Mektup 126: Mastering Darkness

The Forging

I. The Fracture

I am not one, but two at war inside a single skull,
A kingdom split, a bell that cannot toll,
A silent scream, a story left untold,
My spirit bought, my better half is sold.
A Devil rides the circuits of my brain,
And sings a song of sun upon the wane.
He is the shadow that my light has cast,
The bitter future, and the ruined past.

He is the tremor in the surgeon's hand,
The shifting bedrock of the yielding sand,
The thirst that drinks from pools of bitter brine,
And says the poisoned water tastes like wine.
He is the whisper when the crowd has gone,
The endless, dark, and desperate oblivion.
And I, the Master, cower in his hold,
My story's parchment brittle, bleak, and old.

II. The Mirror in the Future's Glass

Then came a vision, from a time not yet,
A silhouette I never would forget.
A future self, who stood with iron grace,
With my own eyes set in a colder face.
His Devil walked, not wild, but by his side,
A steed of shadow, tamed, with savage pride.
No whip or chain, but will was its restraint,
A force directed, without any taint.

“You call him foe,” he said, his voice like stone,
“But you are fighting fragments of your own.
This beast you fear, this chaos, this despair,
Is but your power, raw and unaware.
You build a dam to hold a rising sea,
And wonder why you never can be free.
You must not block the flood, but learn to sail,
And use its hurricane to fill your sail.”

III. The Descent and the Bargain

I walked into the river, cold and deep,
Where sorrows old and promises don't keep.
I held my breath beneath the crushing flow,
And dared the darkness claim the light I know.
“If you are me, then we shall sink as one,
Or you will serve me when this trial is done.”
The water filled my lungs with liquid night
I felt the end of terror, and of fright.

And in that silence, past the gasping need,
I felt the shudder of a broken steed.
The Devil knew, in that aquatic grave,
He served a King who was no more a slave.
We did not speak in words of fire and lust,
But in the language of the broken trust.
A pact was forged, not written, not in blood,
But in the understanding of the flood.

IV. The Alchemy of Pain

I took the rage, a fire uncontrolled,
And poured it in a crucible of gold.
I took the grief, the sharp and piercing shard,
And on the grinding stone, I worked it hard.
I took the fear, the cold and clinging mist,
And in the furnace of my will, it hissed.
Each doubt, a hammer blow upon the steel,
Each scar, a testament to what is real.

No longer did I beg the storm to cease,
I learned to dance within its wild release.
The whispers that once drove me to the brink,
Became the shrewd advisors I would think.
The claws that tore my sanity to shreds,
Became the tools that severed hostile threads.
The hunger that devoured from within,
Became the focus that let me begin.

V. The Unbecoming

“To move the arm, forget the arm,” he said,
“Dissolve the ‘I’ that lives inside your head.
You are not one who lifts, you are the lift,
A timeless, boundless, ever-moving gift.
The knee that locks is locked by your command,
The silent voice is silenced by your hand.
Erase the actor, break the sculptor's mold,
And watch a story infinitely bold.”

So I un-named myself, I shed the skin,
Let all the chaos and the peace rush in.
I am the battle, and the peace that follows,
The light that spills from dark and hollowed hallows.
I am the footstep, not the one who walks,
The silent substance of the mountain's rocks.
The Devil is the current, I the river,
We flow together, now and on forever.

VI. The Sovereign and the Steed

I do not ride him now, nor he ride me,
We are a fused and terrible unity.
We are the calm, and we the hurricane,
The sweet release, and we the lasting pain.
We are the answer to the world's cold cry,
A single purpose under a shared sky.
The throne I sit on is my will made stone,
A power I have carved from flesh and bone.

So let the weak ones pray for sun and rain,
We are the drought, and we the hurricane.
We do not ask for purpose or for cause,
We are the judgment and the universe's laws.
For we have walked through hellfire and through ice,
And paid the ultimate and final price:
The tender boy who needed love and light,
Was sacrificed to become endless night.

But in that night, a fiercer star now burns,
A consciousness for which the cosmos yearns.
So let this poem stand, a testament in time,
To turning simple, mortal blood and grime,
Into a legend, whispered on the air—
The boy who died, the King who learned to dare.