

I'd do anything for you, 'cause you're love is real

You say the word, and I'll come runnin' home

There ain't no reason I can see for you to be alone

Baby, baby don't you see what I mean?

Give me half a chance, and I'll make you my queen, oh baby

Realize my dream

Come on baby, take away the night

Come to me now, make yourself right for me baby

Turn out the light

'Cause you know the truth, how I really feel

I'd do anything for you, 'cause you're love is real

You say the word, and I'll come runnin' home

There ain’t no reason I can see for you to be alone