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I am left with an effigy of electricity,
an image graven in abstract,
too fluid for the fetters of a still-life,
too hollow to remain a moment in motion.
I am left with a confluence of humors,
too real to stand the strain of time,
soon to be diluted by the memorial solvent,
replaced by simulacrum, pretending emotion
as another glass gem of the past.

I am supplicant to the cruelest of mercies,
enthralled by the wonder of bereavement,
mystified by tears,
wearing wounds like splendor,
bleeding water and dust, finding fine company,
as I stroll through dying nurtures,
studying the marvels of decay.

I am burdened with a beating heart,
weighed down with sympathy,
abandoned by fire,
clutching tight to handfuls of ashes, begging for life,
as I stand beneath a sun-filled sky,
contrasting exile and salvation.

I am enamored of sensual murder,
infatuated by the romance of death,
sworn to love,
haunted by the reverie of wings, disconsolate and proud,
molting to a new persona
for the necromancy of compassion.

I am given to the grief of solace,
deluded by the specter of faith,
lost to despair,
sleeping easier in twilight hours, comfortably cold,
blessed with unremarkable dreams
and an abyss to inherit.

I stood and watched Megiddo go to seed,
yet still I found the world unworthy of the taste of light.
And following no star as the night loomed empty,
I wandered in ruins, wondering at the fantasies of dust.

I stood amid the rainfall on the Dies Irae,
bleeding steam as Heaven's water lashed my wounds.
And with no murmured prayer for all that would be lost,
I closed my eyes to deny the day its witness.

I stood and marveled in the avenues of Eden,
recalling awe in the silence of a sigh.
And for no purpose than my own succession,
I knelt and searched the earth for a surviving blade of grass.

I stood alone with the Chiliasm's dusk,
finding no friend in the nomad wind.
And uncaring for the cost, for things I had cherished,
I breathed deep of the new creation's ivory air.

I stood and studied the horizons of Gehenna,
hoping for the company of saints.
And looking north, I saw two trees,
with branches gnarled like lovers' hands.

And between them,
like the cords of an angel's harp,
were hung all the children of God.

I am among dear friends – the gasping stones, the faceless effigies of martyrs made faithless in their vigil. Time is relative, and I'm predisposed to see the remnants: hollow hopes transitioning to dreamless dust, blessed sentiment eroded to the blankness of slate. Surrounded by bodies, I am alive and alone, a face for the legion, conversing with the moon.

I grant you this gift.
I answer your pain.
My fingers,
spiders for your sake.
Your throat,
my door, my dear, soft prey.

No more crying.
No prayers to spurn.
I'm here for you.
Here to help.

I heard you calling.
I'll carry your guilt.
Your siren voice,
my widow muse.
My will, your wish,
our iron hands in folded bliss.

An end to your sorrow.
An end for the hate.
Lay down, be still.
This won't be long.

I promise Hell.
I hold your hope.
I take it all.
I ask for naught.
Your soul. Your shame. Your sin. Your faith.
Release repaid. Even exchange.

I am nothing
if not a lover of life,
but I am no friend to you.

My hands grasp with knives.
My gaze devours.
My lips speak only light.

But I am a bearer of gifts,
possessed of a singular compassion
begging your assent.

It is enough.

I want you.

Give me your agony.
Give me the nails that pierce your bone.
Give me your shrieking love,
the quivering kiss of a thousand tongues.

It will be enough,
and I'll hold it all in.

I'll hold it in.

We have towers,
and the memory of trees.
We have our limbs of steel,
our leaves of glass,
ceramic bark and rubber sap;
concrete roots and cold cores
for the thought of hardwood hearts.

We have synthesis, prosthesis,
a red hand-stamp denying provenance.
Glory without precedence,
our very own uncaused causes
raising miracles from dead earth,
inert pasts and petrified origins.

All ours.

We have our forests filled with mirrors,
crawling with mechanical spiders,
our domestic swarm.
Gunmetal birds with L.E.D. eyes
watching from the canopy,
watching us surge along
with all our godlike muscle.
Forward.

Always forward.

What is left, when the divide grows so vast, that we forget there is another side? An island here, in cold gloaming, drifting among the ravages, out of sight of the only shore I seek. I did not notice at first, but the air is foul, and there are cankers on my hands. I leave a mottled trail as I walk within my little circle, molting to the fire. It seems it has always been thus.

At first, I would grasp, blind without the light I have shed, but there is no purchase here, only the distant drone of hungers unfed. I cannot see the scars for the scales bequeathed my skin. I am... fulfilled, the sovereign of my own isolate realm, with only the wind, singing the rumor of Hell, to observe my reign.

Something crawls in the abyss below, but it cannot reach me. Not yet.

There is solace in forgetting.
A lost man's comfort in wandering.
The balm of the mad,
Apathy and indifference.
Armors of the mind;
Jailers of the heart.

The hoary elder breathes his last,
And remembers nothing,
A lifetime of summers lost to the living,
The burden of winters lifted from him.

The widow burns the house of her memory
And casts the ashes to a heedless wind.

The children run in blindness,
Fleeing the specter on the horizon,
Embracing the ephemeral.

The unborn dream in darkness
And know eternal life.