Opium Bed (edited)

Darkness a cloak so sheer
Rich and smooth like a lie
Hides your wildest fears
Your wishes come alive

Come join me in this feast
Let your blood and join in the fun
Worship the Horned One
Of Cernunnos and The Great Hunt

Abandon ye senses
Throw caution to the winds
For what is religion but pretense
An opiate for the weak to let the mighty to win


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Edit:

I wrote this one when I was thinking about paganism and all. Karl Marx's quote came to my mind, "Religion is an opiate for the poor." For the weak to believe that if they suffer now, they will come to enjoy their afterlife. And for the strong to continue their stranglehold over them.

And sometimes, paganisim is villified unjustifiably. Look at Roman Catholicism. To ensure the stranglehold of their religion, the Roman Catholics sought to demonize those religions that stand in their way in the Medieval Ages. I don't grudges against them. But paganism is a beautiful way of life, of celebrating Life herself and Mother Nature. Why should it be portrayed wrongly? Why is it even associated with Satanism in the first place?

Yours truly
Aristocrat

Sure and Stedfast (Hebrews 6:19 KJV)

In the course of your years of mortality, I believe, at some point in time, people do come across the proverbial crossroads in their lives. Be it a little girl, who's standing at a shop, deciding what type of sweets she should get with her last fifty cents, the humdinger or the mints, or the 18-year old hormonally charged punk deciding which girl he likes best, or the 21yr old female graduate deciding whether to work after university or to continue the pursuit of academic qualifications. I could ramble on and on with more instances and examples, but you get my idea.

And now, woe be me, I find myself standing upon this crossroads as well. Each road leading to a different direction entirely and no clue is yielded by them in where I am heading. To salvation? Or damnation? To utter conformity? Or to its opposite? I do not know. And the question plagues me so. Which path should I take? Whenceforth should I go from here? And if I step into the Northen Lights, would I be able to retrieve myself, both spiritually and physically? It is a bonechilling thought.

This is just the first of the trinity of crossroads facing me. One is slightly less significant on a materialistic aspect I presume. May materialism burn in hell, for it has me within its grasps. I detest the notion of being controlled within its hateful vices. The last crossroads perhaps may be on par with the first dilemma I'm facing. Left or right, I will be burnt on the stakes. It reminds me of Rhys' s "Drab Puritan Grey." For this, I see no salvation. No recompense at all. No quarter given to me. I must fight teeth and claw for this.

I see myself drowning again, with Sorrow as my constant companion, faithful and stedfast. As will be biblically.

Enlighten me Old Ones. I need your help and guidance. Wherefore art thou in the wandering constellations? Show thineself to your devotee.

For now, I can only steer the course of my oarless boat with my bare hands, and hope that this course I set upon doesn't lead me over the Niagara Falls.


Yours truly
(As was, now and will be)
Aristocrat

Whispers of A Blue Moon

A full moon stands above its seat
Casting its silvery gleam all around
And I sat by the sea with the Orion Belt
Above my head, the waves gently lapped and fade'd

The stars twinkled endlessly
As if to show they sympathise wiht me
For I am all alone, neither kith nor kin
Out here in this gray wilderness

Where is she my lovely one?
Not of two or three but one and only
My object of desire and ache

Of heart which only she can break

O pray please enlighten me
Of how my sweetheart is doing now
Does she pine or hate
Or is her heart somewhere else?

How I long to see her now
To hold her in my arms and tell her of
Love that which I have for her
As far as my eyes can see beyond the horizon

As the moon hides behind the clouds
My feet suddenly grows cold, I looked down
And find the sea lapping at my boots
With an exasperated sigh I stand to leave
Awakened rudely from my reverie.




------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This poem was written very long ago, somewhere in the middle of Jan last year and Dec. As you can see for yourself, it was intended for my the other half. But alas, things sometimes don't turn out the way you want it.

I discovered this poem among one of my old notepads, and since someone has kindly pointed out there aren't any delightful stuff in these dusty tomes of my, perhaps this shall be the cow dung among the pile of roses? Ah, getting mean and spiteful, aren't we? Lol...

Anyway, Bon Appetit~

Yours truly forever
Aristocrat

Solitude

Everyone here please welcome this soul to this gathering, to this coven of poets and all alike minds. For he is but an Initiate I believe. Am I right? But he shows bright promise though, may he spread the Wyrd throughout the kingdom like a beacon in the darkness, sparking creativity where there is none. Welcome to our world XY. May you earn your name through your works.

And for the hors d'oevure, I present to you, Solitude....



Alone I came with pain and tears
Nought the excesses of the world
I looked around and found fools for friends
A gay merriment from day to end

Temporary camaraderie
Moments of mirth
A carnival of festive fun
Till the orange set

A blink of an eye
They took their leave
a sudden vanish
as shadow to sun

Alone I was once again
The twilight beckoned
with stars for companions
and the moon as my bride

These gifts I did reject
hoping for a human touch
a warmth I had once felt
An inkling of what had past

All I found was solitude
A chill so cold it froze my heart
My own two arms were all i had
The world from afar just stood and stared

My screams soundless to the unfeeling
I asked aggrieved
for help for a hand
for some reprieve

All i had were my pain and tears
Nought the excesses of the world

Le Masquerade

Procession of motorcade flows through the streets
The rain like a curtain hangs upon the scene
As if dying was a shameful deed

Faces hidden behind glided masks in glee
Celebration of Death a la masquerade
Morbid dance of life after the dead

Smiling Hypocrisy stands among the crowd
In his teeth a blade made in Tinseltown
For your throats to sell by the British pound

Money himself dances with the sinful crowd
Triggers the giggles of them well-bred ladies
And Greed hides behind the fan of aristocracy

Sisters of mercy to us cometh
Wrap us tight with your kisses and gowns
And let not God on us frown

Embrace us and with a penance we do pay in obolus
To heal a wrong with a wrong
Make no mistakes let us be reborn

Deliver us to salvation
Before the motorcade fades
Leads us to where we belong
Right between your legs

Ascendo Tuum

My dear, have I ever tell you how nonplussed I am by 2 things?

Firstly, by how bureaucratic behemoth organizations work, like some gigantic clockwork bugs running slowly and surely. An epitome of it would be the crown jewel of Singapore's tertiary institution, the Old Lady of the West, walking on crutches that are about to snap under the challenge of Earth's gravity, a constant fight to see who would win.

There are countless fine examples that I could dish out of how the small little chugs roll to make the huge thing work, and that if need be, by just throwing a small little tomato into the teeth, it would effortlessly be stopped right in its heels. Just ask any disciple of the Old Lady, and what happens during the birth of each new term. Orderly chaos always ensue, with query after query being thrown up to the head, but never reaching it because Gravity make sures it falls back down again. Tapes of different colour make sure that your query or action never takes too fast, for it has to travel a maze worst than Singapore's road signs directing you to turn left, turn right, U-turn, turn left on red, turn left on green or stop. Perhaps we could venture to say that my Old Lady is a constituent of Great Granpops? Ah, I see you nodding ferociously, at least you do understand what I am ranting about.

Secondly, it irks me to see people discussing about goth online. Where to get goth stuff. This and that. Those small mundane things that I cant' be bothered about. Not that I have never made such fatal errors, for I have sinned and confessed that I once was an erroneous fool. A fool that is just beginning in his magickal journey, like The Fool in the Tarots. However, I have proceeded on. found my goal and those fools have not. Making such a big hooha about it is very demeaning, and I personally find it very insulting. Use your own means and ways to do it, and if I find commercialization of it, I shall personally send Luther to harrass you. Will you not Luther?

And now, for the grand finale. The tragedy of this generation. The rape of all things. Against thy will. Take a look at this. I actually found these two mistakes of the world being merged together! Ah, the wrath that consumes my being has no measure. No measure at all. It wounds my heart, stabs right deep into it. And I see the blood squirting, major arteries severed. ASPIRE. Don't reach out for things that your short stubby hands can't reach for at all. As it goes, "Ascendo Tuum." For those who lies in ignorance of what this Latin phrase means, just ask and I'll give. Alternatively, my dear, you can google it.

Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Heal my soul with your pleasurable lilting tones.

Ave Maria.


Yours truly
Aristocrat

Fire fire burning bright

Sometimes, you just feel like burning right? And I don't mean you burning something. I mean burning people. For the sake of my dear readers, I shall kindly refrain from exercising my skill in profanities on these people that deserved them, and spare them from the napalm that is about to spit out of my orifice.

Before I break free from the metallic chains that I imposed on myself, my dear reader, you had better make a hasty escape. Wrong door you nicompoop. That's the door to the washroom. Better make sure you get of of this very building.

Salud, dinero, amor

Hello dear reader. I see you have been making yourself comfortable in the lounge eh? And judging by the glazed look in your eyes of onyx, I see you have summarily helped yourself to my collection of liquors. You like the Russian vodka? Or the Cuban white rum better? The white rum is a new bottle just acquired today only. And so is the Black Label whisky. I have Gordon's Gin, Smirnoff's Vodka, Jim Bean Black, Jose Cuervo 1800 mix, Johnnie Walker Black and Bailey's Irish Cream. Help yourself to the mixers over the yonder also.

But before you drink yourself silly, let me just tell you what happened today. I ask you, have you seen any person wearing all black dressed in pentagrams and bracelets doing shopping? Hah, you should have been in Centrepoint Cold Storage, then you would have caught the misfit running some pleasurable errands. Pleasurable in the sense that, ah well, there are guests to be entertained, and the range of liquors, though not extensive, but comparable to a bar's housepours, need to be coaxed into the oesophagi somehow right?

I see you nodding your head and Abinsthe seems to be standing behind you with a scapel for your nape, better be careful my dear, take a little care on the drinks, especially when I am wasting my time talking to you.

To cut the long story short, this little guy was running all over the shop, looking for more liquors, garnishes and more mixers to go with. Indeed, Cold Storage Centrepoint is really a barman's heaven. And he did went to heaven, albeit only for a while.

And now, he'll be expecting guests.

Salud.

Dinero.

Amor.

Tiempo para disfrutarlos.

Yours truly as always
Aristocrat

Muses

Since my muse keeps disappearing into the thin air of her own accord, God knows where she's been during these intermittent breaks, not unlike the commercial breaks we have on the black goggle box. A bit more of information is thus needed, a bit more material on this obscure topic regarding the Grecian Muses, or more generally, the Muses that all writers or poets have come to regard their inspirations as.

Whenever we face writer's block, or whatever you call them, we would often exclaim that our muses have gone into hiding, which I admit I oft did it. Yes, yes, I see you all murmuring. I can't write that well or that often as compared to my other accomplices on Darkness itself. Amazingly, they seem to churn out one or two every week, most of the times more than that. And they are really gifted beings as well, graced with the ability to turn words into the most beautiful things that there ever are on this very Earth. Limericks, ballads, poems, freeform prose, fanfics, you name it, they do it.

What is your conception of your Muse? What does she look like? To most people, the Muse ought to be a lady dressed in ivory robes and all, with alabaster complexion, her facial features shart and refined. looking not very unlike Venus herself. But Robert Graves, the British poet and novelist, equates the muse with the Triple Goddess of the ancient Celts: she who wields the power of life and death, inspiring awe and fear, love and lust in everyone who sees her. Of course, the link above only mentions one aspect of the Triple Goddess, and perhaps what Graves meant is that we see only one aspect of her, the Maiden Aspect.

Graves had also described her:

"The [muse] is a lovely, slender woman with a hooked nose, deathly pale face,
lips red as rowan-berries, startlingly blue eyes and long fair hair..."

On a second thought, I don't think my Muse has a hooked nose though. Perhaps what we all see in our Muses is all our idealized vision of our dream lover, the one that is beyond reach to us. The Pre-Raphaelite painters sought out this idealized representation of the muse in real women and painted her over and over. John Keats, who was one of England's greatest poets and a key figure in the Romantic Movement, was known especially for his love of the country and sensuous descriptions of the beauty of nature. In "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", he described a fatal encounter with the muse.

The Arthurian Legends celebrates her multiple faces in the form of Guinevere and Morgan Le Fey. However, all these descriptions are only limited to who was penning down those great ballads at that time. If a woman saw a muse, it appears in the form of the man, in India, her hair would be black and in Africa, her skin is dark.

Robin Frederick had also described an encounter with the muse as:

I would bet that you remember a love-that-got-away, an early experience, possibly your first brush with real love, that lives on in memory surrounded by a deep well of emotion. Sometimes it's a person you met only briefly but you can never forget. You clearly recall the first time you saw that person and how you felt at that moment as if it were happening now. The image you keep inside is surrounded with a special quality of light - a luminous glow that is not present in other memories. The image sometimes comes to you in dreams. There is something magical and transformative about it. This is the face of the muse; it's as simple and as deep as that. The statement that truly reveals the presence of a muse is: "Everything I did, I did for you."

And this, is the image of the Dream Lover, which is not exclusive as you can find references to it in all forms of literature and language

It seems I am running out of space, and my readers are having a dearth of attention span. And therefore, I shall restrict my verbiage to such and let them have a kind break from my mad ramblings here. Mayhap I will continue in the next post. Until then.

Au revouir

Yours truly
Aristocrat

Eye

Finally, a little change of environment by a little dusting here and there. Looks pleasing on the eye, doesn't it? At least to mine. Not that I really care about yours.

Yours truly
Aristocrat

Arthurian Times

Now this is going to be hilarious. I have no idea what happened when I was leafing through the parchments of some tomes but suddenly the theme King Arthur metamorphsized in my head. And this is the end product after a certain length of time was spent crafting it. It took me quite a while, but nothing as compared to the epics on him. Bon Appetit~



Yours truly
Aristocrat

Judgment Day

In the dark bowels of the earth
Among the crusty tomes he lies unloved
There he lies motionless in wait
For the day he will be called upon again

A Seynt to the world saviour of all Mankind
Only need be Excalibur brandished by his line
And all shades of darkness advance naught
For he is the One Returned all fret not

Banishment and betrayal by his own kin
Stabbed by Excalibur’s dark twin
A mortal wound to the soul and its husk
Drove him back from the world at dusk

Peril blighted the world meanstwhile
Man killing man with a sardonic smile
Atrocities abound darkness reigns supreme
Under the monstrosity’s regime

Bidding by his time and troops
Gather’d all the foul waste in one fell swoop
As the raped world cries out to him
Flaying its very limbs

Judgment shalt thereafter be passed
Let not evil’s reign last
For Excalibur is brandished true to lore
And the Light graces the lands once more

Past Mistakes

Forgive me of my hubris, for I can't help but do this. I had to dig up my first works and post it here again. This was written for my ex-significant other. Let the arrows begin.

The Glass Rose

Eyes wide open I lie on the sheets
The fan turns and whirs, the ceiling looks so familiar
Where have I seen it before?

The sun sets and rises
Feelings come and go
Each day is as before

Standing at the doorway
Your shadow cast itself on me
Bringing memories of happiness
Unable to shake it off

Like a rose you are, a child of spring
So full of innocence and joy
A beauty that endures, yet pricks and defies

Cast in glass the rose forever
As the bud turns to leaves, the colours live and breathe
Cast in glass the rose forever
With the sun’s rays trapped inside

The ceiling looks the same
As the sun sets on the horizon
Each day is as before

The bells have rung the time has come
I cannot find the words to say my last goodbye
Cast in glass the rose forever is

Searching InFinite

I'm just here to clarify something whilst I search for my dear Muse. O where has she gone to frolick? That matter aside, since I have taken away the tagboard, whatever comments that my dear visitors leave, I shall attempt to answer them on the very post that they left it on themselves, not the most recent ones.

And meanwhile, my search for my muse resumes.

Yours truly
Aristocrat

Saint Valentine

Ah, the end of your day Valentine, or should I say Saint Valentine? Are you tossing in your grave now? Jumping like ants on fire in the heavens above?

Tell me Valentine, are you the Saint of Capitalism? Were you not once the Saint of bethrothed couples, of lovers, of happy marriages, of young people? Imprisoned for giving aid to matryrs in prison, converted the jailer by restoring sight to his daughter, and later beaten and beheaded for going against Roman Emperor Claudius's wishes by marrying young couples.

Look at the people around you, Valentine. What a degrading sight to my eyes. I fear for my sight. Capitalism everywhere. The march of the greenback. Or the Yusof Ishak. Exchanges through greedy hands everywhere, eager to make a quick buck out of you Valentine!

Does anyone remember its sacred origins? Anyone at all?

In Chaucer's Parliament of Foules I read:

"For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate."

For the reason that during the Middle Ages in France and England, it was believed that halfway through the Second Month of the year, birds began to pair, the day was specially consecrated to lovers and as a proper occasion for writing love letters and sending love tokens. Both French and English literature of the 14th and 15th centuries alluded to this practice.

The Age of Romanticism has long passed from the face of this earth. In its place stood a saint or a devil, none could tell. Male and female it seems to be. Technology stood in its place. A mask of cold affront and a hole lies where it's chest is supposed to be.

How I yearn for the Romantic Movement to come alive once more. Like a dying spark in the dry bushes, it could set off a fire that roars. Alas, all are but empty thoughts, empty globets waiting to be filled with liquid gold from the heavens.

There, enough of my verbiage abuse. 'Tis time to let my dear Valentine rest in peace.

Yours truly
Aristocrat

Salus

Salvation! Hope is to a lover as to what money is to a scrooge! Time is to a runner as to what redemption is to me!

Am I beyond hope? Beyond the ebony gates of Hell? Doomed to languish in the pits forever and ever! For I have risen. Risen and so left the anguish of the human husk behind. Is that a curse or a blessing in disguise? Time will tell. Time herself will whisper and mock wickedly in my ears whether I will fall prey to the one inevitable immortal who shoots true and deadly.

As I now rise above the clouds, looking at the happenings eyes askance, I wondered.

"How long will this haven last?"

"How long before I will be brought down mercilessly to earth hell again?"

And as I rise, my thoughts left me with the setting of the beautiful sun, leaving me in the solitary albeit comfortable darkness.

Yours truly
Aristocrat

Silence is always golden

Be damned with work, be damned with crusty old institutions that give rise to homework during the accursed holidays. Can't we even have a moment of peace for once? Irksome creatures all of them. Silence to all! Silence! Let silence ring out through your ears!

Yours truly
Aristocrat


Cradle of Filth
Absinthe With Faust

Pour the emerald wine
Into crystal glasses
We will touch the divine
Through kisses catharsis

Let us pitch to the seven-year itch
Of the ultra-decadent
To a tainted world and the painted girls
That our fantasies spent

Tripping through boudoirs laced with opiate themes
Sipping the bizarre, tasting copious dreams
A toast to those most sacrilegious of days
Where for every whim won
One soon repays

We touched the stars
That now laugh from afar
At we, the damned
The damned
The damned
The damned

We have spent our time
Drenched in opulent splendour
But when midnight chimes
Will gilded souls surrender?

Let us drink on the giddying brink
Of pools of excrement
All manner of shit for the glamour and glitz
Mephistopheles lent

I remember the night as if it were engraved
A bright marble bridge stretched across the dark waves
To the shore from the moon and by her grace
Came that erudite stranger
That fucker

Come my friend, to fate let’s raise
Two finger shots at this our last soiree
For tomorrow I fear
Swoops all too deadly near
This precipitous weir to Hell’s high gate

We touched the stars
That now laugh from afar
At we, the damned
The damned
The damned
The damned

Explanatio

An explanation for Skeceptism:

It was written as a corrupted haiku, therefore short and abrupt in form, but containing none of the structure of a haiku. It speaks of hope/love, which is metaphorised as a raindrop falling from the heavens like manna to the people that were devoid of hope, already crestfallen. Dejected, disappointed in life. From just that drop of water amazingly it sprung a rose. While its beauty is stunning and mystifying, we must not forget that it has torns too and can prick when we handle it carelessly.

Yours truly
Aristocrat

Skepticism

A drop of water from the sky it falls
Lifeless forms void of hope below
Manna to the parched land of lore

Laying to seed a rose
With its thorns to prick
But a beauty to behold

~Dedicated to Melis and Shuhui. Two skeptics I know~

Black Cupid

Blinded by fury
Lost to darkness
Abandoned by light
Child of the Night

He is in sight
Don’t let him take flight
Bind him without
Don’t let him come out

Love he treats as tag
Havoc he wrecks
Motherfucker ass
That’s him no doubt

Karma

Well, dear readers. Here I am back again, in a fit of pique. There are some things that have to be reciprocal. I give. You must give too. Even if those are small little matters.So heaven decrees that I do a little cleaning up here before my conscience ( I have one?) tickles me to death, which would be most unpleasant. Therefore, voila! The newly arranged and tweaked site, which may not mean much.

Meanwhile, my latest crap. Feeling better after doing some structured ones for a change. As in Black Mary. Bon Appetit!

Yours truly
Aristocrat

Darwin's Ladder

Something interesting that splattered across my path while I was traversing the inane wonders of the internet...take a look. Probably you could substitute agent and lawyer with something else like the general public. Yeah. More or less along that line. Oh yea, don't forget to replace the press too. They are not that bad.

http://www.the-sisters-of-mercy.com/gen/rrr9/rrr9.html

Yours truly
Aristocrat

Mr Bean of Jim

My dear reader, have you ever had a day that pass by that no matter what you do, who talk to you or whatever that happened, you feel like throwing a pick axe at that someone or something? Today qualifies as that day for me. Miserable at its best, undescribable at its worst. There is simply no mot juste for it. Even if you pass me an armanents of nukes or Jurassic-aged clubs, it wouldn't be enough for everyone and everything. The world is lucky that I am not sitting in the nuclear silo of the Communist countries, if not, there would be another armageddon that the world has never seen before. Still, I have this irresistible urge to let off a few catapults at some mortals, stone them if possible. They just simply get on my nerves without trying. But, the conscientious and politically correct side of my other half repudiated my demands. Lucky bastards. Or bastardnesses. Voila! Another formation of a new compounded word with the morpheme -ness and -es.

To exacerbate matters, I can't even write properly without my left brain tripping over my right brain, and in the process, produces crap that would barely pass itself off as work. Even aristocrats have their bad day. I suppose Vladmir Putin has his bad hair day too. Don't cringe my dear. Just let me rant on a bit more and let off some steam. I can see that you aren't able to take it any longer. And my language. Apparently its sliding into new horrendous depths from being in the company of uncouths. Now I see brickbats flying. Who am I calling uncouths? Yes you. That spineless creature hiding in the shadow of your dear mother's flared skirt. Stop holding onto her aprons and behave like a bloody man of age!

Leaving already? Eh bien, just as well. I need my bottle of bourbon from the shelf. This relentless heat is killing me. Worse with a stake that it is. Definitely. At least with a stake, you get instantaneous death. Could you pass me that bottle of bourbon before you leave my dear? Yes over there, on the third shelf from the top, hding behind the tequila bottle. There, just a little to your left. Ah, there you got it. My grateful soul and thirst thanks you from the very bottom of its heart. Now you can take your leave, thank you very much. Au revoir.

Yours truly
Aristocrat

Refuge

Before I proceed on with this entry, let me first draw your restless attention to the changes around. I have took down the chatterbox already, for I feel it deviates away from the theme of this blog. Makes too much chatter around. From now on, please leave your precious comments in where else but comments under each post. And I thank each and every soul that has wandered by. for spending their time reading and leaving their comments. Thanks to Rhys too :) Enough of this inane chatter already, let's get on with the meat.

As each mudane day whizzes by, like a merry-go-round in a stupid circus spinning to some crappy melody of old, as the pain and the numbness of the modern materialistic world pushes spikes into your pulsing brain, do you ever take refuge in some solitary corner of yourself? Do you feel your psyche retreating into one corner of your soul, where nothing can harm you. Where you are the queen and everyone else are your pawns.

I have. Music is my retreat into my world. My Arcardia. I leave this physical world, as if I have took a train or sprouted glistening wings, and flew to another plane that is non-existent to human eyes. From there, the mortal emotions sprung free like some rusty tap gone wrong, and the view is like a myriad of colours on a canvass. At times, they threatened to wear me down into the depths of the void, threatening my sanity. At times, they lift me high up into the multitude currents of the air, not unlike an eagle soaring freely on the warm winds. Those are the times that I feel most isolated from the world. Even standing at Antarctica can't provide you with the same feeling.

I have a friend that has her own world too. A world lost in the dramas of telvision. A world where she can cry to herself and get emotional without embarrassment. Such are the vicissitudes of life that you need a refuge from the harsh and obnoxious reality of the world.

Where is your place of refuge then?

Yours truly
Aristocrat

5 years

Tumultous beginning of the week it heralds. Topsy turvy. Though cliche, mayhap for this week the predominant theme may be that change is the only constant. For not only am I metamorphising into some alien being unknown to my subconscious, but change is occuring all around me. The Wheel has turned a full cycle I believed. To have met old friends and more, those people that I had lost contact with over the course of 5 short years.

Is 5 years that short? Or is it long? In the course of such time, much has changed. Some have remained in a state of stasis, some have shed their skin to open their beautiful silvery wings. Which group do you belong to? The former or the latter? Is it beneficial to remain in stasis? I do admit, much to my chagrin, I have changed to. Whether for the better or worse, I dare not judge. I do not have that much hubris as to judge myself. It's is in the eyes of others, which speaking of, I do not really give a 5 pence worth too. Mortal life is too short to be spent satisfying other people that have insatiable wants. You give them some, they want more.

5 years. Enough for me to change drastically, a 180 degrees turn. Much has happened in the past 5 years. And it's time for me to take the back burner. Is it that much to ask for? Are some things too much to ask for? I didn't ask for some, but it was given to me. Yet I wanted some other, and it was kept out of reach from me. The painful irony of it all.

5 years. Enough time to have served national service two times during my period of 2 and a half years. Reminiscence. About life. Commissioning. It brings back splintered memories, some of which screamed to be forgotten, some which yearned to be remembered.

5 years. Enough time. Enough time for a brand new person again.

5 years...

Yours truly
Aristocrat