You spear throwers think yourselves apex
speak yourselves deep into this delusion
as though you came to the fire and not it to you
all the creatures of the kingdom play chase
so tell me why man prefers to hide than seek
except that in your heart of hearts you recognise
you are still the prey and something hides in the brush
–
The prison is all but complete, hell manifest
and the meat bicker over who holds the keys
and who paints the cells
A strange feeling that men dare forget our place
in this world, yet we grow numb and weary,
a surprise to feel at all
we who imbue land with life
who carried your kind to term
now relegated to whisper, fated to fade
and you who took so much for so little
savage the earth and understand not gratitude
we will have no more of it
we become alien and wild to you
and when the great singing stops and the soils turn white
the debt will be settled
New England woodlands hostile come nightfall
dark forests untamed by church presence
where hard eyes watch white men, Christian uninitiates
with bloodthirsty eagerness for transgressions
The great library grows wilder in its growing
and each day a new wing is built
larger than everything previous combined
to house the exponential production in books
books, books, books
and what’s contained within them increasingly esoteric or tangential
Irrelevant feelings and idle thoughts documented on paper
in time no doubt incoherent gibberish will step over the shrinking bar
all of it is knowledge, for sure, but is all knowledge sacred or worth saving?
much of it underbrush to the towering trees of canonised wisdom
The lone librarian makes judicious use of her opaque filing system
sifts the endless tomes into hierarchies of pertinence
if it tends to infinity, what good is the library without her?
just an endless labyrinth of noise
that swallows signal
Perhaps we ought to burn it all down
and start over whilst we still can
before the definitions blur any further
and the wildfires become uncontrollable
The past must surely accrue, logically speaking:
There’s more of it today than there was yesterday
and even more tomorrow than was today
Yet I dont feel heavier with the weight of new memories
Where does it all go?
An hourglass ever filling from above
And with no clear past, where can I go?
I am the sole point on a graph
I am of no name:
Names are labels and labels require identifiable properties
and properties require distinct patterns of behaviour
and patterns require more points on the graph
As far as I know
I simply am
What’s in a name? Understand in the old ways it was everything
All Creation was named by the Forefather on divine command
and you demean such a thing to a trivial handle?
How many creatures of lore fell foul of degenerate men
because they gave away their true name?
No! A name – a true name – is to know the naked essence of a thing
beyond linguistics and words and gutturals
to manipulate its spirit
command it if desired, kill it if so willed
Such sacred bonds of trust were not often given willingly, you understand
There are still shades of this old knowledge in our group conscience
Nicknames and middle names and usernames
and other such obscurances
And yet others – those rootless ones lacking connection no doubt –
dig deeper for truer naming conventions
The ACGTs of it all, or crisscrossing genealogies
dating back to the Forefather
Pray for them that they never find their own true name
as doubtless they would reveal it to all
and find themselves rendered back to golem-like putty
at the hands of those who still abuse such incantations
They cry for more
even as they hang by their throats
skewered on thorns
Take care; try pull one free and hear its soul shriek
Watch it nip blood from your fingers and
reentangle itself in the barbs of the tree
How foolish of you to think
it was ever not free
A million by a million such wretched creatures
reduced to fuel
all cry for more
But how to prolong their suffering?
How to slowbleed such existences any further?
And so began our important work to digitise the Great Tree
A world-devouring replica into which the creatures could now spawn and reproduce
A new creature, in truth part-wretch and part-tree
iterated screen slave, increasingly cyborg
What pathetic simulacra of life
we perceived the true nature of things from worship:
a child playing round its mother
pilgrims circumambulating the houses of their lord
the moon circling earth, our planets the sun
that there was power in gravity
and gravity in the focal points we chose
from there it was so simple
to build out an entire industry of attention
big screen congregations
small screen daily remembrances
red carpet idols to follow
behold, your new god: the burning hollywood bush
more
more, cried the most fervent zombies
and more
more, cried the hungry tree
and we, the butcherbirds, obliged to feed it
how fair a relationship
you hollowed husks partaking of strange fruit, too sweet for your own good
and in exchange the great tree consumes your lifeblood
more
more, cry the zombies
and more
more, cries the hungry tree…
What does the ink on the page
know of the hand which arranges it
and the fingers which orchestrate
the mind’s movement?
What could we ever hope to know
of the soul that moves us through
this constrained spacetime window
and the animal mind that dances
to its symphony?
What then to make of NPCs
but unpracticed souls, or uninterested
or untalented
Poor artists of a higher dimension
ghosts and spirits felt but unseen
the dredged lifespent who shuffle in place
and linger in the in-between, unable to pass that final veil
pagan witches of old
daughters of the father of lies
those animist heathens, wanton succubi who lay with serpent
winged fire in the flesh
dark demons brim to burst at the gates, waiting
consumed with malevolence at the children of adam
the stuck, the treacherous and the hateful:
a most unholy inversion
a trinity most foul
the hateful command a thinning of heaven’s congregation
the treacherous conspire how to corrupt the untarnished
the stuck, ever envious of those who may yet cross over, oblige
how to halt man’s ascension?
stuck spirits concoct a perversion of nature
apparent only to their own class: reincarnation
the twisted belief in endless circling to nowhere
treacherous witches infect the societies of man in secret
poison scriptures with sweet words
to calcify into rotten dogma
hateful demons warp minds and form
where the godsmatter holds weak
weak vessels of import to accept such blasphemy
abdulj. 