Venturing Deep

Tags

Adventuring, Songs & Poetry, Thoughts

I wanted to explain what it feels like to me when I go caving. This was my best shot: (actually finished 13/12/2016)

The path ahead is cloaked in shadow
Total stillness of the air;
If I speak, my words will echo.
To venture onwards still I dare.
The rock is worn of every edge,
And coming close above my head:
Rushing water carved this path,
But long ago that water fled.
Sinking deep inside the earth
Along the paths I follow now;
Somewhere still that river runs
Its lightless course beneath the ground.

This edge was once a waterfall
Now down its empty side I climb
Wire ladder anchored into rock –
Other hands were here before mine.
Yet in my mind I’m first to walk
Along these silent hidden roads
Though other people stand beside me,
In my head I’m still alone.
Far away from sun and wind,
Beyond the easy reach of man
In these all but untouched wilds
A lone adventurer I can stand.

The rock is not my enemy,
Its cool dark shapes a kind of friend;
Its challenge something deep within me
As I explore to journey’s end.
And round each corner marvels wait
Sometimes subtle or unseen
Sometimes obvious and plain:
Rock veils in hanging filigree.
A sinkhole like an inverse tower,
Water falling from above,
Daylight shining brightly down –
Places like this, too, I love.

Climb down towards the pool below
One last look, then back again,
Upwards to the light above;
Below, this untouched world remains.
The water’s risen in the caves,
Yet still I feel no fear at all.
Retrace my route: I know the way.
In my skills I feel secure.
I test each step on hidden ground,
Or climbing up a steep incline,
As careful on the journey out
As I was when I stepped inside.

I have mastered this dark world;
I have seen the great unknown
And when, in time, I might return,
‘Twill be a new quest all its own.
For now I breathe the open air
And see the sky so high above.
Out to horizons vast I stare
And can’t say what I’m dreaming of.
My journey done, my quest complete,
Adventures new another day.
New memories now mine to keep
Wherever next my path may stray.

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Cloud Spaceship

Tags

Sci-Fi, Songs & Poetry

(*Post backdated to the date I actually wrote the poem. Post posted on 19/04/2017.)

Riding back on a bus from work, I saw this amazing cloud covering the sun and looking for all the world like a plume of smoke streaming from something coming down fast through the atmosphere. Well, apparently I just can’t let something so glorious go unremarked, so I got out my phone, took some photographs, and set my thoughts to, if not exactly paper, then certainly pixel.

Like a plume of smoke, the cloud wisps
Up from the sinking sun
Like a spaceship sinking, burning:
A battle lost or a battle won.
Blazing down through the atmosphere,
Reentry or retreat
Fusion reactor meltdown
An alien or human defeat?
Or maybe just a chance disaster:
Malfunctions are nothing new,
The captain giving orders
As she fights to save her crew.
The sun is slowly setting
And the cloud drifts further away –
Will the crash site be forgotten?
Did the engineers save the day?
The sky has cleared, the cloud is gone
Whether for good or ill
End the story how you want
And imagine what you will.

Riverboat

Tags

Songs & Poetry

I have a lot of fond memories of messing about on the river. And see, now the Internet learns why no-one should ever encourage me even a little bit. 😉

The river waters ripple
Splash quietly ‘neath the hull
In the dappled sunlight shining
Through the pale green leaves above
The oars rest in their rowlocks
Drift slowly with the flow
A quiet day on the river
With nowhere else to go
The breeze may blow by gently
And make the ripples dance
The wind may blow through strongly
It’s all up to chance
The sun is bright in sapphire sky
The few clouds small and white
Drifting down the river
Until the time is right
To turn around and head upstream
To where the trip began
To moor the boat and climb out
Back on the riverbank
And walk away still smiling
The river in your head
A rowboat gently rocking
Long after journey’s end.

Campfire Stories

Tags

Songs & Poetry

We lay our whispers softly
in the branches of the trees
paths criss-cross recrossing
as we tell our victories
they whisper slow and softly
as the night brings in the black
but the stars that shine in darkness
they reflect our glory back
the first grey light of breaking day
born of the rising sun
like wisps of mist the fallen
ghost the first grey light of dawn
and you tell your secrets safely
to the branches of the trees
their lines trace out the patterns
of their whispered mysteries
a thousand tales of heroes gone
still waiting to be told
are whispered in the hazy light
as dawn’s gold rays unfold

I was tidying up some weeks back and it’s a rather boring job, so I grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled down a quick line every time I walked past the table. The end result then got forgotten in my living room for a while until I noticed it cluttering up the table and thought I should really digitise it and get rid of the random paper. And I actually quite like this one (particularly since it got complimented!).

The Ghost Tree II: Crimson Ground

Tags

Fantasy, Short stories, Songs & Poetry, Timewarp Tales

(The Ghost Tree)

A Timewarp Tale

I never saw the dancers again, though not for want of trying. Strange and alien, tantalisingly familiar, they spin in my sight even now, on the edge of dreams, half seen, half real. But I watched the pub, week after week, my comfortable and familiar friend. It never seems to change.

It’s a bright and sunny afternoon, the sun shining down from a blue sky. I’m coming from a different angle to usual, heading for the shop on the end of my route. I always look at the pub as I pass it, wondering what will be the same, what will be different. But this time… something feels wrong.

I can’t put my finger on it. It feels as though something has shifted in the world, as though something is out of place. Something so subtle I can’t see it, so obvious I can’t ignore it. I look at the Oak Tree over its lengthening grass. It’s the same shape, the same colour. The grass has grown; everything grows so fast in the summer. Yet it looks… sad. Strange. Alone.

And something is wrong. I’ve slowed down without realising it, and I’m only getting closer one small step at a time. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and the sun shines down on me, and it’s hard to believe on a day like this that anything could be wrong, but something is. And, just like that, my eyes are drawn up, to the sign that hangs high above the street.

It should be an old and familiar friend, but now it looks wrong. The strange, fey landscape in its washed-out blues and purples is white and red now, not repainted, because it’s as faded and worn as ever, but somehow changed. Now a deep and dull crimson soaks the ground beneath an almost ghostly, almost bare tree, as if a lake of blood has soaked through the world and changed everything. As if an end has come and a world has fallen and something has shifted forever.

I look again at the building, and the doors seem shabbier than they ever have, the bricks duller, the tiles faded. I can see through one of the windows with its motionless curtains open, and something, maybe a light fitting, is hanging askew from the ceiling. I don’t want to approach, because for once the place is uncomfortable rather than cosily inviting, and I’m almost afraid.

Perhaps the sign only looks different because I don’t normally see it from this side. Perhaps. But I walk on and turn around, and there it is again, a faded tree awash in a ground soaked through with blood, against an eerie sky. It didn’t always look like this, I know it didn’t. My memory can’t be playing tricks on me to this extent. Have I never seen it by daylight before? Of course I have.

I can’t find an explanation. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t want to approach it, so I turn around again to continue on my way, more unnerved than any building has any right to make me. And then I see a new change, a new difference, something else that’s wrong.

The ground on this side has been dug up and overturned, raw earth instead of lush green. Some rubble leans up against the wall, and I look at the building, and instead of that cosy-cat look I’ve grown to know, all I can see is decay.

Something has changed, and an era is over. And I don’t think I like the new one that’s dawning. Curiosity impels me, caution warns me, and something… something draws me. I look around. No-one’s there, and once again, though I can hear the traffic in the distance, I might be the only person in the whole world. Another secret moment, another slice of time alive with mystery – and with dread.

I turn again, and I step onto the path, avoiding the soil. I can’t go to the window I looked through before, I don’t want to step on that turned earth, so I go the other way, to the one with the open curtains and something hanging from the ceiling.

And it could have been forever
Since the world I saw before
I once saw them dancing
But they’re not there any more
The sun is shining on my back
But all I feel is cold
I peer into the darkness
And it seems to have a soul

The darkness sees right through me
The darkness knows my thoughts
The darkness is just waiting
For all that I have brought
I dare not blink, I back away
Until I reach safe ground
The Wild Hunt is hunting
And I dare not be found

Slightly Untitled!

Tags

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Songs & Poetry, The Path of the Gods

I didn’t get much editing done on the coach (I was travelling), but I did write a first draft of a song about part of Reclamation. Our hypothetical singers are one female, one male, playing the parts of Raine and Corvin respectively. The parts in brackets are sung simultaneously, while the parts that are just separated by a slash are one singer after the other.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really have a name yet, but whatever!

Both:
We’re watching, we’re waiting
The sunset is frozen in time
We’re standing, we’re guarding
No longer remembering why

Raine:
The silence, the stillness
I don’t remember my voice
I break it, I hear now
I remember that I have a choice

Corvin:
At last change, the light fades
I don’t remember the night
I hear in the distance
I remember that I have to fight

Both:
I’ve stood here for so long
I can’t remember my name
The orb drops, the light fades
We realise it too late

Raine/Corvin:
I see you / I see you
(And I remember your name / And you remember my name)
I’ve found you / You’ve reached me
(And you give me back the same / And I speak yours once again)

Both:
They failed us, we failed them
No longer remembering why
How can we undo this
We just know that we have to try

Both:
We’ve been here for too long
Somebody was meant to have come
Now we can’t remember
But everything’s resting on us

The Ghost Tree

Tags

Fantasy, Short stories, Songs & Poetry, Timewarp Tales

A Timewarp Tale

I pass it every week on my way to the shop. It never seems to change. Sometimes the signs outside will alter, or there’ll be a different banner up. Sometimes the curtains are all closed; sometimes some of them will be open. But the paint is flaking from the doors and windows, and I’ve never seen them open, and even with the curtains open it’s too dark to see inside. Nobody ever seems to go in, or park outside it. It’s just… there, a fixture that makes no sense but never seems to change.

It doesn’t even belong in this town. A mining town, old now. Aged rows of brick houses for the Aged Miners’ Association. The mines are closed, but the town’s still here, quietly functional, added to over the years with a new development here and a new development there. And right in the middle of it sits the Oak Tree, the strangest pub I’ve never quite known.

It’s an odd shape, curved rather than angular, not quite like anything else around. The brick’s the wrong colour, sandy yellow instead of red. It’s not a low building – it’s about the same height as anything else around – but it seems to sprawl across its grounds like a shabby but contented cat curling up in the sun. Which is odd, given that there’s nobody there.

The sign’s odd, too. For the longest time I remembered it as green and gold, like you might expect for a pub named after a tree. It’s not. It’s purple, like a strange-tinted wintry morning, or like something has washed all the yellow out of it and all that was left were the blue-reds, save that it’s too dark for that. It’s oddly otherworldly. Not exactly haunting, just ever so slightly alien, as if it’s from somewhere at just a little bit of an angle to here.

I’ve often wanted to see inside, but the only way to is to go up to the windows and peer in. That would mean walking on its land, and I have no good reason to be there, no explanation. Just curiosity. The closest I’ve ever come was on one sunny day when the curtains were open and I could dimly see the outlines of some comfortable-looking chairs. Even that, I only saw once.

I never see anyone open the curtains. I never see anyone close them. I never see anyone change the signs, or so much as go indoors. And yet, there it is.

As I walk past it, empty shopping bags in hand, I wonder yet again what’s inside. If it’s open, but never busy, or if it’s closed, but still has someone come in every day to maintain it. I want to go in, but there are no visible lights and the weatherbeaten doors look very firmly closed.

It’s a dusky evening. The moon is bright, almost full, and the last traces of colour are fading from the sky. Thin, high clouds reflect pearly white and seem to increase the moon’s radiance. The sign looks almost natural in this light, as if it belongs here.

I’m the only one around, and it puts a spring in my step the way all the secret times of day do. When there’s nobody else but me, and maybe the birds, the secret times that can happen anywhere and make a bright new mystery of a grey and boring day. It seems as if the air around me is alive with possibility, with mystery.

The curtains are open. I mean to walk to the shop, ordinary yellow light spilling from its ordinary glass door. I mean to for all of ten seconds. And then I keep walking, towards the window, like a homing pigeon seeking north. For the first time, I dare to step on the trimmed grass.

The interior is all blackness as I get up close. I hold my breath so as not to fog up the window, and lean in until my nose is almost touching it. And it’s then, just then, that I see movement, shapes lit in a light that doesn’t quite reach reality, raising glasses, talking, dancing. They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and I’m frozen for a moment as the first drops of rain start to fall from the sky above.

And I thought I saw them dancing
As I gazed into their world
And, just for a moment,
I convinced myself I heard
The distant strains of music
Like nothing that I knew –
I looked in and out of time
And knew that it was true.

I might have seen the future
I might have seen the past
I might have seen forever,
But forever didn’t last.
I blinked just once, I closed my eyes
And when I looked again
They were gone, and I was left
Just standing in the rain

Reflections on Echoes

Tags

Music, Sci-Fi, Songs & Poetry, Timewarp Tales

I was travelling the other day, and part of the route took me through a major bus station, as it so often does. This particular bus station usually plays quiet background music, a rather pleasant thread of sound to pick out from the footsteps and chatter. The other day was no exception, but that particular time, the music that was playing happened to remind me of a particular moment in a game, a melancholy kind of moment in which you wander through the remains of an ancient civilisation more advanced than your own. I began to picture what it would be like to wander through a slightly more indestructible version of the bus station in a few hundred years, or perhaps a shopping centre, with the people and pigeons vanished, but the music still playing hauntingly as you passed through, detecting your presence, fading away as you moved on.

As I often do, therefore, I started singing quietly to myself. (Yes, I am that annoying stranger who hums under their breath and doesn’t shut up. Shush.) As I don’t do so often, I actually got around to writing some of it down, mostly on the return journey a couple of days later. Here’s the end result!

These old and lonely whispers
In these long-forgotten halls
And the sounds that spring from silence
As you walk between their walls

These pictures of another world
That dance as you pass
And you see your face distorted
In their ancient looking-glass

These things the world’s forgotten
Spin to life inside your head
And you dream about the dreamers
Of a world that’s long since dead

As you wander through the shadows
And the echoes in their halls
Hearing sounds that spring from silence
As you walk between their walls

You might see a coloured window
From the ancient times gone by
A child’s simple plastic toy
That flew through the sky

Or see a silent mystery
Its glassy screen all black
And the words that say within it
Someone should be looking back

You pass through open doorways
That still leave you feeling small
Hearing sounds that spring from silence
As you walk between their walls

And you think about the people
Of this long-forgotten world
Imagining the things they did
The things they saw and heard

Wondering if someone
Not too much unlike you
Might have foreseen this future —
You wonder if they knew

They’d be left as ancient whispers
In their long-forgotten halls
Or thought they would forever
Summon echoes from their walls

The lights that woke as you passed by
Now fade as you retreat
And leave the distant echoes
To their long and lonely sleep

The sun that set on their time
Is still rising on your own
And you take their dreams back with you
For the times when you’re alone

The old and lonely whispers
In those long-forgotten halls
And the sounds that sprang from silence
As you walked between their walls

This song by V. L. Bending is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.