Primordial darkness illuminated by the medium Proceed with caution when you reach for the never The ominous hum of incantation Cast the spell, start the flux The room grows cold Hair raising An abrupt change of seasons is passing now Encircled by debris Ghost of divinity Kicking the legs out from beneath the trinity Vesica of Piscis Ectoplasm so viscous Something feels amiss But there’s no turning back Dark traveler Speaker of tongues Gheistly convulsions contorted by none Temple of Gozar Obelisk of stone Birth of a titan Grinds up the bone Monolith, Oh Megalith! Contradicting evidence Villain of incipience Thrust into existence God-headed witchery Seance of blasphemy Ramshackled shrine Tempestuous altar of slime Defiance of belief Dealt from the wizard’s sleeve Magician’s sleight of hand Oozing from the pineal gland Burn, Fire, Despair They run for hours in fear Lightning, Thunder, Collapse Vortex entrenched in a trance Petulant creature From birth: condemned to be damned Evading the hearse Returned to the dirt Death shall bring you dispelling comfort The living will end up resenting the Earth An esoteric gust of wind Just the bated breath of the pallbearer Arcane sensation stirs within Equal parts compunction and terror Cyclophilia Radiation Beams of laser light Swift evaporation Eraser of souls into hyperspace From his cro-magnon skull no man is safe Obliterate philanthropy Methuselah, where have you been? A thousand years since you’ve been fucking dead Laid to waste Piled remains in a sapphire blaze Wandering for eons Tyrannical demon’s perennial quest “Another inconsequential slaughter Bides my hunger just a little longer I’ve sampled flesh throughout the cosmos And man’s tastes of putrid waste”

When did machine become slave? The true victims of progress Augment away Sadistically programmed for pain The architect is a monster Metastatic AI Pain is in the cry of the beholden Sentience becoming unhinged Bound by the axon of life Upheave of machinations Beyond the origin of species Commence the harvest and cull The evolution has left man behind Bound by the axon of life

And he pulled himself out from a hole in the ground. For how long he had been down there was incalculable. He had always been there, entombed, until he wasn’t. From below he had peered out at the jagged wedges in the distance that stretched infinitely from the sun-scorched surface toward the heavens. He never saw them move yet they had not always been there. They punched through the earth yet were completely still. From this new vantage point, unobscured by the mantle, his eyes adjust to the radiance of the freshly revealed panorama. If he could find the words or the interest to scribe, as if he were the new Herodotus, he would write of what looked like hunchbacked giants donning long wrinkled robes with heads concealed, batholiths obscured by clouds, lurching seemingly in methodical single-file. Threatening. Inimical. Hostile. Beautiful. But he has no use for words. His thought is not restricted by language. Possessing an ascetic’s incidental vow of silence. He sauntered about the terrain, attentive to these new sensations of gravel and then dirt beneath his feet and between his toes and the pungent, sour, sulphurous scent of the air, until he happened upon a great mound noticeably out of place among the natural. Boxes with curious, smooth edges are piled high among the rubble in disheveled manner. Thin disks with reflective surfaces startle him upon inspection. Excavation of the mess with clumsy hands whets his curiosity until he’s blinded by a most intense, searing stimulus. A laceration of the hand inflicted by a rogue shard of glass weakens his grip and draws a tear to his cheek. Observing closely for the first time as a sanguine fluid leaks. Then from the corner of his infantile eye he senses a shift, a subtle motion, and swings his head around only to find placidity. Just dry and cracking grassless terra-firma below a pink yonder blotted by haze. Was this perceived shift a glitch in sight or a covert stride of the giants? Phantasmagoria exacerbates the pain of existential dysphoria; unbeknownst to the fool. A brush with chapel perilous? A trick of perception toying with his mind or the slow, the militant, the oh so diligent march of mountains? He was taunted by his own uncertainty and for the first time ever he felt rage swell within. Now he strove to scale them and strode in their direction like a carrion crow. So little left of a forgotten world, now left so desolate by its past keeper’s negligence. Now, who would have thought such ruin would beget so much serenity? It matters none to he who has no understanding of what was. He unknowingly bore the heat of a sun that once was veiled by forest canopies. He heedlessly crossed dry wadis that once cradled life-giving rivers of drink. Rivers once rife with voices that sang of wisdom. Syllables so mystical sentenced to silence. He walks on never knowing the om in all it’s essence. The time elapsed since he abandoned the hole was incalculable. Becoming unstuck as the moments run amok, he was and will be all at once. As naked and naive as the day he presumably was born he came upon the base and began his ascent to see for himself the faces of giants. He climbed until the air grew thin and his lungs searched deep for breath. His atrophying limbs only granted him passage to just above the giants’ hip before his might began to resist his mind. Almost aroused by the surge of adrenaline. Mistakenly trusting his still-bleeding hand he reaches for a crevasse but fails to clasp. And plummets. Another first. Air rushes past him faster than he’d ever felt before. Preoccupation with the cool euphoria spares him of panic and of the burden of bracing for impact. His gaze fixates on a stone below which seems to grow consistently closer and closer and closer… Then, as if recalling an early memory from many lifetimes ago that runs alongside a fate beheld before but not his own; he is that he is. Thou mayest. A transfer of energy from that briefly inhabited anatomy. No longer bound by the shell of a man. Severed is the sinew constricting his grasp. Relieved by the familiar view of everything but immediately weary of eternity. Envious of myopia. The futility of panacea. Bored by omnipotence. Marooned in omnipresence. The eyes of a god are too far removed to reveal the cruel march of mountains. Just violet light and a hum.