
From ruins of a ravaged soul,
Emerge embryo, ormolu.
Hatch the egg in razored scroll,
Make of hallows, a battue.
Illumine with mirrored glass,
Whispered chasms of the game.
Shadows of the gorgon’s mass,
Nude, by vestigial flame.
From ruins of a ravaged soul,
Emerge embryo, ormolu.
Hatch the egg in razored scroll,
Make of hallows, a battue.
Illumine with mirrored glass,
Whispered chasms of the game.
Shadows of the gorgon’s mass,
Nude, by vestigial flame.
As minstrels’ songs, old daring tales,
Enshrined the deeds of the just,
There is a scribing, as sanguine nails,
Of malignance and forsworn trust.
Who think judgment is at an end,
With black withering of the wick;
When as yet cold candle burns,
With a bloom to score the sick.
Reams will ripen to a horde,
That stalk as a merciless wight.
Always there rests a record,
Of what is done in dark of night.
Shining strands, enmesh and weave,
A thrilling violence, cutting blinds.
Sure tempation, flee or cleave,
An error pure, trips errant minds.
Needs no flight what holds the wind,
Nor fins that sow the sea,
Like as cords that burning pinned,
Heart in grating rhapsody.
Whether threads split whole,
Or are as fierce bola caught,
Can be more tinsel than toll,
In gilded cage of thought.
Up from out the fathomed dark,
Cruelly subjugated and suborned;
Comes figure with dire writhing mark,
By the hand that gripped the thorn.
Malice from pricked blood inscribed,
What was reaved shall be repayed.
Mask and mark cannot be bribed.
In coffin gold, the briar laid.
Halcyon, auspicious to the charge.
Restored from carrion’s plume,
Low descends the stygian barge;
Debarked, for horror to consume.
There, subaltern banquet towers,
And with thorough, savoring bite,
Wraiths, as dew in twilit hours,
Weep, as aurous tendrils smite.
Distance has no weight to bear,
The phantom chain is ever stern.
Stolen color, a piercing flare,
That pallid mask begins to burn.
Regilt. Crystallize the depths,
Better to, unflinching, see the blight.
Joyful that with shining steps,
Shadows only lengthen in the light.
Mask once glittered bright and gold,
Now a pallid, osseous thing;
From it, endless venom cold,
Seeps, and a hunger sings.
Grasping with bloody fingers,
For the cursed thief of gilt,
Whose blade in marrow lingers,
As the searing fragments lilt.
Nothing as to the poison stored,
That even should limbs stray,
Venom is unfulred; a sword,
That needs no body to find its prey.
Clangor in the smokestack air.
Dross, the cloudy factories strip.
Work ascendant, harsh and fair,
With unrelenting iron grip.
All that obstructs the vision,
And all the past has reaved,
Is scribed with cold incision,
Consigned, in fire wreathed.
Supervised from livid tower,
Exquisite, ornately alone;
Seeped in acrid vista’s glower,
That burns far deeper than bone.
No degree of intensity,
Eschews the engineering hand.
That relishes woe’s immensity,
Assumes a loftier command.
A klaxon howls in night’s cold pitch,
Heavy pistons ream the skull.
Rippling through consumptive itch,
Raising burning waves to fall.
Awash in unebbing acidic tide,
Sleep forsook for pain.
Cost of that which does not hide.
To direct a swallowing bane.
Pulse throughout the body,
Reactor-blue and bright.
This engine built by memories,
Of all depravities to smite.
Eggshell void to piceous pirouettes,
Glimmered, so spun the sprawl.
Casting all in golden nets,
That heed but a single call.
What the root of this gilded mesh,
That as armor grim does bind?
And marrow churning thresh,
The soul as lethe’s incline.
Deep lacerates the interior,
Yet greater the damage without.
Ejecting all spirits inferior,
Who, writhing, mercy shout.
Threading open hidden eyes,
See figured source disclosed.
The lifeblood of gilt assizes,
Born of treason’s wilted rose.
The plan was carefully fabricated,
For blossom’s delight, a settled row;
Cafe, library and parlour,
All to fire, barren bloom did throw.
And so it was from pit of fire,
That the towers began to rise.
Seething out the ruinous mire,
And blotting naive skies.
See how vast this iron garden.
Hear gearwork pulse and thrum.
The sundering without pardon,
Until hollow depths succumb.
Tower titanic the wretched plot,
Machine of unidling mind.
Its repeating prominence wrought,
By Flower’s treasoned rind.
Boil and break, hiss and roar.
Furnance effulgent, a million more.
Low, Her forests; swallowed, Her seas;
Billowing black to Her careless breeze.