And now she's the enemy

her skin is like jade
perfect and smooth, a pale green
she has been bitten

the city... silent,
but for the stirring of the
shambling undead

it was a small scratch,
I thought I could survive... but
I feel the sickness

The Superiority of Haiku Over All Other Art

All of our lives are intertwined. I mean this in more than just the economic sense. Yes, the pencil on your desk took thousands of men to make (the man who chopped down the tree for it's wood, the man who mined the ore for the steel in the axe of the man who chopped down the tree, the man who mined the graphite in the center, etc)... but more than this, we are connected by the actions we take (or do not take) in ways unfathomable to us, unless we're able to step back often and see the mosaic of life for what it truly is, a complex system of connected beauty.

How Prince Lupus Gained His Royal Title; Also, The Arming of a Tyrannical Regime

Rangoon, Burma: Birthplace of the famous Prince Lupus

I realized recently that I neglected to explain fully how Prince Lupus came to have such a regal name. It begins with my first meeting of the Captain James Massimo, in fact, and involves much international intrigue, two Burmese military coups, and the arming of a tyrannical regime with stolen weapons:

On The Meaninglessness of All Things

I once heard through my friend and Captain, James Barlowe Massimo, that Dr. Benjamin Redstone had told him of a dead planet with vast evidence of previous inhabitation by roughly "pre-industrial" sentient life. Those on the planet likely died over one hundred thousand years ago due to their star going nova.

He supposedly said this planet had the most beautiful stone carvings and works of art he had ever seen. Unfathomably enormous, intricate, highly detailed, and perfectly preserved carvings in stone the likes of which he says he had never imagined could exist. This is a significant statement considering the longevity of Dr. Redstone and the many world's he has supposedly visited. This planet was the one that stood out among them all. And it's still a nameless planet around a nameless star. I think Dr. Redstone prefers it that way. Captain Massimo told me there was a great sadness in him when he spoke about it, unlike anything he'd seen in his friend before.

The Good Doctor discovered tablets of their language, deciphered them, and brought back some poetry from this lost civilization. It's offered here in what Dr. Redstone determined was chronological order, roughly chronicling their planet's slow demise and increasing temperature, through stages of appeals to the gods, then into eventual acceptance of their deaths, or cynicism... depending on your interpretation. Dr. Redstone said that the very last carvings were made deep within caves underground, where the last of their species probably survived when the surface temperature became unsurvivable.

here they are:

Laboring in stone
The million faces of God
that we should know You

the sky in stillness
the stars lay unstirred by the
sound of our cries

Our world is like dew...
fleeting... small beauty, like dew,
will evaporate