I watched it in the summer;
I watched it in the winter:

a memory without a middle name
on which I never was to have a claim—
you left it there to linger, and moved on
to make a sacrifice of something blond,
toward a time of plastic, neon, glitter,
of which we knew but only scraps and litter…

I. A Reprobate Soul

I thought I drew my sustenance from her.
For months on end, the fever kept me up
at night, and from her image I created
a fancy world where age would have no say,
where time would of our story’s moments be
a web of dislocation—cherished tales
always to be retold, rewritten, sung
in variations inexhaustible.
No memories, no expectations had
a place in there. The line between our selves
was blurred. Her thoughts were mine. The space between
our bodies was no gap: it bridged our breaths
that, filled with words and spirit, tied us up
together, and attached our fates as one.
I used the letters of our names as links,
and forged a chain adorned with pearls and gems,
a gossamer of songs and whispers cast
on the mundane grimace of agony—
the chaos engineered to serve the fear
and hubris of the worshipers of works
that cannot speak nor save. I pictured us
as different from this Luciferian ilk…

II. The Shapeless Ones

In corridors of our dream-palace, dusk
is full of murmurs, promises for night
to keep—as many red blood corpuscles
in veins we drain from the inside. We’ve been
invited in. We’ll change and shape the flesh
according to our whims; we’ll dwell in it
until consumption of the forces that
sustain it, keep it standing on its feet.
Thus will this world be dealt with, ours to take.
You would not recognize it, should you see
it with your eyes of old and sinful meat.
But we’ll have mended you by then: our light
will have transformed your bones corruptible
into a new creation that can neither
rebel nor fail, impervious even to
such notions stale as right and wrong. You clay
automata, you choir of shells that sing
our lies and make them resonate throughout
the consciousnesses left to conquer—rise!
And march upon the remnant of the seed
that claims a kingdom from on high, and scorns
our rules, ignores the principalities
we have established from the ancient days!

III. A Reprobate Soul

Night after night she came: a friendly face
among the shadows—smiles and laughing eyes
to soothe the woes of day, and to rekindle
the pangs of bygone fantasies. My dreams
were hers, a universe for her to rule.
I didn’t see I was under a spell,
that neither was her making nor my work.
I recollect the moment when it struck me,
but what could be the cause of it? It filled
my limbs with vigor, gave my heart a purpose.
Was it intended, though? Was it an error?
Was she an accidental cause? A means,
and nothing more?—yet, to another end.
Or did she play along with the charade?
Was she aware her slender frame embodied
a pure idea, a mirror of the will
that through my eyes was gazing at itself?
Though a consenting tool for the dark powers
that subjugate in entertainment masses
of senseless husks that wear a human semblance,
a flame was burning ‘neath her act, a torch
that sent a signal through the widths of space.
Would I be strong and fast enough to seize
the light ephemeral of this sun that fell
from unsuspected heavens—ere it fades
and dies—or worse—before they harness her
and sully her, and make her spoil, defile
that very special gift, and turn this grace
into a curse? Before, misled by fiends
that labor hard to make her one of them,
she gets her outer Form reshaped, her body
beyond all recognition modified,
and thus, at last, her soul commodified?
Ere emptied, she’s discarded in a mansion,
with worthless trinkets left, and sadness real,
by hounds surrounded to protect a garden
of thistles overgrown and briars sharp
from swarms of other sorts of parasites?

IV. The Shapeless Ones

This earth is ours by right: our father shed
the first libation of the liquor red,
vermilion offering that God rejected.
What gift more precious was he to bestow?
The jealous liquid to his Maker pleaded;
his silent whines and whimpers weren’t unheard.
Inquired about the deed, and knowing well
that naught could veil him from the Eye divine,
the first of us, however, held his ground:
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” said he, firm,
defiant in his crime. In his own sight,
the firstborn’s second sacrifice surpassed
by far his brother’s. Now, as he was banned,
and marked so that no man would raise his hand
against his life (a mercy double-edged),
the slayer found the strength to turn his curse
into a blessing: so would strive his bloodline,
so would endure the wonders of his might,
to stand against his kin as testimony
of prodigies achieved by man in pride.
His name resounded of the pain he bore.
Resolved to pass it down to all mankind
as surplus to the sin original—
enforcing unawares the sentence harsh,
but nothing more—he roamed the earth and toiled,
and probed the secrets hid of life, and forged
the keys to power over minds, devised
the ways to bend a will into embracing
his man-made travesty of holy nature
as what is real and good, while feasting on
the very blood he spilled. The idiots gulped
his poisons down, and asked for more, and fought
against each other. Thus, the road was paved
for the enslavement of the sons of man.
His tricks and words were beautiful. He knew
the ways to lull the cattle into sleep—
we use the same old tactic: infiltration.
We infiltrate the people and their flesh,
infecting dreams to breed despair instead.
Then, to the slaughterhouse! And they comply,
and bleed, and bleed some more. No name invoked
on open throats: the sacrifice is lost,
and has been lost for generations. No
redemption for the willful victims, blessed
with feeding plump their betters. Vainly die
the living damned, recycled in their owners’
bloodstream. They die, never to be revived.
We teach you to complain about the things
you never suffered from; we keep you blind
to your true plight and slavery, to wrongs
you help us make for your enjoyment. Fools…
In vice you revel—dear accomplices!—
our best support for full ascendancy.

V. A Reprobate Soul

I know I’m not alone—that in the mass
my blood is brewed to feed the ruling ghouls.
I know I’m played—according to a score
I have no inkling of. How to resist?
I know she draws her sustenance from me,
though she’s a bait to serve but for a while.
She got the ritual brandings of the thralls
and sports them proudly for the crowds to see.
A wasted muse, she’s gone a-whoring after
the works of mediocrity. She makes
a show of virtue cheap, forgets her art,
unfaithful to the love of former days,
to boredom fallen prey. The varnish thickens,
lackluster poshness crusting all her traits;
it chokes her breath and smothers hopes she’d fanned
in viewers hypnotized and stupefied.
Hers is a shameful share; she’s worth much more.
But she’s as trapped as all the rest of us.
She saw in us a pain she cannot ease,
but never looked upon the shrine I made,
I dreamt for her—and all of it was fake.
The phantom haunting it was there to lead
to other places further down the depths
of waters bottomless and still that lie
beneath the cozy chambers, warm and lit,
of certainties to be forgotten soon.
But who would follow it to the abyss?
What persuasion would it take to drag
bewildered souls into the lair of beasts?
Reality’s turned upside down, and ghosts
are everywhere more visible than us,
transparent as we are to scrutiny
of monsters cold that coldly lie: “I am
your friend and your protector” as they gnaw
your bones and suck your life and make you love
abjection, cherish ugliness and filth.
Yes, human world is being changed—once more,
and for the worst. It never stops. Convergence—
the worshiped singularity to come—
amalgamation—blotting out the first
divine decree (dividing light from darkness,
and good from evil so that life may flourish)—
restores the chaos it pretends to fight—
a pregnant void, but dead to sense and purpose…

I watched you in the winter;
I watched you in the summer:

I can no longer recognize the girl
who sent me on a journey wild to swirl.
I came to find you, treading roads unmapped,
but lost your sight, in midnight fog enrapt
with those delusions wrought to keep me tame.
I dare not tell who is the one to blame.