When I was stationed in Seoul, South Korea, I was assigned to SUSLAK, an NSA/CSS (National Security Agency/Central Security Service) facility. During one mid-watch, my watch supervisor put on the album October Rust by Type O Negative. When “Love You to Death” played, I was blown away, and I literally replayed the track for 12 hours because I had never heard anything that expressed the humanity of romance, hope, longing, and pain within what I would later understand to be gothic metal.

For about 15 years of my life, from 2002–2017, I never wrote about my field of study or the thoughts and feelings I carried due to the circumstances I was experiencing and navigating within my life. Since retiring from the U.S. Navy, the romantic poetry I have written became my way of processing what I have always believed love to be while grieving the loss of people who meant everything to me.

It would not be efficient or productive to communicate everything I have reflected on in recent months, but I have reached a point where publishing romantic poetry no longer has value to me because I no longer desire to bleed my soul into the void of this world. I have evolved to a point where I no longer need to be heard or seen regarding these thoughts and reflections.

This is because I choose the spiritual purity of only writing for the one who chooses to walk with me into eternity. I wrote on 05 AUG 2021, “The only view of the Kingdom of Heaven a man will have in this life is while looking into the eyes of the woman that loves him.” Then let my pen only create beautiful worlds for her.

#gothic

#metal