J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know better. He’s been widely published over the last 30 years, most recently at Disturb the Universe Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Rye Whiskey Review, Misfit Magazine and Yellow Mama. Hopefully, he will have a new collection of poems out soon. He does still have a blog, although he rarely has time to write on it. such is life. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
I was born in a kingdom with underground passages. The king was a tyrant and the queen a woman made up of lies. Poverty, lowliness, and humiliation. I was raised like a guinea pig for experiments. I was raised with the seed of a soul. I have wanted wings since I was a child.
Since I was a child, I wished to fly away from the harshness and darkness of this life. An old man once said to me: “I want to fly. Nothing is certain in this world, but whoever denies heaven will be denied by heaven. I believed it.
I began to have a will to the sun. I knew that even in the land of underground passageways, we are made up of the power of the heavens and the earth. It is not a flight to the top. Rather, we fly to the bottom. To the very depths of humanity.
The ugliness of human beings, their meanness toward the upper class and their pride toward the lower class, became my strength. Wingless flight. I descended to the bottom of the underground passage. There, the living had no purpose, and their souls were as good as dead. Here it became clear to me for the first time that I was an angel without wings.
I planted the seeds of my soul in them without reserve. The will to the sun. With their last strength, they ran up the underground passageway and escaped to the earth. To a land without a tyrannical king and a false queen.
Burnt by the sun and with blinded eyes, they ran up to a high cliff. Then, arms outstretched, they soared toward the sun, one after the other, light and full of happiness.
