Faust
There is a solemn beauty in a pale grey landscape
A dewy grace to the twist of a barn owls neck
There is worth in the flowers that bloom in places where man does not dare tread
And there is all of this in Faust
Like a stork through shallow waters he strides
Across the fractured landscapes of his home
Up cliffs steep and over the jagged tooth of the world
He strides, ever watchful, a specter in the night
A glimpse of existential dread through the fog that hangs thick in the air
Too tall, too pale, too ‘not’ to be anything cousin to familiar
But their perspective is clouded, by their own narrow,
mortal bias which covers their eyes like a film
There is so much more to Faust
As a moonbeam on the darkest night, dainty
As the album down of a chick in the nest, silken
As the grave on a hallowed night, solemn
As a marble work of human genius, statuesque
As the velvet petals of his periwinkle soul, delicate
As the wind which batters the hatches,
bends boughs and snaps at sails,
which howls and moans and
whispers deep into the sleepless night,
Which slips through each crack in the defenses,
through even the thickest woolen armour,
As the wind which nips, whips, bites, nudges,
knocks, shoves, steals, freezes, sweeps, and stills, he is lonely
Vasilisa
But soft, what light through yonder meadow breaks?
It is the sort padding of small, ancient paws.
The bold eggshell coat of a wandering winter stranger far from homely burrow
and familiar horizon; a sweet searching soul parts the dry inland pasture.
A patient step, carefully considered, and then perhaps another, if the mood strikes
Time is transient, both more and less than most assume at first life
Time is static, it does not change no matter what perception states
Everything changes, in time, but time does not change
These things she knows well.
She is antediluvian, primeval
existing relentlessly and seeming without end
She is fractured, stuffed of snow and brittle bones
A heart tender as pomegranates and with just as many chambers
Spaces aplenty for the exquisite grotesquerie of nature
All the wasted birth and welcome death,
All the catastrophe and climax
The miracles and mayhem
The ephemeral love, the enduring love, and the empty love
All hers for the viewing, a sentinel
beyond mortal morality
Past the waves of towering grasses,
brittle and beautiful in their annual expiration,
Slinks the gentle, shattered, eternal thing
Observing the perennials aching for the last dregs of cold sunlight
There is the bandy stem, bowing to the ocean breeze,
There bellow lies the root deeply embedded in the narrative of the land,
There are pale petals the blue of permafrost on still lips
So alike and so unlike her own pale coronet
She takes a moment, then several more
to contemplate the colors and all those in between
There are many colors in between
It took many moments
She twitches her trailing tail and rolls her neck
As she again takes a step toward the tall esk at the cliff
Faust & Vasilisa
One tall and timid
One low and slow
Their meeting a quiet collision of binary stars
A circling dance of north and north
Magnetic in the antonymity sense
Mirrored movements, each in the orbit of the other
Each equal and opposite in their cosmic waltz
“Who could you be?” speaks the frozen deliberate
And her candor after such methodical steps feels quite abrupt
“I could be,” he says with care, in respect to her meticulous nature,
“Any number of things.
I am here, I am visible I could be a friend, a confidant, An adviser, or an enemy I could be sweet or sour Or taken with a grain of salt I could be fierce, a marvel A real tour du force
I could be a nightmare A monster of the mists I could be a patron saint
A guardian spirit, protective
I could be faint of heart
Terrified of a world as wide
And with creatures as wise
As the one before me
It is yet to be seen what I could be
I am potential, personified I am the afterimage of the light of creation
I am the dregs of the primordial soup
I am in front of you, seeing and being seen I am eternal, breathing and feeling Living and being
Thinking and existing”
It is a speech fit for contemplation
Which suits Vasilisa just fine
And she goes over each word as One would roll a sweet around From one cheek to the next
“You could be, for certain
Just as anyone could be
It is a choice that faces you now
A choice which faces each
Who came before
And each who will come after
The future is yet undetermined
You are yet undetermined
This I have learned,
And this I know.
So allow me to revise
My previous question”
“Who will you choose to be?”
Base Score: 16 AP (Writing: 835 words) +5 AP (Personal Work Bonus) +20 AP (Other Esk Bonus: 10 AP * 2) +20 AP (Esk Interaction Bonus: 10 AP * 2) +8 AP (Storyteller Bonus: 8 AP * 1) Total AP per submission: 69
Base Score: 8 GP (Writing: 835 words) +4 GP (Poetry Bonus: 4) +6 GP (Storyteller Bonus: 6 GP * 1) Total GP per submission: 18