You pour your essence into
the inkpot of my soul and fill me so
that you can dip your quill in
and write the poetry of my life
on the canvas of skies.

I have received your secret message;
And sit by the courtyard
awaiting your blessed return
past the procession of stars
endlessly mourning the death of days.

Beloved friend, now it does not matter
whether the blessed dawn is nigh
or an oasis afar.

What a strange place this is, hovering between the perpetual dark and the grey light of dawn. It was nowhere you would find on any map. It was said to exist only in the psyche, in that moment between sleep and wakefulness. But  I found it and, should these words ever be read, you will know that I am there still …

Tall ramparts of the dullest stone rise up skyward. Sightless windows stare out across a strange landscape: it is not possible to make out any landmark for the mists twine in psychotic patterns making the tangible invisible to the eye.

I came to this place … I don’t how I got to be here. As I write down these words, I try to recall my journey but my memories are as fogged as the barren mist-infused heath below me. It is as though I have been here for a lifetime, maybe more. I seem to have a sense of having been somewhere other than this place but it is impossible to draw a coherent recollection from my mind.

It is cold here in my room high in the turret of this place. The cold stone arch that is my only eye to this outside world is presently covered with a ragged curtain. There are faded colours discernible on it; age has dulled them. It ***** forlornly in the insignificant breeze that blows through the window. It is dark outside the window. I know it must be as the tears in the drape are showing no light coming through.

On my writing table is a candle that is burning with a yellow flame. It sputters as the breeze catches it unawares. My candle casts a little light; enough to write with. I look down at the yellowed paper and my words you have just been reading. In my hand is my pen. How old-fashioned; a feathered quill. At the top of the table is a small *** and the trail of ink suggest this is my ink-***. Strange. It seems perfectly natural and familiar to be writing these words in this archaic fashion yet oddly out of place also as though a thread of a memory is tugging somewhere in my brain telling me it cannot be real. My hand reaches out to rub the surface of the table. It is rough, hewn not by a skilled artisan but functional. A shiver courses through me and I draw my rough cloak closer about me …

I don’t know if I had slept but becoming aware of my surroundings, I can see a little greyness coming through the drape over my window. It is not daylight in the sense you would know it; it is never daylight here. The candle is no more than a stub now and it’s flame is gasping it’s last breath. My surroundings are eerily visible now in this dull light. I can see the door across to my right. It is old and heavy with a large handle and studded panels. I expect to see a bed but craning my neck all I can see is a rough straw pallet in the opposite corner. That part of the room is still hidden in shadow so I am surmising that the rumpled pallet and rough blanket heaped against the wall is where I sleep. But I do not remember sleeping.

My pen is laid down next to the sheaves of manuscript I had clearly been working on. All this time, whether sleeping or writing, I had not considered whether I was alone here in my room. There was nothing in that moment I considered it to suggest I was here in anything but solitary isolation. Yet something made me look again at the rumpled bed in that dark corner. I realised then with a start that what I had assumed to be just my bedding had a clear form. Straining my eyes against the grey shadow, I saw an imperceptible movement. I held my breath, unsure if my eyes were deceiving me in this half light. I pushed against the table to lift myself as quietly as I could from my chair and padded over to the bed in the corner.

Crouched against the wall was the form of a woman. Her breathing almost imperceptible, coming in short, tremulous whispers. Clearly she was sleeping but something told me it was not a comfortable sleep but rather a sleep brought on by sheer exhaustion. Her pose was unnatural; half lying, half crouching. Her hands were clasped against her chest and rose and fell with each breath. I staggered backward my heart pounding in my ears, drowning out the sound of her breathing.

Turning to the table, my trembling hand reached for the candle and, cupping my hand to protect the dying light, I crept back to her. In the faint yellow cast of the flame I could see her more clearly. A once silvery gown now grey and tattered covered her small frame. There was a rough blanket draped carelessly across her shoulders. Her elfin face was as pale and dull as the grey light and threads of golden hair hung across her face. I found myself reaching out to her only to brush a strand from across her eyes. In that moment her eyes flew open and stared wild and frightened. Immediately she cowered back against the wall whimpering like a cornered animal. The shock of her awakening startled me and I fell back from my crouched position. Her hands flew up to protect her perfect face and to my horror, I saw they were bound at the wrist. Who was she? Why in all the gods’ names was she here, my apparent prisoner?

I recovered my senses and as gently as I could I approached her again. The blanket had fallen from her shoulders and in the still guttering candle flame I saw what I could only guess were silver feathers seemingly growing from her shoulders. This was impossible. The light was playing with my senses surely?

Reaching out to her I ever so gently touched her clasped hands now held against her face as though in prayer. She let my take them in mine – so delicate, so perfect, so cold to the touch – and my fingers slid down to her bound wrists. The binding was a dull silver, so flimsy yet seemingly strong enough to hold her hands together. There were welts where the bindings had dug into the flesh. And now she stared unblinkingly at me, sheer terror in her eyes.

I let her hands go with more force than I intended and recoiled from this scene, my whole frame trembling, my skin crawling with cold dread. Had I done this? I cannot remember. If I had, why? I closed my eyes willing it to be no more than a nightdread. Opening them seconds later I realised what I knew; that this was real, as real as anything could be in this strange world I found myself in.

I knew then what I must do and turning to my table I looked frantically amongst the sheaves and found the blade I had been using to pare my quills. Grasping it I returned to the pallet and approached her, blade in one hand, sputtering flame in the other. She gasped in horror as I drew close to her. How stupid of me. The poor creature was terrified of me, terrified by the cruelties I must have inflicted upon her.

“Hush, I mean you no harm.” My words seemed to belong to someone else. I placed the candle on the floor and reached out for her hands again. Pulling them toward me, I told her I was going to remove her bonds. She seemed to understand and, though still staring wildly like a frightened child, she let me insert the blade under her bindings. I could only imagine she had trusted me once and was now prepared to do so again. With a deft flick, the bindings parted to the blade and slithered to the floor. She turned her eyes from me for the first time to inspect her wrists massaging them lightly. She looked up at me once more and though she spoke no words, her eyes framed the question, “Why now? Why now after so long?”

I stood up and backed away from her and gestured toward the door: “It is time, that’s all, time for you to go.”

Rising uncertainly from her rude bed, this angel, for that is surely what she was, stood before me trembling. I removed the cloak from my shoulders and placed it about hers, my fingers lightly brushing the feathers on her shoulder blades. I gestured toward the door once again saying as I did so: “Walk toward it; I shan’t stop you. There is no lock; it will freely let you pass. I will not follow.”

The poor creature turned from me and walked to the door. Grasping the handle, it opened with a groan. She passed through and was gone …

In a stupor, I went toward the window and pulled the drape to one side. The sky was still grey but now a silver moon hung in my vision. I sensed a movement to my left and saw my angel soar across the face of the moon and into the gloom.

I walked back to my table and sat heavily down. Grasping my quill and dipping it into the inkpot, I reached for another sheet of parchment and continued to write in the hope that you will find these words and tell my story …

VERNARTH
Monastic  Cell

Vernarth begins to describe:
"This magnificent monastic complex dominates the island, and the old settlement of Chorá, associated with it, is home to many religious and secular buildings, where the famous pressurization of the inspiring forces of the Beloved Disciple is present, in this place he will reside in the sacred year 95 AD. AD, with his Gospel and the Apocalypse. A monastery dedicated to the "beloved disciple" was founded there in 1088 by Hosios Christodoulos Latrinos and has been a place of Greek Orthodox pilgrimage and teaching ever since.

Spilaion Apokalypseos (Cave of the Apocalypse) Many architectural changes have undergone over 900 years, adapting to changing political and economic circumstances. It has the outward appearance of a polygonal castle with battlements flanked by towers. It also houses a remarkable collection of manuscripts, icons, and liturgical objects and works. The primitive elements, which date back to the 11th century, are the catholicon (main church) of the monastery, the chapel of Panagia and the refectory. The north and west sides of the inner courtyard are surrounded by the white walls of the cells, and on the south side stands the Tzafara, a two-tier arcade in dressed stone, built in 1698. The outer narthex of the catholicon forms the east side. . Halfway up the steep path from Skalá to Chorá is the Cave of the Apocalypse (Spilaion Apokalypseos), where, according to tradition, Saint John dictated the Book of Revelations and his gospel to his disciple Prochoros. This sacred place attracted several small churches, chapels and monastic cells, thus creating an interesting architectural ensemble. ”
They continue in this set of phenomena towards the definitive mediation of the cavern by means of the inspirational illumination of the conduit of the ****** of the hundred doors or church of the hundred doors, declaiming the Panagia with the hermit and his disciple Prochoros, with remarkable whispers of the Blue Cormorant that he brought from La garriga; from a nearby ecoregion with plant formations emerging in the biomes of the Mediterranean forests, to incense all the white walls of the cells where the hermit led them walking together with two monumental candle torches. From here this cormorant will transport all the bioclimatic zones of the ecosystem, to constrain the Tytillinus embryo to be swallowed by it, predominantly to forget about its concept of egg as an oviparous generation of temptation and to be anchored to the plant site as an original species. . This blue cormorant is a superlative factor in the context of changing the cephalization of this demon-monster in the collective consciousness of the grotto and its shed.

They transpose the Tzafara, where the cormorant perches lavishly moving its head like a spasm in its neck to the northern north, illuminating its crimson green eyes. Destining his penances for the narthex as an open portico until the exonarthex, here the multiplied figure of Tytillinus would increase, appearing to be dominant before them, but all remained cohesive and closely united in paleo Christian rosaries, to re-infuse the forces of fear transferred to this invader.

Thus being able to reach the hemisphere of the mound that comes from Skalá, in front of them the Spilaion Apokalypseos grotto in Katapausis. You could see how the crystals of unhappiness turned into high-grade psalms of translucent stained-glass crystals of extremely shameful colors. Vernarth carried in his hand a Sheesham box with purisms and essences of the temple earth that he was building, he carried his magnificent thoughts inside the catholicon tied in his arms of the quarterdeck, where the raw solvents of the past wars as Military Commander oozed.
In front of the cave they all perch. Vernarth will inaugurate the Quadrivium whose four paths; They would group disciplines related to mathematics, geometry, astronomy and music as a study curriculum for the uprising of species and their preservation for centuries and centuries. Linked to the tracks or roads; grouping grammar eloquence and helping to speak, with dialectics to help search for the truth, and rhetoric coloring the words. Thus they understood the grammar, dialectic, rhetoric and its elementary figures and the three Trivium routes attached as a whole on this pilgrimage as they were already in front of the hermitage of the Saint. Raeder, Petrobus and Eurydice move their anxious feet with a few bars of Laziko, thus throwing from the ground with their feet the particles of thousands of years inseminated by the adjacent atmosphere towards the theological philosophical goal of the spirits satisfied to join them in the masses in proportion to the weight of their mobile talents, applying makeup like millennia to each other ..., parading before them.

Orpheons of the lowlands of Patmos were felt entering through the holes of the roof of the cavern, in communion to join them in the compas of this beautiful melody that diverged from all the original immaculate accents of the gifts along with the original of the Holy disciple. The petrified lotophagous mushrooms walked swiftly along the walls through the deviant Trojan ships, towards where the Trinidadian music descended from the roof, bruising the oversized apricots of the candlesticks, dazzling the other walls full of figurative tapestries of conceptual and iconographic images. Vernarth sang the Almara, an insistent retrograde song that invoked the entire community of Skalá and surroundings to join them through the arena sliding down the face-to-face gorge of the Katapausis, imbued in the mega center of the redoubled canticos of their own gorges, cloning the flat voices of the unknown mezzo vocal origin. Saint John only Vernarth allows him to enter his monastic cell, the others remain in the anteroom, pouring holy water and touching the hyper-curled walls of Chytridiomycota mushrooms that became voluminous in the immortal reflections of the vivid glow, to gather them to follow his insistent pastoral voice to a meadow of prominent demarcation step with its dynamic Laziko. Vernarth places in his hands a thick and heavy sacred medal, which will allow him to cease his lamentations and processes of Excessive occultism, before the heavy solitude procreated on his new face in rictus of joy and smiles in rounds of healing, beyond all predictions of his avatars and proselytes.


Vernarth goes on to describe:
A large amount of stress accumulated due to damage to the mitochondria that respond to the DNA that preserved the genetic material niche itself in a different way from that of the nucleus in the cavern, managing to dissipate after auscultating with the Quadrivium, detecting that a large part of the volumes manuscripts and iconographies were reactivated to other books as guests, to make them a living portrait for the tissue of the organism that parasitically inhabited the cavern walls. Inquiring an organized mitoconuclear communication. If they fail to resolve the mitochonuclear mtDNA breaks, before the radiosities of the celestial diaphragm, a dysfunction will be triggered that will affect the cells and tissues of the host, on all manuscripts and iconographies. These mitochondrial genomes will examine their function in the area of organic cellular spatiality, therefore the ideas obtained of incompatibility will remove all the saprophytic material from the rough trails of the demon granule Tytillinus, to exile it to the confines of its eco-region, where it lives unnaturally abandoned.

An evanescent canonical source alluding to this stay in Patmos will reveal to them through the roofs of all the houses of Skalá, mentioning through the mouth of the Eremita: “I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation, in the kingdom and in the patience of Jesus I was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in spirit on Sunday when I heard behind me a great voice like a trumpet saying: '' Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches (Rev 1: 9-11). Moist winds licked all the roofs changing the nuances and morning faces, proclaiming the new secular kingdom. ” The most detailed source, continues to deny his parchment although already in late popular event, on his stay in Patmos are the apocryphal Acts of John, attributed to his disciple Prochorus. In them it is told how Juan and his disciple looked for a quiet place with a cave where they spent ten days of fasting. Subsequently, John sent Procorus to buy papyri and ink, and for two days dictated to his disciple the text of the revelation. Later the saint would entrust his disciple with a noble copy on parchment. The Golden Legend makes practically no reference to these moments, except for a mention that "he was entrusted with having confidentially known some arcane and profound things, such as the divinity of Jesus Christ and the end of the world".

The apostle appears on the spot presenting Vernarth with writing as a sacred office, also to commission future parchments for his future prophecies, and ink on a scroll or codex resting on his knees or on a desk. He also boasts showing him the writing tools (calamus, inkwell, rasorius, cornua) that are usually also reflected in considerable detail in the decals of his fingered golden fingers, accompanying the eagle, symbolically within the set of the tetramorphs of the old testament. Here Vernarth takes his face in compassion when he learns that his hermit master acquired the appearance of an octogenarian appearing accompanied by his disciple Prochorus, showing him the streaks, singing to them with the ninety years since he was exiled. It is a subject of late consolidation, very frequent in the late medieval manuscripts that contain this book or fragments of it, especially the books of hours where the image of the saint abounds on the island accompanied by the eagle, allusion to the apocalyptic living, and with much Frequently, of an imp that throws the inkpot or hides the calamus and that many authors have identified with Titivillus, a medieval demon who was credited with spelling errors in books and mistakes in prayers in order to win souls for Lucifer. The first reference that is had of this terrible demon is in the Tractatus of Penitentia of John of Wales, which dates from the year 1285, which will be evidenced in the framework of this stratagem entrenched in Vernarth's career as a Macedonian warrior, and that he would bring with this odeón the detuned song that would rule those who cultivate the art of sound near luminous beings prone to lose faith, as well as those who represent here as Tytillinus, vast evil oppressor of those who look at sacred scriptures affecting their eyes, as a sign of peeling of degraded human eye skin.
The others appearing were outside in a shed, all very close to each other, just waiting for the order to leave. Suddenly they see a brilliant blue waving light, which was coming down on them, it was an eagle coming towards them as a signal to tell them that Vernarth was coming back, to go to go with them to their rooms and continue with their daily tasks.

Under edit / continue

I comment “yes daddy” on your videos
You comment “prettiest gurl” on my photos
We are just friends, but just maybe, just maybe we want something more.

a memory

the delhi monsoon, 2016
smashed inkpot like the sky
my head on the bus’s window
yours too
i said, “so what’s up?”

from there you would often turn around, have a look at me, shake your head, let out a shaky breath, give me that lazy smile and your eyes would be showing adoration, you would turn back and answer to my many questions

we talked about our classes, our future maybe not as a pair but as individuals

at some point, you and I started talking about politics, developing ideas out of the very little information that we had.

at some point, you and I started talking about art, dancing our fingers on the glass, creating figures and emotions.

at some point, we got to school

you stood behind me, the kids were just too slow, because the hormones had yet to be released, you were a little taller than me, your head dropped, and you whispered, "I want to be in the same class"

and both of us grinned, pushing all our feelings out, somewhere gloomy, twilight-like, dark and unseen.

you introduced me to your sister
you told me that you wanted to pursue sports
you said will talk to later

neither did you pursue sports nor did we talk again in person

I'm spinning in circles, wanting someone who might be mine, but I'm too scared to do that, trying to make myself believe that you really don't exist. I'm ******* selfish, yeah.

trapped here with the weight of memories and emotions that I don't want to revisit.

boy, boys are bad for you, I am telling you.

It was defenceless,
the death of dreams. Why god
has lifted the sorrow of pain in eyes.

Open your inkpot, the
tears pay the price to purchase
the inner mercy after tasting venom.

Do you think I
possess everything. I want
to become Sisiphus with empty hands.

I wake up in a dream,
Without fear, without doubt.
Without a desire to divine its meaning.
Shedding the stupor of existence,
I wake up in a dream.

~~~~~~~

Gloomy skies and silence
Greet me as I cross the dead fields.
I see a mountain in the distance,
Its peak shrouded in mists.
I walk through a drab world.

As I draw near to the mountain,
I see sparks of colour.
I am drawn to them
Uncaring if they are an illusion -
Like the Lonely towards Love.

I see butterflies flitting to and fro
Between flying petals of every colour.
I see the ground littered with fruits
And blue puddles on the lifeless earth.
I see rodents scurrying into the distance.

I see colours everywhere,
Of every hue and shade.
Here a golden moth,
There a mauve lamp.
Rainbows springing from the ground.

A golden rain falls to my right
As if the sun has melted.
And in that patch of deluge,
I see formless faceless children
Shedding black tears.

I look to my left
And see the air wriggling -
Many moving dots of no colour.
And looking into its expanding mass
I feel as if adrift in a void, weightless.

I force myself to walk forwards.
I see birds of many wings,
And red flowers dripping honey.
All whirling as if caught in a tornado
And at its vortex, a man.

I see him standing infront of a canvas,
Moving his arms and moving around.
He is painting but not only on the canvas.
His brush moves even on thin air,
The paint changing colour as he moves.

He is drawing a multitude,
He is drawing them everywhere,
And he is drawing them into being.
His eyes closed, his head bent,
Bringing his paintings into life.

He stops after a while.
His hands fall to his sides.
All the space around him
Is filled with his living paintings,
And yet there is silence all about.

He notices me and seems puzzled
As if wondering when he has painted me.
He beckons me to come closer
And I go to him without fear.
There is only trust in his eyes.

He tells me that he is a painter.
I look around and nod.
He shows me an inkpot
And tells me that it has magical ink.
I believe him.

He asks me to try painting with the ink.
Anxious about the formless anamolies
That might come out of my artless hands
I politely refuse.
He looks baffled.

He draws a pen in mid air, catches it,
Fills it up with the magic ink
And offers it to me.
'Write, if you can't draw,
Life, one way or the other', he says.

He points to the dead lands all around,
Asks me to help him bring them to life.
Others before me have accepted the Ink.
He tells me he never saw them again.
And yet he trusts another.

Or if I'd rather return to the world I'd come from
He advises to take the pen with me.
I tell him I can't carry anything
From Dreams into my Reality,
Except for things untangible.

I tell him where I come from
Hope is a dangerous currency;
That Rivers of blood would flow
Long after Rivers of Ink dry up
Magic or no.

I tell him where I come from
We don't need a pen
That can bring to life everything it writes.
More a pen that can
Write Life into others.

I asked her if I could
dip my
      pen in her inkpot

She replied "What are you going to write?

A brevity of love, I said..
                                  
                               "Your confident, she replied...

The quill a harpoon
Whaling stories from
Sea in the inkpot