Mentiroso

I speak a little Spanish. I studied it for a while in high school, and I have an appreciation for the aesthetic quality of the language. It can sound quite beautiful when not a harsh high-speed trill, but more carefully enunciated, like is spoken in Spain. I admit, my Spanish is not good enough to write this outright, so I used a translator to help me out a bit. As you read it, even if you don't speak the language, try and say the words out loud to yourself. Get a feel for them. It's not just about the meaning, the words themselves are important too.

This was inspired by a disjointed, adventurous dream I had. Only being able to remember bits and pieces can be helpful, sometimes.

For simplicity's sake: http://translate.google.com/

Go ahead, it's not cheating, I promise.

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Mentiroso

covered in a thin layer of sweat
como la escarcha de la desvelo
down the tunnel, tight and dim
huye el mentiroso
bag laden with ill-gotten goods
con todo tesoro mio
hesistates, hearing me plead
"No me tires a las arañas"
kneeling, placed them on the ground
para reunir como diosecillos
The holy book tucked in my robes
las palabras sagradas
is in a language I cannot speak
una lengua ajena extraña
but I can still read it
con mis costillas
I traced his steps to the cliffside
pero se desapareció
cliffside is such a beautiful word
sin embargo, un final amargo
madman, I journeyed home
discutiendo con mi reflejo
there's a girl in the house
olvidada/reclusa/esclava
forbidden from leaving
herir apretado
so happy to see me
ella cae de su ropa
but it's all nonsense
las mentiras de la mente
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There you have it, post number seventeen. (approach with trepidation)

Dead Astronauts Part 2

Let's admit it: space is scary. We live in a tiny bubble in a very hostile reality. If you were instantly transported out of our bubble and anywhere else in the entire universe, you would die in seconds. Every time. It's too hot or too cold, there's radiation and solid objects moving very quickly. Things are blowing up and coalescing. Maybe, just maybe, there's something...someone out there too, watching or perhaps plotting.

That being said, I want to explore all of these frightening and dangerous things. I want to stand on the solar-wind swept surface of a lifeless rock, looking into the blue-hot face of a star that takes up my entire field of view. I want to feel heat and cold unlike anything experienced on my home planet. I want to shake hands (or membranes, or tentacles or pseudopods) with the natives of these strange new places. I want to stand on the surface of a titanic planet, and gaze on a mountain the size of the continent I was born on.

Obviously, I can't. I'll die. Even if I wouldn't, these places are impossibly far away. Our closest neighbor star (proxima centauri, the nearest centaur) is 4.24 light years away. If I was born today on a state-of-the-art spacecraft travelling towards it at maximum velocity, I would die of old age before we arrived. So the best I can do is chew up scientific journals like travel brochures of the most far off and exotic places that will ever be. They might as well be fiction, they're so impossible to reach. And if they're fiction, I might as well create a few of my own.

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Dead Astronauts

silent
sleepless
star sailors
visors down
so your face becomes theirs
too close to death
to reach the next port
even when they were born
stepping aboard
celestial schooners
sacrificing their minds
and bodies
for a scant chance 
at being a corpse
washed up on strange shores
exposed to blackness
beyond the backdrop
of the stars that scar our ceilings
while the rest of us slowly circle
staring at our hunters and swans
crabs and bulls
lighthouses
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There you have it, post number sixteen. (approach with trepidation)

Priest

(Nothing much to say.)
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I dreamed I was a Mayan priest, sequestered away in the royal chamber atop the second-grandest of our pyramids, second only to our Great God-Emperor. Draped in the finest silk and gold fashions and adorned with sparkling jewels of all kinds, glinting in the golden glow of the torch sconces in the night. Tailor's and artisan's own empires rose and fell depending on my choice of their product or their competitors. My dozen concubine harem splayed across my bed pouting and moaning, catering to my every base desire. Servants cooked my food, drew my baths, entertained me with song and with poetry. If I was wrathful, they were scorned, if I was magnanimous, they were praised.

My only duty was to the people. I was to take the wisdom granted me by the Gods and bestow it on our subjects. I was very fortunate to have such a connection. None of us, save our Great God-Emperor, could claim to have the ear of a God, or to hear the voice of one. Our Great God-Emperor had once told me the holiest path was from the Gods' lips to my ears. Therefore the holiest of duties was mine to perform.

Such was the occasion that night. It was a festival, and we had been hard at work. My servants had heard the woes of hundreds of our villagers, and selected a dozen of the most difficult problems for me. They ascended the great pyramid, hearts and souls heavy with great trouble. One by one the knelt before me and poured out their troubles. They came with problems difficult and varied, complex and trying. Paradoxes and cosmic questions and horrid moral dilemmas by the handful. 

I had no answers for them. 

I opened my mouth to apologize for lacking the wisdom my station suggested. From deep within me came an incredible sound. Holy music, a divine reverberation. The rumble of thunder, the blast of cannon fire, the roar of colossal engines and ancient beasts. The keen of whale song, air-raid sirens, funeral mourners and shearing metals. Children laughing, stars burning, hearts beating and chains clinking. All these things and more spilled from my mouth in that moment; simultaneous, blurring, layered. 

I closed my mouth suddenly, in surprise. The troubled peasants making prostrations at my feet had tears welling in their eyes. Looks of profound gratitude stained their faces, as if this sound could carry away all their woes.
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There you have it, post number fifteen. (approach with trepidation)