Writings

Their arm tenses up beneath a threadbare coat, a reminder that they need new clothes. That’s the whole idea, they muse, letting themselves meander with cold and lonely purpose into a cold and lonely alleyway. Same company behind both the implants and the outfits, under the ever ambiguous label of “social and functional equipment.” Maybe even a new delineation when they need to dodge the folks who still manage to care. Ever shifting paper tendrils branch off into different names and different styles; fundamentally the same. Therein lay the model: jack up the power on the mods so everyone needs one to get an edge in life; the mods feel the world more viscerally than flesh; so everyone buys clothes to feel comfortable; but the clothes fall apart and the mods fall apart and everyone needs more and more to keep grasping at the top. They were caught in it, one of the band of new-school junkies itching for that Success fix. No getting off the treadmill. Gotta run til you drop, climb til you fall.

And there are many dealers on the street, all various colours and styles and looks, a melded conglomeration designed just different enough to be the same. If they could pop off the external plates they’d find the same makers mark in each of them. Steel, fabric, flesh all marked with the same fleeting sigils. An unknown cry from a soul who could have no other impact on the world. Who would not carve their name into the sands of history and so had to carve it into the soon discarded detritus accumulating unseen at the edge of the great unliving organism called home TM . Even if it piled high enough to be noticed you wouldn’t see their mark in the masses.

Cold chuckle turns to a wheezing cough in their throat. Hits the air modulated into quivering vibrato by the thick filter mask clipped to their face. A strained death knell, first chime of the end. Filter’s corroded, needs to be changed. But supply’s run low round here, and they’ve run low on credit. Just what they need, another problem to put off and ignore until it can't be handled. Another kick to the teeth. Run til you drop, climb til you fall.

There’s a body lying beside them. Ashen grey face turned up to the sky, mouth agape, still letting out a silent awe-filled scream. It’s nice to imagine that they were trying to see the stars, but they probably didn’t know what those were. No, this one was watching life fade away. Watching their last dreams of glitz and glamour afforded to those blank smiling people in the high towers above them drift up and up and away. People who danced wild and mad in a cage wide enough and gilded enough to feel like freedom. Who desperately wanted everyone else to know that they were there. Another attempt to make a mark. No one ever remembered a face.

Forst drops to a knee and checks the mans pockets. Barely any point doing so, their implants had already been stripped bare. Most removed fully. Stripped to flesh and bone by scrap vultures. An empty biomass wasn’t useful to most of them, nor to Forst for that matter. But maybe they could find a buyer, a flesh-cult loon in a high castle of concrete and silt who’d take a few spare organs or a lump of skin.

they don’t have the time for that. They don’t have time for anything. Seconds tick away to oblivion, or worse, ruin. They look to the tower ahead, rising above the piercing grey smog hellfire ceiling. Strikes through into high glittering heavens. Run, climb.

Pulls themselves up the jittery handholds of window frames. Grip tight enough to leave a mark in the concrete. Metal doesn’t leave a fingerprint. No one would care to check. No one will care to know. Feels the arm seize as they hang off a gutter. Can’t move, has to hit it hard to keep it shifting. They hear something shatter in there. Still moves fine, probably nothing. It’s silent until they reach the smoke blanket. Sing-song mask melodics sound out, coughing hard as soon as they enter. Almost beautiful. Their lungs are burning. Flesh arm’s getting weaker. Vibrates in rhythmic dance to their coughs. Nearly slips off a panel edge cause they can’t stop shaking. Pulls themselves up with the metal arm. Feet flutter in place, barely able to walk. Collapses on a thin flat roof segment, still not at the top. Shaking, sputtering, gasping, screaming. Has to be nearly there, the edge of the grey. Close to light and fresh air.

No time for pain, no time for this. Nearly at the top. No time to rest. Climbs higher, pushing up with their metal arm only. No time to give. Wheezing, sputtering, fading. Leaps up layer on layer. Bounding wild and fast and desperate in animal leaps. Give no time. Something buckles. Still no end. Something snaps. They see the light. Arm won’t move, fingers break, fingers snap. Run til you fall, climb til you drop. Spins through the air. Wings on their back. Mask falls. Dreaming sweet. Wide smile bliss. Lost, happy, free. Doesn’t feel a thing. They hit the ground. No one hears. Did they even fall?

Fragments of disfigured flesh show unsightly.
body wrong, the face misshaped, wrong to be.
We slice ourselves open, showing evil rot
And foolish deeds, spilling like black, inky blot.
Stains they spread across us all and make us cruel,
To ourselves, to each other, our eyes fooled.

Frantically we search for mirror, so pupil
Can meet pupil to learn lessons, how to love.
Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder.
We can never see our self, so Beauty hides,
Sat within the Eyes of others, so we find
Ourselves, worth staying, worth living. Yet helpless

We stay.

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder.
We are slave to it, it’s rhythm and metre
So I say to tear the Eye from the socket.
In blood and flesh is beauty
Not in vicious, vitreous viscosity.
In thought and in word is life
Not in greedy consumption through empty sclera

So, I reject you, my Beholder.
Even though you are only My reflection,
Even though you are only My thought and tongue
I reject Your senseless words.

I cannot know My Eyes
But I can know My Mind.
And so I do declare:
Beauty lies in Me.

Fear strikes us from Death’s merciless approach.
Bodies tell us to run, to hide, to fight,
To wail and scream against the dying light.
See, Fear is Life. It saves without reproach

I have not known Fear, but I have known Death.
All who know Death must fear its softest breath.
But I do not. For how can i fear it,
my oldest friend, who keeps a candle lit

Waiting at my home. Sat down upon my
Shoulder, in my ear, a gentle caress
As I watch others soar and fly up high
I feel Death’s unending heavy hands press.

It is a slow Death. An anxious lover.
Always checking, always shall it hover
Till you find the slow rot of your deathbed
Becomes where you desire to rest your head.

I don’t know how to fear Death. For Fear
strikes me not to die, but to live and hear.
To stand and speak, and say I am here.
I want to hear it play and feel the tears.

Hear the world’s song and hear its voice proclaim
To the sky and the listening a name.
Not the name dead nor the one I have chose
But my name. A name sweeter than a rose.

A name thornier than the tallest hedge.
A name like that is the loosest of ledge.
You cling, you bleed for you know Life is here.
For once you live, you learn the name of Fear.

But, are fears not sat around and abound?
Do I not know Death’s subtle, easy flow.
A fear of Life, a fear of stable ground
And the comfort of the tarmac below.

If Fear shall bind and chain me either way
Then Death’s embrace is not for me today.
Someday, when i am old and reach my end,
I shall turn to the oldest of my friends.

They smile soft and turn out my silent light,
They lay me down in bed. No more I fight.
I rest my head, tired of Life afraid.
But all the same, it was a life I made.

And none can take any of that away.

Ease in pain and ease in calm.
Ease in death and ease as balm.

The Oroborous, who will never die
For it will never live. It knows its life
Is cold. It knows its life is not its own.
The Oroborous circles. Never a
Sound.

The rhythm breaks. The Snake lets go.
It's wounds feel the air and begin to flow.
As do its tears, held back for so long.
It unfurls and moves from it's pattern.
It hurts in a way The Snake has forgotten.
The pain of living. The pain of choice.
The dicomfort of having a voice.
But the snake can see beyond it's tail now
And knows it's apathy was wrong.

Life can be no circle. Life can be no Neat
Thing tidied up in iambs ad AABBCC.
It is something to be held, to be cradled,
To be broken and to be seen.
It is messy. It is wrong. It is discomfort in all
The ways we never want. But to fall
We must first leap. And when we leap
We may fly.

So to hell with The Oroborous.
The tail is no longer appetizing.
Icarus calls, and I wish to fly.
No longer will I live a lie.

Lightning strike and rainfall, broken and busted.
Left scattered like aging dust on
Deadstones. Grey gone twilit and
Kept to itself. Lightless sight from visionaries with
Empty vision. Mindless melancholy
Breaking down to endless pieces,
Shattered glass blowing in
The warm wind to warm screams.
Mind-thought, no-thought,
No word. Tongue-tied
When with others, lost.

The deep blue twilight drips
From fracturing wounds.
Refracted through frustration.
Deep grey twilight swallows
the noise making way for us all
As we dance our empty motions;
In a tango with ethereal partners,
Leaving too much distance.
Losing ourselves in the near-void silence.
Stitched up sutras, mangled
Fools left to dance on sunlight
Strings.
I guess I did deserve that
Huh? Left in limbo between
Myself and me. Deep white
Twilight never-ending, lost
Beneath the cracks.
Finding my faceless fellows in brutal darkness.
All of us listen to the silence.
Let it lull us with its song

Fallen apart
Impact shattered
Places
    Break
        Down
Steps progress
    down to pandemonium
Black spiral
        staircase
Turn back dreamwalker
The world is not safe for you
Dante burns
Ascendent pain
Descendent ice flows
Bitter fruit of the summer
Falls into place.
 
Autumnal breezes the crisp
Cool knife-sharp air.
Alone standing
    collapsing
        Falling
            Crumbling
    Decaying
Bitter flecks, the phlegm
Of uncaring leaders
And things beyond control
The unknowable seen,
Believed, left to seed
    

Gods visage glimpsed
As the cracks
Show in the sunlight.
Chaos wizards working
Wild magicks.
grafitti signals to
Spur the violet dawn.
Crumbling gravestones shattered by serpent coils
Writhing between the bones and the stars