ORION

Tethered to the city of the sun is the eternal chromosome. Unseen while it is both ancient & waiting in the future. Penetrating deep into the roots of churning histories where gold has been dredged from its foundries. Molten guts sloshing with fire & blood, emitting a chain of memory that codifies in its darkest moments ... Deranged spectres hardening in a meat-­furnace as the body grows rancid. Born larvae-­like, but eventually taking flight. Enough to break the shell of shit that’s encased them for so long. Dust incinerated in final dawn as the planet slips. Burning. One more look behind as they carry a broken god on their backs. Nearly impossible to reach their destination, but that’s how they’ve survived so long. Physicality metallic & spore-like to climb through stars. Long periods of sleeping between bouts of pain. Bound to one another in the cosmic freeze. Sharpening their dialectical meaning as they’re both brutish & philosophically charged. Seeds of night & day ... They didn’t arrive here to conquer it, but to enforce the balance that’s always ensured their longevity. To keep blood pumping through nature’s veins & make sure she’s moist enough to reveal soft-­spots in the desert – Tribes & mystics anointing her open plains. Generations to reshape the land into a valley of shrines.

Now, as the old planet shatters & boils, there’s no corner for a plaintive mind. Dilution of the spirit unremitting since before the first citadels were erected. Man hiding from man as the spawn of eras sweep him up. A current of fire swallowing his mind as he tastes blood at the back of his throat. With rage against sickness he feels for closed portals, bloated by inertia & the soundless voice. It is only heard when he’s asleep, buzzing beneath his dream. Nothing he can focus with his thoughts. Deliriums have taken the place of visions. Arrested in throes of death even as remaining extant. Unable to connect with the essence of his own sublimity. Self­-immolation in the face of dire ignorance ... Yet, among a fading race, there were those listening with grim defiance. Hidden inside ruins where roads are still paved in gold; inlaid by skulls. Eyeless sockets gaze into a burning sky. Blinded by holocaust. Sight forsaken by reason & progress. Knowledge of death capable only of transference. Inside charnel winds of memory’s estate. Future looming cold & calculated. Even as wilderness remains uninhabitable & the wound opens up. All secrets, once uncharted, bleed­-out & roll back into an ocean of unreceived symbologies.

A golden chain weaving invisibly through plasmic regions. Even if one is falling or waking in his shell. A burning question enters thought to make him desperate & desirous of a more atomized way. Realization becomes the ocean he’s always considered a sequestered zone. Only gods had access – But he was a god! Holding a scepter in his fist with the head of many beasts. Roiling eyes to gaze down disparate corridors. Not legion, but plenty. Separate but easily unified. Drinking from the same cup. Blood on blood. Scintillating in the dark a moment before the fire descends. Travelling through space while still entwined in each & every breath. It’s the only way he could ever reach them & why he’s still here. Many others, too, who are no longer susceptible to lonely forms – Bathing in soaked orgies. Erogenous salutations as seed is blasted across fields. Erecting pyramids that connect the chain to its source. Nature’s spume coming undone in a galaxy of stars. Where he sits & gazes & strokes the fate of things.

THE GOLDEN ARTIFEX

I want to get away from all this – Sadness. Confusion. The duress of a brittle age ...

Malformed dignity dons another mask. I have visions of stripping the flesh of every human who walks the earth. So their nerves will feel wind as it passes by. Ecstasy of a forgotten time as pain rapidly burns through every field of experience.

It is the true meaning of baptism. When nerves are lit on fire & the sordid memory of life is cleansed. Crawling through desert sands like an insect on its back. Heated from the Outside as its blood runs cold. Creeping deeper into shadow as more of the blaze is revealed.

I’m on my knees before this notion. Berating my skull. No sooner to let it go. It comes back to taunt me even when focused on the light. Exploration of brutal lands has changed the terrain of my vision. Now, where there used to be stars, I see a shutterless effusion of gulfs.

Clinging to the side of a mountain in anticipation of the day all this will finally crumble ...

Separation of logic & spirit. Indoctrinated into a game of codes. Labyrinths centered in order & progress spinning out of control. A deadly surface to undermine the faculty of strength.

I’m the strongest I’ve been. Also the weakest. Even with a clearer idea of how consciousness works I continue the struggle to stay alive. Commanded by rage to dig out the heart of the race & burn it ritualistically. Droning incantations over their corpses to draw them out.

Shattered masks forged into new sands dissolved by planetary winds. I stand in the eye of destruction to feel its otherworldly calm. Mountains of ash kicked up in the distance as they are drawn into the sun.

Shadow mounts light. Penetrates with reason. Shroud­like – shining through me in the manner of water. Wandering the earth as a living ghost ...

Circling ocean for a very long time. I become enticed by the contours of cliffs along the shore.

Finally, drifting off. Chaos bends across nature’s back perpetuating hidden realities. Indifferent to concepts that I have stacked around me like walls. All those times I’ve walked along the shore to find I was becoming stony myself. Even with the current so close. It soothes my rage when I can no longer forget. It matters not that I’m without a home.

No longer hesitant to swim or drown. I have died once & am not afraid to do so again. I must step aside a conflict so fueled by mental anguish & realize the beauty in the steps it takes to let a mask fall & a body die – Loam of nature’s bones. Far richer now than in heaven.

Ocean heralds nature’s roots louder than the mountains. I’m crushed by her weight when she first gives herself to me. Blood pounds in my ears. It is the last of it. Everything else has been washed away. There is only this frozen vessel scintillating like blades. To cut down any mask that reigns. And see to it that true sacrifice forces penetrating glances inward ...

Naked & free. Afraid of what I am going to see. Progeny of larvae living in shadow & breeding on the cycles of races. Frothing & bloody shore where my enemies left their bones. Grinning in the sands a final time as I cut them down. To meet my rage in tandem with another vision.

Slowly, my vessel fills with every tangent of the imagination.

Circles drawn on ocean’s floor become galaxies; spiralling out of control, yet focused.

Driven to sleep with chaos in my guts. Beautiful nightmare – Frozen landscape. Mountains undreamt of by men. Oceans stretching­ out to indifferent suns. Magistery of pitch­-blackness ...

I am changed when I awaken. Breathing air underwater the same as any other. All worlds unite & are undone. Myths no longer confused for sacred knowledge. All I’ve wanted to see destroyed is destroyed as I’m blinded by light coming through. Shadow folds into itself followed by the death of many seasons – Altered constitutions. Dual. Without pity or judgement.

What is this I see? In its pulsing harvest. Meat rooted to the ground refusing to seek its own way out. Existence among stars stubborn to witness their own death. Non-­committal hubris in the company of eternal consciousness. One corrupt symbol hiding in the cornfields of another’s incorporeal substance. Devouring the beast, infant-­like, in its swarthy shell.

I wanted to see it go down. I knew the purpose in violence when it came to bursting out of the womb. A slow degradation of former realities blind­sided by abruptly altering forms. No room for indifference as there was too much at stake. Even as recognition stalls & curves around.

Blindness can no longer be substituted. While groping in the dark I knew it to be true.

Guise of a man who’s seen too much, but only in back of the mind. Finally, as I detach, it brings the whole thing into view. Guttural howls in spaces I occupy that I realize are my own.

I dig into wet sand seeking escape. The grave I carved out for myself wasn’t enough.

Through the bottom of the ocean & onto the other side.

Adrift. Blackened currents of a reflective nature. Spirit grows confused & roams, yet returns.

A river of blood winding through primordial lands; cast off are effusions of pity while stand rectifiers of hardship & beauty. No tragic state of being as it would seem. Those travelling knew the difference between darker currents & false light: by pushing through ...

Naked as babes I leave the circle behind & cross­over into a pre­-mythic delirium. Shadows to pulse around a serpent’s longing. Seed of the universe bleeds free. Following it down through veins of coarser logic where my focus becomes intrusive. No longer weighed down by invisible grief that holds me. I’m able to control my suffering in my gut until it is a stone.

Transformation along the road. I was always glad to see you there: a voice from past or future living in my head. A conduit that’s always been. Perhaps lying dormant in the hours I’ve spent away. Once corralled into slavery by reality’s forked tongue.

Civilization burns for it. Hunched in the corner of some wretched cave. Now, flowing freely through Gates of Hesperus.

Out of the porous ground & back into the rain – Absorbed by electric storms.

Torn apart to reach there. Walls quaver as in the beginning. And I’m just as unsure of my birth then as I am now ... Giants circling around with bloody hands. Seismic ritual. Murder in fields & sacrifice to upheavals in sand. Brings forth the fluid that reaches us from the basin of all waters & times. I look into their stony eyes & know that they have passed this way before ...

No longer gripping sides as I am pulled through. There isn’t any reason to fight it as I’m looking into the eyes of beings who travel here constantly. And although time is loosely represented it’s as if they’ve always been – Beneath their craggy stares lie oceans of veiled light.

Down there. Entire civilizations. Orbic star matter risen on poles alongside towers of molten glass that flow inside thin sheets of viscid matter. Miles to go as I sidle along its watery thread, into the abyss of shadowy kingdoms. Faces gazing Out as I pass them by.

Memories of cold, but unthreatened worlds. Down there. Where the center is protected by gargantuan formations – Night & stone. Impenetrable worlds. I follow them through.

Voices coming from inside. Across divides of matter & spirit. They break the circle & release me from the salt­-brine. All drenched in gore from the violent spasm of my birth ...

Howling at the sky before I able to commit to the Word. Many suns anchored there, infested with darkly pulsing umbras. Hazing across my eyes in the form of tears, blood, ritual. While they are forming a line on either side with heads down. Pointed to a distant, most easterly, star.

It’s from where they arrived. But never linearly, along the surface of space; with spirits that have shattered & re­aligned so many times they cannot keep track. Beyond that star & the next into a radiant chain where a haze of smoke is still visible around the entry/exit hole.

It is where we come from. Built up around the chain as it spirals out into wayfaring realities never to return. Where stars align themselves eventually. When they’re ready to die ...

Back under the mountain. Pulsing against shadow. A first spark ignites the realm which would give them their first glimpse. Awakened by aeons of dreaming. From behind ripples of darkness where seeds of chaos bask in the loam. Ready to impregnate fields of matter that would stretch as far as each vessel had strength to plow: violent terms for a wildly tenebrous ambition.

We’ll know it when we find it. Or all would be lost. And it will not come at once, but in mostly indiscernible ways. lt is the wind on our backs when we are pushing up the mountain. But also the blood churning in my stomach. Forcing sickness & fire. Flowing down through me into matter, ocean & wind.

They penetrate me with their stares & I weep.

Why do I cry? While suns blaze over me burning my skin. A distant grief I don’t fully understand.

Drowning the sanctity of a weaker man’s plight as he remains on the shore. Warden of memory’s ghost & emptiness it leaves him with. Nowhere to go but into the ground: seed of nothing save his own dull streak – I do not cry for him. Of this much I am certain.

A joyful pain assails me. Rapturous intuition. Penetrating evidence that I have been alive since before the chain broke. I have looked inside the eyes of those who were there & tried to discern the knowledge they keep hidden, without words. I feel it on my tongue in my mind. Everywhere or nowhere. Regrettable or set free. The chain, unseen. A wandering litany. Deposition of the new seed. A reunion of sorrows in the mercurial dawn & nature’s claim to loneliness.

FLOOD

Vulture on the mountain. Carrion in the hills. Blood flows down to kingdoms ...

Remnants of majesty in the breath of a song: a voice heard & not forgotten. Still, no time to escape black tides rising murderous from the swamp. Stench fills the air bringing new sickness forth – Hallucinating reality. A scourge that saves. Where to go from here when IT is ripe.

Such an ugly time to be alive when they’re clawing out each other’s eyes. Wishing only to convert those who’ve agreed to live in total darkness. No labyrinth for them, either, who don’t seek within themselves. Curled into a ball at the edge of man’s shore & dark campaigns.

Killers suffering visions of war until they suffer no more. Instead, they’re able to lock ­out any turmoil or voice. On knees before the murderers preceding them. Gore wells reminding them of victorious days at the end of the Deluge. The cannibal harvest begins anew, but only in their minds. Black magicians ...

Arise enlightened from a bed of distant memories. No longer able to rationalize the duration in which they remained formless – They remain formless, yet consider that as being to their advantage. Risen from pestilence; larval beginnings. Gods as men born again.

Holy terror becomes an unconquerable force. Claiming to inject goodness into spirits of leprous men. Eyes fluttering awake at wind’s call. Fire crawling toward them with the intention to suffocate them – Broken-­down hardships. Faded testimonies.

They’d rather watch it burn then share it with weaker men. To march across scourged territories oozing lesions. Armies riding through to hack off heads, piling them in a village square before lighting them on fire. Forming a circle around the blaze & the dark shadows cast there. Arisen out of the land of Magog & its mostly hazy secrets ...

Things have altered. So many devoted have lost their minds. Sacrificial altar touches the sky. Burning brightly, yet no longer resonant. With heads down in silent prayer. Whispered platitudes to forgotten, ancient gods. Who, taunting from the other side of the mountains, watch as undisciplined forms of violence pile up. Sediment to afford them time for pondering outcomes of things that are out of their own reach, as well. Still, they’re planning on leaving soon.

Cult of death it has become. The measure of man’s base thinking strives to dominant itself before it is able to hatch – Caste systems of rigidity & silence. All must go! A sleeping sickness that has gradually taken their minds. Now it arrives in the form of brute strength. God’s soldiers marching toward the singled-­minded vision of a mutable land.

Reality forcing reason which, condemned by its terms, dissolves in waters of supreme confusion. Order of nature’s debaucheries have been fed to the kingdom.

Oil in her heart builds. Condemnation of the spirit & the spirit of compromise.

Grey residue of her ill-­worth. Crust covered in sores. All those who died during God’s malice. Ideas worn thin that, through acts of men, willed shadow­-realms into being regardless of absence of light. Violence spills its seed in the temperamental season ...

No chair among brethren of this world. A necromancer’s throne surrounded by grieving demons. He has died & seen into the future. He understands the pain of transformation. Severed from budding fields of Spring’s ardent blood. In favor of a war against reality’s mist.

They’d raise an army of the dead. Each a murderer in another life. Torturers & butchers who’ve understood excesses of the knife. A cavalcade of bone scrapers who have touched the nerve of land. Raping the sediment with their scarred & brutal cocks. Seed forlorn & ragged pushing itself down into the slightest cracks. Where bones of old worlds survive.

If memory serves them well. They’ve died, too, but come back to reclaim the prize as it has always been splayed out before them. Passages & currents. While men lie sleeping with their navels pressed toward heaven ...

They must obey if they’re to learn His secrets. It’s difficult to narrow it down, now, when planets are constantly shifting. Nature groping for her place, too, among the stars. A true seed in the defiance of her youth. When violence against violence becomes the negating tool. Sown into the fabric. Where necromancers hide their bones ... Resurrection!

In the guise of new masters. Where does it go? When mountains dissolve & the killer’s mind is revealed. Huddled in the darkness of His delirium – Look at your God! Cowering in a place death can’t reach. While crusaders Outside are doing His bidding.

One does not wake Him. Even the most potent of necromancers (who have seen the future). They turn, instead, to nature for the gifted fruit. Under the moon where the blood is warm, the semen is thick, destroyers are championed & killers are put on trial.

In the name of true reality. Always at war, but never for reasons they’ve conjured. Before the altar without a face – It’s both inhuman & human to want to drown in fury that’s besieged these times.

Still, can it be much easier to remain asleep & wait out your doom ..?