That lyre,
Apollos hand-me-down,
An instrument of antiquity,
That sound,
Each tone more shrill than the last,
Thundercracks across string,
I hate it,
I hate those aural pangs,
They scrape across my cranium,
Nails upon chalk,
Leaving invisible scars,
There is nothing divine about this sound,
No virtue from its turtle shell frame,
It is a miserable dirge of angst,
Plucked free by the fingers of demons,
Inflicting naught but malady.
The mirror lies,
I swear it,
It’s very sheen rippling with deceit,
Or perhaps malice,
It insults me with that foul image,
A reflection of some miscreation,
Is that who I am?
That creature,
Are those my eyes?
Those unfeeling oculi,
But I foolishly believed myself a man,
A higher primate,
A lie like a million glass shards,
Bad luck for a lifetime,
Denying my own monstrosity,
A crisis of the very self,
Carrying oneself as a somebody,
While being a nothing of a ghoul.
In my dreams,
I often take off in astral form,
Cheered on by stadiums of stars,
Off like a spectral rocket,
As I soar through the cosmos,
Skip,
Zoom,
I take snapshots of the constellations,
Spying their empyrean forms,
Proving their fabled existence,
They dance sprightly about as I pass,
I’m an astrological tourist tonight,
I have flown so far already,
But there are more sights to see,
I stop for lunch upon the rings of Saturn,
Watching a show lightyears away,
A medical drama,
Starring the ministrations of Jupiter and Neptune,
They keep trying to revive Pluto,
Rambling onwards,
The sun is calling to me,
As I approach my eyes grow heavy,
The solar rays declare morning,
This astral vacation was over.
We’re a secret organisation,
We tell everybody,
This is a wacky institution,
The syndicate of silly,
And we’re always open,
So open the door and climb in the window,
Wipe your hat,
And hang up those moccasins,
There’s a brew boiling in the bath,
But to business my friend,
We’re all in the basement upstairs,
So best go up the down staircase,
Don’t trip,
These stairs bite you know,
We’ve been debating,
And arguing,
And debating about arguing,
We’re scholars of senselessness,
Humans to a man,
It’s all a bit silly,
That’s undeniable,
But that’s life in a nutshell.
After the sunsets warning,
The dark creeps up,
Nothing is radiant in the world,
Naught but the two lights I see,
Corpselights in the black,
Malevolence in twin lustre,
Eyes flittering a grim emerald,
I lock vision with them,
Silence,
Just silence,
The hairs upon my nape stand in awe,
I know not to which fiend they belong,
But I feel the heat of their ire,
Such hate in their illumination,
They pounce from brush to brush,
Denoting a predators process,
The night shifts just that bit colder,
I am fixed in their gaze,
Silence,
Just silence,
Then rapid claws upon broken twigs,
No more sound would be heard,
No more sunsets to be seen.
Under this phosphorus curtain,
In these blood-strewn streets,
I do not believe this war will end,
Which war you ask?
The forever war,
Humanity versus humanity,
Presided over by those arms dealer divines,
Lauded by sycophants of the political class,
Soldiers are mere cents,
Towns are legal tender,
Nations become naught more than stockpiles,
Fuel for the napalm fires,
Iron and uranium and young blood,
Progeny sent into a grinder en masse,
Front lines along the bottom line,
Eradication becomes a profit all its own,
Both decades and darlings have already rotted,
There can be no ceasefire,
When populations are just another currency,
To these hollow men.
Plated and iron-willed,
Zweihander in grip,
We are the first,
The forlorn hope,
The first of the army,
The first to charge,
The first to brave that barbed storm,
To climb those ladders,
To brave those battlements,
The first to kill,
The first to be slain,
We are the first,
The forlorn hope,
The first to die screaming,
The first to burn alive,
The first to be impaled,
The first to perish under arrows,
To be pierced,
To be slaughtered,
The first to be buried,
The first to be forgotten.
I crawl,
I crawl because death looms,
Tracer fireworks and smoothbore orchestra above,
The air is a Russian roulette of lead,
To stand vertical is to welcome the reapers round,
Razor wire as spectators,
Bullet casings as applause,
Knees and elbows,
Along this dank trench,
Each inch ahead is a marathon,
The mud cossets me as a reliable guardian,
Enveloping me as I crawl panicked,
My uniform once regal,
Is now a butchers apron,
Knees and elbows ragged,
Each pound of the earth shakes forth more debris,
Fellow conscripts lie about as charnel meat,
Carved by arms dealer produce,
This ditch has become the grave of many,
Its mud surely pining to consume me too,
As readily as any artillery,
Knees and elbows bloodied,
Exhaustion grips me,
I crash beside a shredded standard,
I did not choose this war,
Have no ability to quell its fury,
But now I lay amidst its masterpiece,
Etched in grunge and gore and steel.
Upon the sea we rest,
Callused hands upon nets and scales,
The winds rise in warning,
Waves lashing at our hull,
Begging us to flee to shore,
The storms know what approaches,
The monster the waters try to hide,
Teeth like tantos approach,
Ichthyology turned to nightmarish design,
The shadow cutting betwixt waves,
This is no shark,
No animal of biological leaning,
But a yokai,
A dread spirit of myth,
Isonade,
A barbed tail like a typhoon,
Ready to impale fleeting lives up on deck,
It could be our briny and thrashing end.
The bog is woken up,
The murkiest waters even animate,
Murk becoming effulgent,
That fell flame hovering there,
The waters surface reflects it,
Phosphorescent in its disquiet,
Like a canvas painted by ghosts,
Some machination of the spirit realm,
That dread light,
It’s a foreboding lighthouse in the black,
Offering not salvation,
But a watery grave,
Is it a ghost?
Is it purely folklore?
Or is there a more cogent cause?
Science offering some motive.
