I see the devil in all things. It's not even particularly well-hidden, not like some trick of the imagination or a disguised magician, it's hiding in plain sight to me. Not the sort of devil that a cult may tell you of, not some huge, red demon with the beard of a goat, but something more primal. Fear. Loathing. Hatred. Something malicious, something insidious, something downright disgusting is hiding amongst all which touches the light I walk upon. An idea of evil, a form of maleficence, an essence of carnage, a torment of the psyche. I walk unlit roads towards a house which does not feel like a home. I see it within the groups of youngins that shout, scream and stare me down like a starving, broken hound. I see it in the lonely old man with the fishing hat and the widest, deepest wrinkles one could ever see. He approaches and I feel the cold, biting sting, then the twist, and the switchblade enters my belly. Something is ruptured, I am sure, and I will bleed to death right here, under the inviting smile of an evil moon, on this playground I've trod upon so many times. But no, no, the warm gushing of blood simply does not come as he passes me, the cold is all-encompassing and stark and I realize the blade never came out, it was merely his stare, his essence that penetrated my stomach so violently. I see it in the mother and father that walk near me. I know all they could think about was tearing me apart, bit by bit, inch by inch, biting into my flesh and carving me up like a pig, putting me down with a pickaxe to the forehead like a workhorse. All that was keeping them back was the child on the father's shoulders, so young, so clean, so pure, untainted by such evil. But it'll grow. It will become an adult someday. And woe is me if I see them then. But I do have good news, I do!
There is not much left of this path, so short, so narrow, so hard upon the soles of my boots. Soon I can walk inside and experience once again how ghastly, isolated, frozen, lifeless. Truly despicable is this room. There is no home within this house. The devil is in all things, but some things different than others. The walls used to laugh at me but now they stare in silence. They know better than to scare me now. They instill these images of specters coming to **** me in my sleep, but without a word. They do not speak to me, for they know what will happen if I am simply left to my own devices long enough. Clever is this old devil, it is, for it knows its greatest weapon in this war against me is itself the subject. It knows, it does, that one day, one miserable, gray day, under the clouds that block out even that disgusting moon that carries me, that smiles with me, that accompanies me better than any man ever did, I will do its bidding for it. I will simply have had enough and I will leave, and it will greet me with a grin that could harm a man in its sly and smug luminosity.

But that day has not come, that day is not today, and the future is as grim and unseemly as the past, almost like they bleed into each other, like a river of sewage running directly through my soul, carving the rocks until they're the color of **** and tempering me with the essence of garbage. And what do I do in response? I simply endure. I stand and face the river, thinking myself some hero, some sisyphean idol of martyrdom for claiming to know the agony of living. When in reality, all beings face the same agony, they just do not see it. But I do. I see the devil in all things.

I see and hear it all this dreary night. Sirens of many varieties under a sickly pale green moonlight. Police, ambulances, firefighters, hell, maybe even the army is involved. And all for such a little, insignificant, measly thing with no ramifications at all. Looking at the moon unbound by a window is far brighter but I float back inwards to see the gorgeous, yellow, orange and red flames licking my former room and what remains of my belongings. There is nothing left of me, but it was over quite quickly, so there is no need to complain. Some little ghoulish figure set a fire under my bed claiming it would finally warm me, then blamed it on me when the flames consumed both it and I. Nothing is better now than it was before, yesterday and the day that preceded or the day that came even before then, although the lord knows I can't even remember that far back. Nothing is better, as I was saying, because there is nothing to do, and nowhere to be, no one to see and nothing to look forward to. The heavens wouldn't take me, but hell rejected me too. It was a few minutes ago that I learned that those wise crazies from centuries ago, who had called the soul undying, were right, but anamnesis simply wouldn't come and I was not worthy of apotheosis.
So even what little I could hold in my hands, the sparks of warmth that I was given oh so rarely, had moistened and turned to drops of water, and I could not even join the fire and the cosmic jubilee. I looked upon my scorched abode once again and sighed. Or would have, had I lungs still, but it seems incorporeal beings have their limitations. No matter, limitations and disappointment were nothing new to me. I floated onward to lament and hope for another day where maybe, just maybe, some body would need a wandering, lonesome soul. Eventually, after hours became days and those days became weeks and those weeks became months and those months became years and those years became worthless to keep counting out to myself, floating turned into such a **** chore. Sitting was impossible, so that was out of the question, as well. And it simply wouldn't come. I eventually forgot what it even was that I was waiting for, and with nobody around, nothing would even remind me. Alas, existence can be tedious, but non-existence is just such a bore.

The sound of blood dripping
Faint and repetitive thumps
Rouses me from my daze
And I look down upon the scene
What remains of a face is there
One even a mother couldn't identify
And my hands covered in fresh viscera
So I start to piece it together

Upon recollection I realize
The punishment you received
Inflicted by my heavy hands
Was nowhere near severe enough
I took from you the clarity of vision
But I must continue onward
Knowing what you took, I'll never regain
Always cursed to be less than before

Wherever you end up now
I hope your torment never eases
And you find no grace or mercy
No forgiveness for sins unrepentant

I will never be whole
And never be loved
As long as it's not undone
I will always be nothing

Be ye, who are not forgiven
Like the wind
Fleet of foot and silent

Fly then, mine sorrows
Away with ye
And til we meet again

Cry not for fear, nor grief
Ye shan't suffer
Among rats or roaches

Skittering, clawing beastes
Be with me
In mine hours of solitude

Sing not for love or loss
Rest thy voice
And thine weary head in a lap

All that must be will be
And has been
So sleep eternal in cold heat

Welcome to the festival
Where chaos true shall reign
Many saints have blessed it all
I'm heralding the pain

I seek and I beseech
My trembling hands do reach
Your approval I seek
With eyes bereft and meek

O Gracious Lord of all
Through winding dreams I fall
Is there no resting place
Have I lost all my grace

Weak and haphazard I sing
And dance around a yellow king
Transfixed upon a dimming moon
Whose gaze returned upon me soon

What more is there to say than this
To be without, empty of bliss
I crave the warmth of soft embrace
In you I've found my long lost grace

There's a girl down in the valley
And she dreams of being warm
But it's a winter's day in June
The feathers torn from her longcoat

And she sleeps in her mother's bed
She doesn't speak in her own tongue
Some days she just speaks none at all
And she just sees herself a ghost

There's a girl down in the valley
Who doesn't dream much anymore
And when she does it is of torment
Which always comes true after all

She used to dream of being tall
To be a giant in the moonbeams
But she's a wretched little thing
And she gets smaller every day

And when the voices all stop singing
That's when she meets her own small tune
It's out of key and full of misery
And there's no one left to hear it

As a child, they teach you what is
And inquisitively you find it isn't
What is and is not, and where do I come in?
I, who think and feel, but not my own
She, who walks, is not I
As I, who think, am not her
Still yet, we are joined at the hip, we are twins
The big sisterly ghost and the little sisterly robot

If I am who I am but not who she is
And she represents me
Then only tangentially do I see these creatures
The pigeons, lizards and moles
As well as horses, cats and dogs
And still yet, those too are me and not I
All are shards of the greatest Broken Mirror
Or fragments of a fading memory in Him

As the famous term insists, a writhing mass
Though writhing is incorrect, it is unmoving
Stable, expanding, becoming-living and unvoid
Moving all which moves and breathing all which breathes
It is in him that we are finite, but becoming-infinite
Approaching eternity while rotting away meaning
Mirror images of mimicry and specters of words
Colliding in the Great that is Unknown but Knowing

So finally, all I see is that which is synthesized
A world created just for me, a tale untold
They, the Otherness spouts drivel and slander
About my sight being the flaw in my Machinery
I am she, and the fauna which you see
I am she, and the great Anomaly
To paraphrase He, who is Perfect and Unmoving
I am that I am, I will be what I will be