Hey guys. This isn't truly a poem but a paper I wrote for English class. I wanted to share this view with people and this is the only vehicle I knew to use. So here it is. I hope you enjoy it.
-------------------------------------------------------------­--------------------------------------------------


The amplifiers were turned up to ten. The young and fresh crowd looked at us with anticipation.

What were they waiting for? As the music began I noticed the subtle movements and growing tension in

the crowd. Men shook their heads and we shook ours in a violent duet between the crowd and

performer. Women and men flailed their limbs as they awaited the ******. We knew when it was

coming; they did not. When we decided to let it all go I witnessed something crazy! There was a brief

pause in the music and when it began again we kicked it into overdrive. We shook our heads with a

more frantic pace. We jumped about like madmen. The crowd erupted; it became its own entity. You

could feel the heat and power of this new creature. We were locked in a violent psychic-sphere of

crazed young teens and when the ****** was over there seemed to be a sense of relief and happiness

in the crowd. Had my after school hobby become a healing agent, even if only temporary, in society?

This papers purpose is an attempt at piecing together the phenomena of catharsis by merging

philosophy, psychology, history and spirituality.



First, to understand the psychology of catharsis we must think back to the roots of this behavior. Since

human life has existed we’ve formed crowds for various reasons. The first reason held the sole purpose

of protection. Tribes of people, men as hunters and women as gatherers, teamed up for the benefit of

human survival. Erich Fromm says that “the meaning of life is not to be found in its fullest unfolding but

in social service and social duties; that the development, freedom, and happiness of the individual is

subordinate or even irrelevant in comparison to the welfare of the state.”(Fromm, 1947, page 51) This

states that a crowd is actually very necessary to the function of human life. The second reason crowds

gathered was in form of revel, shamanistic healing and worship of deities (Ehrenreich, 30). Men and

woman would often enter trances, speak in tongues and become involved in a collective ecstasy while in

worship of their God. In later years, politics, entertainment and rebellion or protest was a main factor in

the gathering of people (Ehrenreich, 102). People gathered at Festivals that were in the midst of being

suppressed and would dance in mockery of their Kings or leaders.



What exactly is catharsis? Catharsis is a purging of emotional tension brought out in a crowd through

the viewing of a tragedy or tragic play. In the article “The Power of Catharsis” Kearny says the following

More specifically he (Aristotle) defined

the function of catharsis as 'purgation of pity and fear'. This comes

about, he explains, whenever the dramatic imitation of certain actions

arouses pity and fear in order to provide an outlet for pity and fear.

The recounting of experience through the formal medium of plot,

fiction or spectacle permits us to repeat the past forward so to speak.

And this very act of creative repetition allows for a certain kind of

pleasure or release. In the play of narrative re-creation we are invited

to revisit our lives — through the actions and personas of others — so

as to live them otherwise. We discover a way to give a future to

the past. (Kearny 1)

I figure that, even though he states that it is a purgation of pity and fear, it could also be involved with

many other suppressed emotions. Take my introduction for example. These kids were not releasing

pity and fear, they were releasing their angst! They were releasing their desire for competition.

They were making up for the violent feelings of agression they felt in their body that had been

suppressed by society for so long! They were revolting! Could catharsis also be used to purge other

emotions as well such as ****** suppression or communicative issues?





How would one come about actually attempting this catharsis that I speak of? We need to first look at

some ways in which people have controlled crowds in the past and realize that crowds form by

themselves but often look for leadership due to what Nietzche called that “herd mentality.”

In the article “Seducing the Crowd” by Urs Staheli it mentions that repetition is a key factor in beginning

to control the crowd. (Staheli, 69) This means that through repetition you can get the crowd to side with

your beliefs. The crowd could begin to think about what your suggesting and potentially be swayed by

the other people that are now following your ideas. It could also be repetition of body movements as

well. What better vehicle is there to sway a crowd than music? It’s repetitive in instrumental and lyrical

form!



Another way to “******” a crowd is to act like a madman! Specifically how I stumbled upon this in

the first phenomena place.

The leader himself is possessed and hypnotized by the ideas

and visions he holds, obsessed to such an extent that he cannot rationally exercise

control over the crowd. Instead, he devotes himself to fascinating the

crowd by more ecstatic means.8 He often resembles a madman but fascinates

by the mere power of his determination. What distinguishes the leader from

the rest of the crowd is his will alone, not any particular intellectual capacity

or a superior morality. (Staheli, 68)

The theory is that through mythological story telling or acting tragically and in a spectacle, we can

actually release negative emotions and potentially even heal neuroses or psychic ailments. Later in the

article he goes on to say that a shaman was actually documented to have cured a woman with a blocked

birth canal and in labor by telling her a story about a warrior trying to exit a cave that had monsters on

the outside trying to get in.

The function of a shaman is to heal his tribe. He uses drugs or plants to change his state of mind and

then by going over to the other side of reality he invokes spirits that help to heal.

In the séance, the shaman led. A sensuous panic, deliberately evoked through drugs, chants,

dancing, hurls the shaman into trance. Changed voice; convulsive movement. He acts like a

madman. These professional hysterics, chosen precisely for their psychotic leaning, were once

esteemed. They mediated between man and spirit world. Their mental travels formed the crux

of the religious life of the tribe. (Morrison 1967 pg. 71)

This shows an ecstatic crowd dancing and chanting while one man acts out a tragic spectacle. Through

this spectacle the shaman acts like a madman. This causes wild emotions within the crowd and allows it

to release their built up and suppressed emotions. Also, the dance and chants bring them to a feeling of

unity and oneness!



One may not believe in the spiritual shaman because of their own beliefs about God and religion. Some

may not believe in the other world that parallels our own.  It is a skeptical concept without a doubt and

there are probably many people who disagree with the legitimacy of the shaman. Is there a way that we

could think of the phenomena in a psychological sense rather than strictly spiritual? The answer lies in

Carl Jung’s theory of the unconscious mind and dream therapy as well as in Nietzche’s philosophy on art

and aesthetics.  



Carl Jung believed that there is a conscious mind and an unconscious mind. The conscious mind is the

everyday mind that occurs in waking life. It is rational and helps us survive. The unconscious mind can

be found in dreams or whenever you experience a déjà vu (Jung 1964 21).  He also believed that through

the study of dreams you could heal certain aspects of your psyche that have been altered by neuroses.

Symbols and archetypes make up dreams and the unconscious, and often you will find that archetypes

appear in the form  of people. Jung believes that through living in society that men and women have lost

touch with their feminine or masculine characteristics depending on their gender. Dreams can help us

get back into union with these lost roles through connecting us with our anima(female) or animus

(male) through symbols in our dreams or unconscious minds. Jung wrote that when society was

formed people took on roles and caused a dissociation in their psyche and caused a duality rather

than a unity when they suppressed one side of their mind.  He mentioned that at all times the

unconscious mind is connecting us on a psychic level.



How does this tie into shamans and catharsis? It seems like something completely different all together

right? My theory is that the shaman or crowd leader brings forth a forgotten union of the masculine and

feminine forces in the universe. Nietzche believed that there are two polar forces that are natural in this

world and in art. These forces are given the names of deities in his book “The Birth of Tragedy.”

The first is the Apollonian force that is masculine. This force in art governs form and dreams. The

Apollonian artist directly takes ideas from his dreams and brings them to life whether it is in form

sculpture or poetry. Apollo appears through an oracle often in tragedy or in visions of the waking life.

The second force is the Dionysian which is feminine. This force governs intoxication, revel and ecstasy.

Dionysian artists are improvisers and dancers and are usually tragic figures. Nietzche believed there are

three different types of artists: Apollonian, Dionysian and the fusion of both (Nietzche 1872 14). This

latter artist is what I believe the shaman is.



Through connecting these polarizing forces he fixes the psychic neuroses in his own mind. He becomes

a unified artist, or a magician of duality. The shaman, as stated above, takes drugs to intoxicate himself.

Often the drug of choice is wine or alcohol though it could be hallucinogenic drugs as well. This tied with

repetitive revel is the Dionysian side of the spectrum and also helps draw the crowd’s attention through

spectacle and repetition. Everybody is ecstatic and experiencing the collective vibrations of the crowd.

Through his intoxication he is able to go into the unconscious mind and produce dream symbols in

reality! The crowd follows the leader into this unconscious mind and brings back forgotten wisdom of

mythology and archetypes. This is the Apollonian side of the spectrum because it deals with the

unconscious mind and dream images. It also could be this “other world” that traditional shamans speak

of. Now the psychic duality is merged and a tie is formed between the masculine and feminine forces of

nature! People feel at one with themselves and the crowd and the societal suppression is vanished

briefly. All the neuroses caused by the suppression fades away in the ecstatic revel. This is the appeal of

the rock concert. Notice how many leading figures of rock bands have androgynous features and

shamanistic nature. This is because they have fixed the psychic neuroses in their own mind and become

at peace with the masculine and feminine duality of their psyche.



Stumbling upon this phenomena in my rebellious youth was very eye opening. Ever since I have been  

very excited about this theory and I’ve been trying to piece it together. It seems to be coming along

further and further in my study of this. What exactly this ancient wisdom is; I don’t entirely know. I

do know that I have witnessed this in reality and the subject is interesting and fascinating. My theory

still has a lot of work before it is completed but I think that within this article I’ve given a decent

amount of history about the topic as well as my own thoughts. Whether this phenomena is true or

not, we can leave that up to the psychologists and philosophers to decide, though I think many may

agree. Either way, catharsis surely does exist and it is a fun way of entertainment as well as a

therapeutic option for many stressed out individuals out there

(Glade, World, Master, Boy, Hero)

                                                 GLADE

There is a glacier.
Its blue tongue’s tip just tastes a frozen gorge.
There is a gorge, its walls shattered by cold; a once-green thing that, in dying, birthed a thousand aching fissures. It works its jagged way downhill, round ragged rifts and drifts until it comes upon a little frosted wood.
There is a wood, an island locked in ice.
Within this wood the gorge descends. It wanders and it wends; it brakes and all but ends outside a clearing wet with sun. And there, forking, its bent and broken arms embrace a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a glade.
And in this glade the black bears sleep, though salmon leap fat between falls. Here the field mouse draws no shadow, the eagle seeks no prey; they spend their while caressed by rays, and halcyon days are they. Here rabbit and fawn may linger, no longer need they flee. For in this timeless, taintless space, the Wild has ceased to be. (Outside the glade are shadow and prey, are ice and naked death. There blood may run freely. There the eagle, that thief, is a righteous savage, a noble fiend. But once in the glade he is dove, and has no taste for blood, running freely or otherwise).
And in this glade there nests a pool:  a dazzling, blue-and-silver jewel; profoundly deep, pristinely clear. All who sip find solace here, for this is the Eye of Being. They lap in peace, assuming blear, not knowing it is seeing. And ever thus this pool shall peer:  a silent seer, reflecting on—all that Is, and all Beyond.
(Outside the glade there lies a world where rivers ever run, where ghastly calves in random file revile a bitter sun. East, the day is born in mist. West she dies:  her rest, the deep. And North…North the Earth lies mute. Wind gnaws her hide, wind wracks her dreams. Wind screams like a flute in her white, white sleep).
But in the glade are tall, stately grasses, sunning raptly, spinning lore. Roots render the rhythms, blades bend without breeze, as signals ascend from the glade’s tender floor. (In this wise the glade weaves its word, airs its views. All the glade’s flora are bearers of news). They do not wither with fall, for in the glade there is no fall. They do not bind or wilt or brown—they gesture, spreading the mood, the mind; conveying, indeed, the very soul of the glade. As ever they have, as they shall evermore.
Bees do not hum here; they sing. They fatten the dream. Mellow and round are the timbres they sound, sweet is the music they bring. Birds do not sing here—they play. They carry the theme. Dulcet and warm are the strains they perform. Gifted musicians are they. (All in the glade are virtuosi. They were born to create. Melody, harmony, meter…are innate). Now the performance is lively and bright, now full, now almost still. For, though all in the glade may lean to the light, they must bend to the maestro’s feel.
And yet…there was a day, long ago in a dream, when this ongoing opus was torn. And on that day (so the lullaby goes) the wind brought a scream, and Dissonance was born.
There was a noise.
Moose tensed, their coffee eyes narrowed, their patient brows creased. Bees mauled the tempo, birds lost their place. The grass stood *****, all blades pointing east. There was a crash, and a shriek, and a naked, bleeding beast burst stinking through the fern, fell stumbling on its face.
Moose scattered:  unheard of. Sheep brawled, geese burst out of rhyme. The symphony, forever endeavored to soar sublime, fluttered, plunged, and, for all of a measure, ceased.
The pool was appalled…what manner brute—what kind of monster was this? Furless flank to forelimb, hide obscured by blood. As for its face…it had no face; only a look:  of shock frozen in time, of horror in amber. A deep welling rift ran temple to chin, halving the mask, caving it in. Such a grievous wound…the pool watched it stagger, on two legs and four, thrashing about till it came to a rise. There it labored for air, wiped the blood from its eyes, lashed at illusion, looked wildly round. Beholding the pool, the beast tumbled down.
And there this wretch plunged his thirst, drank his fill, fell back on his haunches.
The pool became still.
The two traded stares.
The glass read his features:  that durable eye pondered the wreckage and probed the debris. Revolted, the pool sought the succor of sky. But that thing remained—that face…in all creation…surely there could be…no other creature so ugly as he.
And he gazed in the glass.
Beneath the surface were…images…swimming in currents of shadow and light. He saw half-shapes and fragments…hideous men, exotic beasts…saw blue worlds of water, saw white worlds of ice…it was all so vague and unreal—yet somehow strangely familiar. Deeper he peered, but, as his mangled face neared, the sun smote the pool and the shapes disappeared. The brute pawed the ground and, dreaming he’d drowned, shook his head sharply and slowly looked round:
There were starlings at arm’s-length, transfixed with suspense, their tail feathers trembling, their dark eyes intense. Fantails and timber wolves, stepping in sync, paused for a sniff, stooped for a drink. Bees, pirouetting, threw light in his eyes. Seizing the moment, the pool pressed its hold.
And the glade revolved.
The freak watched it spin—saw the ferns’ greedy fingers reach round and close in, saw the tall grass rise high in an emerald sheen, swaying to rhythms from somewhere obscene. This place was madness; he struggled to stand, but, weak as he was, keeled over cold.
And the glade heaved a sigh, and the tall grass reclined, in curious patterns once rendered in whim. Far off in thunder the hard world replied, as iced pines exploded and screamed on the breeze. Down bore the sun, a chill just behind. The pool, grown blood-red, fended frost from its rim. Details dissolved in the oncoming tide. The pool dimmed to black. Night seeped through the trees.
Now flora found slumber while, pulsing below, the pool was infused with a soft ruby glow.
Soon birds bearing beech leaves, and needles of pine, laid down a spread and returned to the limb. But breath from the North blew their blanket aside. The wind grew in earnest, the air seemed to freeze.
And the wolf and the she-bear, of contrary mind, abhorring their task approached, looking grim. They sniffed him for measure, then, loathing his hide, growled their displeasure and dropped to their knees.
All night these glum attendants flanked his naked quaking form. The rising moon drew dreams in gray.
In time the man grew warm.

Morning swept through the glade in one broad stroke of the master’s brush, dappling the foliage with amber and rose. The pool was roused by the sweet pass of light. He opened his eye and the glade came alive:  into the whirlpool of life a thousand colors swam, chasing the scattering eddies of night. The magic of morning began.
Bluebird and goldfinch descended in rings, primaries clashing with robin and jay. Dollops of sun, repelled by their wings, spattered anew on the palette of day. Banking as one, the hues struck away.
There was a crowd.
And in this crowd that oddity sat, its chin on its chest, its rear pointing west. Its forepaws lay leaning, upturned and at rest. ***** and blood messed its muzzle and breast. Passed overnight. Or perhaps only dozed…tendril by tendril, claw by claw, the crowd decompressed:  the ring slowly closed.
And the stranger cried out and shifted his seat. His eyes sought his feet—rounding the arches, and topping the toes, the tall grass was questing. The little brute froze.
And the fauna took pause, and the flora went slack. Leaves followed talons, stems followed claws. Hooves tromped on paws as the crowd drifted back.
Not a breath taken. Not a move made. Stillness, like fog, enveloped the glade.
Now the grass tugged his feet, now the sea of jade splayed—left hand and right, the slender shafts reared. Gaining momentum, blade followed blade. The green field was torn till a deep swath appeared. The swath hurtled west, reflecting the sun. A hundred yards distant it died. Once more the grass stood, its tips spreading wide. The swath, born again, repeated its run.
Plain was the message, and clearly conveyed. The newcomer gawked. Confusion ensued.
The tall blades were swayed by the pulse of the glade.
But the swath was not renewed.
Something tiny bounced by. He ventured a peek, barely rolling an eye.
A chocolate sparrow, with pinfeathers black, popped past an ankle and paused to look back. The bird cocked its head, rocked in place, hopped ahead. It fluttered. It freaked. It glared and stopped dead. Vexed to its limit, it burst into flight.
The sitting thing watched till it passed out of sight.
Now a breeze bent his back, picked him half off his stern. The wind, done its best, grew flustered at last. It trailed to the west, thrilling lilies it passed. It wound round the willows and didn’t return.
So the fauna repaired to the live oak’s shade.
A strange kind of stupor fell over the glade.
From deep in the wood came a shape through the trees—a pronghorn, perhaps, or an elk swift and sure. But up limped a moose, a flyport with fur, low in the belly and wide at the knees. Wizened he was, scarcely able to see. Neither vision, nor vigor, nor velvet had he. He hobbled abreast, then groveled or died, his nose facing west, his tail flung aside.
The brute merely glazed.
But the glade was unfazed.
Those long shafts reshuffled. A tense moment passed.
The ominous shadows of badgers were cast. Three left their holes, as if to attack. They pedaled like moles and the stranger jumped back. He stumbled, fell flailing, and, kicking his guide, threw out his arms and tumbled astride. First he stepped on his tail, then he stepped on his pride. The moose bellowed twice and shook side to side while the little pest clung to his high, homely hide.
And the old moose unbent to his knees by degrees. He reeled like a drunk down the path of the breeze. Together they lurched through a break in the trees. And all morning long, and on through the day, both beggar and bearer would buckle and sway. The moose lost his temper, but never his way.
And the wind blew the sun to its deep ruby rest; the scrub, in obeisance, inclined to the west. Their slow taffy shadow in slinking would seem to slip round the rocks like a snake in a dream.
And the sun became a beacon, and the underbrush a stream. The wide Earth took their weight in stride, and the wind named him Hero.

                                               WORLD

When the sun was low the old moose began to stumble, at last limping to a halt beside a swift river lined with stunted pines. He’d half-expected a somewhat graceful dismount, but Hero, dug in like a tick, wasn’t about to let go. The moose knelt until his joints objected, shimmied, bucked, and with a sudden whirl sent the little bother flying.
Hero scraped himself out of the dirt and looked up forlornly. The ancient moose, his good eye gone bad, glared a long minute before hobbling away, his bony **** rocking with dignity, his scraggly tail fighting off imaginary flies.
Hero managed a few steps and dropped, staring in disbelief as the moose disappeared between half-frozen pines. He remained on his knees for the longest time, his jaw hanging, waiting for the moose—waiting for anything to show. At last a ruckus to his left snapped him out of it. His head ratcheted around.
Fifteen feet off the bank, three screaming gulls were dancing on an immense stone outcropping, fighting over a rapids-tossed sockeye. Hero was instantly famished. He wobbled to his feet and stumbled twice wading out, only regaining his balance by leaning against the current while rapidly wheeling his arms. The shrieking gulls reluctantly backed off as he stepped in slow-motion through the rushing water. Hero lunged at the slapping fish, cracked an ankle on the rock, and hopped around howling with both hands holding his shin. One foot was as good as none in the surging water. He went right under. Before he knew it he was being swept downriver.
This was glacial meltwater, so cold he quickly lost all sensation. Hero swallowed a mouthful and surfaced fighting for life; too disoriented to combat the current, too numb to realize his waving arm was striking something solid. That solid something turned out to be a swirling clump of rotted birches tangled up in scrub. He embraced one of these trunks as the mass slammed against isolated rocks, kicked his feet wildly, and somehow hauled himself aboard. The raft ricocheted rock to rock until repeated impacts sent it spinning. Giddy from the whirling and soaking, he clung freezing to the trees, retching continuously while the river roared in his ears. Through spray and tears he made out only cartwheeling fragments of the world.
But then the river was widening, its fury dissipating. The raft was approaching the sea. Hero gasped as the seemingly boundless Pacific swallowed the broad red belly of the sun. And as he spun he was treated to a panoramic, breathtaking spectacle:  the great indigo ocean with its slow traffic of driftwood and ice—voiced-over by the dismal calls of foraging gulls, and broken rhythmically by intermittent glimpses of the river’s rocky banks growing farther and farther apart. Whirling as it went, the dying man’s soul was taken by the sea.

At the 59th Parallel in winter, the Pacific coast plays host to numberless floes and minor bergs orphaned from Alaskan coastal glaciers. Hero cruised into a watery gridlock on a boat of ice-glazed birches, one bit of flotsam among the rest.
The cold wouldn’t let him move, wouldn’t let him breathe, wouldn’t let him think. He lay supine, feet crossed and hands clasped, terrified that to budge was to roll. An ice patina grew over the tangled trees like a white fungus—this growth soon webbed his fingers and toes, speckled his chest and thighs, glazed his hair and face, danced and disintegrated with his breath’s tapering plumes.
Floes and frozen-over debris tended to group with passing collisions; Hero’s married birches bit by bit accrued a mostly-submerged tangle of trunks and branches, all becoming fast in a creeping ice cement. Night came on just as resolutely, until land was only a flat black memory. The raft moved silently over the deep, still accepting the occasional gentle impact. And the floes became thicker and wider in a freezing doldrums; soon the proximate sea was all a broken field of packed ice, bobbing infinitesimally with the planet’s pulse.
Long ghostly strands of fog came striding over the torn ice field. They leaned this way and that, their mourners’ skirts tearing and patching and leaning anew. The ghosts were there to seal it:  their locked fingers and gray diaphanous wings were quickly becoming a wholly opaque descending shroud, its boundaries lost in the soughing wind.
Collisions came less and less. Darkness and silence, breaching some previously impenetrable barrier, began to take up residence in Hero’s chilling marrow. From his very center broke a weak little cry of refusal, of denial, as mind mustered frame in one desperate bid for freedom. His skin, frozen to the raft, peeled right off, and at that his inner brave succumbed. Hero’s smashed head arched back. His face contorted frightfully while the little lamp fluttered and paled within.
A raucous chorus slowly worked its way through the mist. It emerged a few hundred yards off—a tiny, terrified barking, growing in clarity as it grew in volume and urgency. It was a sound beacon. Hero strained eagerly, and when for one excruciating minute the beacon was cut off by a large passing body, was certain death had claimed him. Then it was back, and his heartbeat was quickening. He caught a heaving sound…something was moving his way down a wide tributary between floes. Hero could hear a gasping and snorting, accompanied by a hard slapping and splashing. The sounds vanished. In a moment the raft was rocked from below.
A sputtering muzzle blew salt in his eyes. A cold slimy flipper flapped across his chest and slapped about his face. The fur seal barked directly in his ear. Whiskers raked his dead cheek. The seal barked again.
Back below the surface it slipped. Hero listened anxiously as the splashing sound retreated whence it came.
The seal swam off perhaps a hundred feet and began barking hysterically.
From much farther off came a profusion of answering barks.
The seal swam back to Hero’s raft, circling and calling, circling and calling, while the responders approached en masse.
Now a sallow beam could be seen cutting through the fog. Several more showed vaguely along a plane yawing with some huge, barely discernible object.
A herd of northern fur seals burst into sight, barking madly, beating through the ice. They converged on Hero’s raft, really bellowing now.
Those odd yellow beams came in pursuit, and soon were close enough to eerily illuminate a gigantic wooden vessel parting the ice. The seals barked ferociously. Whenever the vessel leaned away, those nearest Hero’s raft would absolutely howl.
The fog deepened, condensed, crystallized, and then the collective light of a dozen lanterns was playing over a low, listing nightmare. Hero could hear the shouts of many aggressive men, but the waterborne seals, rather than scatter, boarded the ice and redoubled their din, fighting their way onto his quickly mobbed raft.
The sealers hurled serrated spears even as they clambered down rope ladders. When these men reached the ice the seals snapped and gnashed madly, refusing to be dislodged. The sealers lost all composure with the thrill of the hunt:  wielding clubs, spears, and hatchets—sometimes using iron bludgeons or any old utensil handed down—they crushed skulls, dragged carcasses, hooked animals still spurting and bleating. Clinging though he was, Hero was flabbergasted by the way the slipping and scampering men went about their butchery, hacking and smashing more with passion than with precision. But not a single seal attempted to flee—throughout the carnage they barked all the louder, egging on their slayers, carcass by carcass drawing the impassioned sealers to Hero’s ice-locked raft.
It was all so hazy and macabre. Hero’s eyes rolled back, and the next thing he knew he was sitting hunched on the vessel’s sopping deck. Two men were rubbing his limbs while another poured warm water down his back. He looked around in shock. The very notion of a boat containing more than one or two individuals—a sort of floating tribe—was way beyond his ken; so to see it, to have it come looming out of nothingness, was an experience almost supernatural.
He remembered some of those fur-covered men force-feeding him mouthfuls of halibut and seal fat, and he recalled a small group standing around him, shouting words that made no sense at all. After that he had a very vivid memory of their angry little chief repeatedly punching him while hollering one angry little word over and over and over. Hero couldn’t make out his inquisitor’s face, for the large feather-lined hood quite engulfed the man’s head, yet he could see those quick eyes flash as they caught the oil lamps’ light. Finally this man stopped boxing Hero’s ear. He stared hard. In these remaining decades of the tenth century it was fully within his power to administer as he saw fit—he could have ordered Hero’s immediate execution and not a man of his crew would have objected. He hesitated only because there wasn’t a hint of resistance in his prisoner’s pinched and frightened eyes. He leaned forward, studying the wound that all but split Hero’s face in two before grunting, raising his right arm, and yanking down its seal hide sleeve. Attached to the stump of his forearm was a primitive prosthesis consisting of a thick oak cap strapped to the arm with lengths of gut, and, hammered squarely into the center of that cap, a broad, cruelly hooked blade chiseled from a narwhal’s tusk. He held this obscenity in front of Hero’s eyes, traced the face’s deep diagonal rift, and once more demanded his captive’s identity. Hero then vaguely remembered being dragged along a tilting deck and thrown into the ship’s tiny hold. He retained a strong mental image of landing in a place of musty odors and dank projections.
There came a soft scuffling in the darkness, and presently a blind and exceedingly old woman felt her way to his side, mumbling as she approached. Her speech was comprised not of words; it was rather a running gibberish of cooing vowels and clucking consonants. The old woman was as mad as her circumstances; sick with sea and solitude, bedeviled by age and confinement. She sat cross-legged, patting her withered palms up his arm until she came to his face. Her strange mumbling soliloquy rose and fell as her bony fingers daintily explored the newly opened wound. Hero let his head fall back in her lap. A pair of hands like emaciated tarantulas scurried through the filth and tiny bodies until they came upon an old otter’s pelt bag that held her secrets. The woman loosened the bag’s cord and extracted an assortment of herbs, sniffing each in succession. She then scooped a handful of blubber from a bowl made of a previous occupant’s skull, kneaded the selected herbs into the blubber, and commenced gently massaging the wound, clucking and cooing while the black rats watched and waited.
For nine interminable days Hero remained in that cold, stinking compartment, rocking back and forth between life and death. The old woman never gave up on him. She clung to him during his seizures, rubbed his limbs vigorously when his blood pressure fell. She gathered various accumulated skins and, using woven strands of her own long hair, sewed him a multilayered, body-length wraparound with arm sleeves and very deep pockets, working by touch with a needle formed of a cod’s rib. By this same method she was able to fashion a pair of heavily lined snug-fitting moccasins. The old woman made him eat; she masticated the cod and halibut their keepers pitched into the hold, then shoved the results down his throat with a long gnarly forefinger. She called into his screaming nightmares, talking him out of sleep and back into their foul little reality. Together they lowed in the dark, while the keel groaned along and the waves beat time.
At the end of those dark nine days his strength was restored, but not his mind. Once again he was taken on deck.
The vessel had reached a chain of remote wind-swept islands, rocky and treeless, naked except for patchy carpets of hardy grass. These islands stretched far to the west, shrouded in mist. The ship was making for the smallest; just a chip on the sea. When they reached depth for anchorage Hero was hustled into a rowboat and lowered over the side. He looked up, saw two men climbing down by rope. These men positioned themselves at the oars and slowly rowed toward the islet. Seated between them, Hero felt like a man being led to his execution. He snuck a peek. The rowers’ heads were lowered, their features completely obscured by the heavy feathered hoods; they had all the somberness of pallbearers. Not a word passed between them as they rigidly worked their oars:  the only sound was the dip-and-purl of wood in water. Hero looked away. Against his will, he found his eyes drawn to that rocky islet waiting in the fog.
Not a bird, not a sea lion, not a shrub. It was lonesome beyond imagination.
Upon landfall one of the men used a spear’s point to **** Hero ashore. While his companion steadied the boat, he removed a skin sack full of half-frozen halibut, followed by a few armloads of precious tinder. These articles he tossed at Hero’s feet. He resumed his place at the oars and, without looking back, used the blunt end of his spear to shove off.
Hero watched the boat moving away, watched the men climbing their ropes, watched the boat being hauled aboard. As the mysterious vessel receded he saw a number of those silent men standing at the stern, stolidly returning his stare. Their hooded forms grew smaller and smaller, finally becoming indistinct. The vessel was swallowed up in fog.
Hero looked around, at a desolate world of rock and drifting ice. In the sunless pools at his feet a few purplish, flaccid sea anemones were waving in a sickly phosphorescence; along the rocks ran a tattered quilt of wild grass and lichen. It was the end of the world. He began to pace in his anxiety, only to crumple bit by bit inside his furs. At last he just sat with his face in his arms and wept. When he could weep no more he raised his head and opened his red, swollen eyes.
There were gulls all around him, staring like statuary in a madman’s garden. Standing in their midst were auks and puffins and murres, absolutely spellbound, unable to lean away. The silence was broken only by a wild, fitfully pursing wind—a wind that seemed, eerily, on the verge of producing syllables. And on that wind a flock of terns was rising slowly, their beady eyes fixed on the lone sitting man. The terns watched as he trembled, and banked as he swooned.
Then, beating as one, they threw back their wings and blew into the sun.

There was a blaze.
Behind that blaze a pair of black, bug-like eyes met his and immediately withdrew. A man wrapped in caribou hides stood abruptly, drawing angry swarms of sparks.
The Aleut peered queerly into the icy Pacific, his craggy profile merging seamlessly with a jumble of rocks showing just beyond his shoulder. The man was very tall, closer to seven feet than to six, and thin almost to emaciation.
He was also a mute. Soon enough he would display a talent for communication through gutturals, but now his body language spoke louder than words. It told the shivering stranger that he was not only disliked—he was feared.
The islander removed the hides he’d piled on the sleeping man. He produced a bone awl and strategically pierced a caribou hide, draped the hide over the old woman’s handiwork, and ran a cord of tightly woven tendons crosswise through his made holes, knotting it at the bottom to create a kind of cloak. He then killed the fire, heaped wood, fish, and remaining hides into Hero’s arms, and led him to a tiny cove where his long skin canoe lay in the grass. This was not the one-man kayak used by his people for centuries, but an actual canoe modeled on the graceful vessels he’d observed under the control of northern coastal tribesmen. After dragging it into the water he perched Hero in the fore, placed the cargo in the middle, and stepped into the rear like a gaunt furry spider. The Aleut dug out a paddle and began pulling with smooth strokes of surprising muscularity, his black eyes trained on his quiet companion’s back.
So began their long island-hopping journey. They stepped the chain one stone at a time, living off the sea. But much as the islander disliked Hero’s vapid company, it was not in his nature to proceed expeditiously; his people, remote as they were, had learned to count not in days but in generations. Given this, the Aleut took his time. He showed Hero how to build shelters of skin and gut; during bad weather the two would sit on an island in utter silence while rain hammered on their stretched seal-intestine window. And one very clear night he pointed out constellations while attempting to demonstrate, using broad gestures, just how the brighter heavenly bodies were in perfect alignment with the Aleutians. Hero followed his guide’s gestures as a pet follows its master’s movements and, like a pet, soon became bored. The Aleut did not grow flustered. He grew ever more wary:  behind that granite, weather-beaten exterior squirmed a very primitive imagination. Superstitious as he was, the Aleut was almost certain Hero could read his mind. So one time, and one time only, he threw a searing look at the back of Hero’s bowed and listing head. After a long minute of vigorous thought-projection he shifted his gaze aside. The brute appeared to feel this shift, and gently turned his head. And both saw the ocean break rhythm, and watched as otters and sea lions surfaced, noted their progress, and slipped without tremor beneath the waves.
In spring the fogs lifted. The grimness gave way to serenity, a generous sun buttered the dappled sea. On the islands grass grew lushly. Wildflowers leapt on the color-starved eye.
And one day the islander’s nape itched. He turned to see a flock of arctic terns casually tracking them under a gorgeous, white-plumed sky. As the day progressed the terns came drifting high overhead, slowly but surely taking the lead.
The Aleut squinted against the sun. He’d never known these birds to pursue a westerly migratory pattern—the terns were distributing themselves into a rough wedge shape, much like geese on the wing.
For a while he let the flock be his guide. Then, to test his stars, he cunningly steered his canoe north. At once the wedge disintegrated. Not until he’d lowered his eyes and pulled purposefully to the west did the disrupted pattern reassert itself. He peered up timidly. The wedge was now in the shape of a perfect arrowhead.
Just so were the fates of mariners and aviators inextricably entwined. At night, once the Aleut had landed his canoe on the nearest pearl, the terns would light in a quiet circle and remain until sunrise. As the Aleut and Hero took to sea, the flock would quickly form that same authoritative pattern.
In time the Aleut paddled his companion clear to the westernmost islands of the Aleutian chain. His people had dwelt, even here, a thousand years and more, but no contemporary islander knew for certain what lay beyond. Legend told of an enormous land mass forever gripped by cold, where a cruel people waylaid innocent seafarers for barbaric sacrificial rites.
So here the islander paused. But even as he vacillated he noticed the terns were veering south.
If the Aleut had been able to curse aloud he would have been vociferous. He was being compelled to follow an even less desirable course—that of the unknown open ocean. Now he looked upon his passenger’s hunched back not with fear but with loathing. He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and defiantly continued west. The wedge broke up immediately. The terns dive-bombed the canoe, whirled around the windmilling Aleut, tore skyward and hovered determinedly. Something huge broke surface behind them, but the Aleut was way too frayed to turn. He dropped his head, a beaten man, and began paddling south. Little by little the birds returned to formation.
The tiny canoe had no business going up against the mighty Pacific. It would soon have been swallowed and smashed, had not the terns veered in close formation whenever the distant sea appeared too rough. Once he’d lost his bearings the Aleut religiously followed their serpentine course.
The days began to warm.
Now the sea’s bounty all but leapt in the canoe.
It seemed the Aleut was forever catching the finest currents, practically sliding down a corridor entirely free of peril. In this manner he was able to safely navigate waters no such craft had mastered before.
They were proceeding south by southwest, awed children of a plenteous, generous sea. The going became easier by the day, the ocean heavier with cod.
Nights the Aleut drifted comfortably, but a lifetime of wariness made him wake off and on. He’d slowly rise to find Hero sitting quietly under the stars, and soon he’d see, pallid in moonlight, a large body neatly pleating the ocean’s surface. The shape would precede them a while, only to vanish without a ripple.
All this strangeness kept the Aleut’s heart in a whirl, though he took pains to maintain his poise.
To allay his fear he kept a flat black stone planted squarely between them. It was his oldest treasure; an oddity he’d taken off the body of a mauled Tlingit woman when he was a child. Who she was, and how she’d come by the stone, were mysteries far beyond him, for no such piece had ever been known to Aleut or Inuk.
The stone was smooth and had been worked perfectly round. Bright yellow specks were scattered about its dull black face.
Long ago someone had etched a quaint and clumsy rune on that flat black surface—it was the crude, universal symbol for sun:  a broad circle surrounded by several rays. When the stone was rubbed against a pelt it possessed the curious property of growing quite warm and bright in the rune’s grooves, while the surface remained cool and dull.
This stone, both friend and overlord, had always “spoken to him”. It caused him to become restless when it was time to move on, and allowed him to relax when a destination had been reached. In this way he’d come to the familiar islet and discovered the unconscious little man. Just so:  the stone, he was sure, was responsible for making him “feel bad” as he watched the stranger shiver, and “feel better” once he’d built him a life-saving fire from the small pile of tinder he’d found nearby.
By now, however, the Aleut was wholly disenchanted with his stone, and deeply regretted having done its mysterious bidding. Never before had he been so long from sight of land, and never before had he felt so very, very small. The unimagined immensity of the Pacific was really starting to get to him when, after all their while at sea, a gray, seductive haze broke the horizon. They had reached another chain of islands, an Asian chain, the dark and smoky Kurils. Here a cold current kept the climate cool and foggy, and the chill, along with the prevalence of otter and seal, made him feel almost at home.
But this place gave him the creeps; he was a stranger, a trespasser somewhere sacred. There was a looming quality to the island mountains that made him extraordinarily aware of his transience, his pettiness, his puniness. He grew more and more cautious, sure their progress was being monitored—he could have sworn he saw wraiths in the trees, and wolves padding warily in the brush. The big islands looked on breathlessly. All along the rocky cliffs, thousands of auks and puffins followed the canoe in dead silence, their heads turning simultaneously, their countless tiny eyes peering redly through the fog. As the weeks passed, the Aleut’s anxiety was manifested in tics and sighs, and he’d cringe each time the crimson sun sank behind those black volcanic summits. In his imagination the mountains would rise right out of the sea, as though to pluck him. But the islands, in all their dignity, would always refuse to acknowledge so meek a stranger, and return their eyes to sea. The Aleut would hang his head, and timidly paddle by.
Then for days and days he pulled his weary canoe west—through a strait parting two mighty islands not part of the chain, and thence across a sea that was a warm, enticing bath. Spring had come to the East Asian coastal waters, and the Ainu, alone and in groups, were venturing deeper in search of increasing bounty. The Aleut, absorbed in his thoughts of sweet climate and bitter fate, was unaware they’d been spotted.
This first meeting between strangers of different worlds was a brief and awkward one. A lone Ainu fisherman, seeing the Aleut come paddling out of the unknown, dropped his net and turned to stone. The Aleut, for his part, instinctively froze with his body turned half-away to make the leanest target possible. Their stares locked. Never had the Aleut seen a face so heavily bearded, and never hair so fair. The Ainu began banging on his bronze catch pail. Other fishers soon appeared from the north and south, effectively cutting off the canoe. The Aleut caressed his stone and looked to the sky. The wedge had vanished. He put down his head and paddled for all he was worth.
With the word out, uncountable fishing craft appeared out of the blue and broke into hot pursuit, their pilots determined to force the canoe ashore.
Suddenly they were in sight of land, and the sea was absolutely riddled with watercraft. A train of small boats cast off from the mainland, even as a posse of two-man coracle-like tubs began to surround the battered skin canoe, their inhabitants calling back and forth in astonishment at the sight of these dark, savage newcomers. But the pursuing little coastal men, banging excitedly on the sides of their boats, were not Ainu. They had very straight black hair, prominent cheekbones, and strangely slanted eyes. And their speech, oddly marvelous as it was, was a rapid series of coos, chirps, and barks. Their boats formed a tight semi-circle around the canoe, forcing the Aleut to approach the mainland. The little men banged their boats maniacally, with more joining in as the canoe neared shore.
A bit farther south was a natural harbor swarming with fishing vessels of every description. As the canoe was forced into this harbor, people along the rocky coast began banging whatever they could get their hands on, until the air was filled with their lunatic percussion.
Tiny brown men came running along a soft yellow cliff overlooking the harbor, gesturing wildly. The canoe was squeezed between a chain of tubs and the shore, and, as it slowed, the tempo and ferocity of the banging decreased accordingly. When the canoe came to a halt the banging and shouting stopped. Hero creaked to his feet. The first North American to set foot on Asian soil stepped out shakily.
There followed the profoundest silence imaginable.
A second later it was as if a dam had burst.
Hundreds of hysterical, yammering voices erupted from hundreds of hysterical, clinging men and women. Hero was spun around, jostled about, handed along. He stared into their astounded, pinched little faces, and the sun, pulsing between their heads as he was turned, repeatedly stabbed his eyes. There came an excited outburst and frantic splashing which could only have been the Aleut’s violent demise, and then Hero was somehow limping alongside a primitive fishing village, blindly following a narrow dirt path that hugged the yellow cliff’s base. The warm spring sun caught the dust as he shambled. He rounded a bend and stopped.
Half a dozen children stood in his way, too fascinated to run. A chatter and scuffle rose behind him. He looked back to see that he was now in the midst of a small crowd of these children, and that more were running up with cries of amazement.
A stone struck his shoulder. As Hero turned another glanced off his chest.
A moment later he was being pelted from all sides, and the giggles and gasps had become something wildly unreal. He dropped to his knees in a hail of hurled rocks, covered his head with his arms, and slithered up the path on his belly.
A new voice broke in; an older, authoritative voice.
The children scampered off squealing.
Hero, shaken to his feet, found himself face to face with a diminutive, shouting, incomprehensible old man. The old man threw his arm around Hero’s waist and, jabbering all the while, led him to a secondary path cut into the cliff’s face. This path sloped gently upward over the waves. Together they picked their way to a place maybe halfway up, where the cliff’s face was honeycombed with natural alcoves and dug-out caves. Most of these spaces were used as one-man shelters; a few, cut deeper in the earth, as family hives. Strange gabbing people slid out of these holes like worms, reaching, but the little old man, who was evidently a little old man of some stature, embraced his find possessively and shouted them back inside.
The path narrowed as they climbed.
At its summit spread the upscale end of the neighborhood. Hero was led to a hovel nestled amid dozens of similar hovels, all scattered around a dainty stream wending between patches of stunted vegetation.
The old man’s place was basically a one-room hut fashioned of earth and salvaged boat hulls, with a slender side-yard surrounded by dry, dusty hedges. But inside it was clean and tidy, with rice paper partitioning and, built into the far earthen wall, a miniature stone fireplace. The old man sat his guest in the exact center of the room. There he fed him scraps from his bowl, using long sticks to pluck out bits of fish and clumps of tiny, starchy white pellets.
He studied the brute closely, watched him chew, walked round and round him. He poked here. He pinched there.
And that night he lit a fire on his crushed-shell hearth.
Hero curled up on a mat where the gossip of flames could reach him. Nearby, at his delicate wicker table, the old man sat in semi-darkness, illuminated only from the waist down.
But his eyes were alive. They spat and darted as they reflected the fire’s light, and, when at last they’d begun to sputter, his scratchy little voice came pattering out of the dark, muttering something vile and oddly modulated, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a gathering snarl.
Hero feigned slumber, unable to ignore those paired ominous flashes. Still, the room was cozy, and the fire warm, and the play of light and shadow kicked sleep in his eyes.

In the morning he woke in the old man’s side-yard, his head pounding, a rusty iron clamp securely fastened around his neck. This clamp was attached to the outermost link of a crude three-foot chain, and the link at the other end to a long stake driven into eight inches of solid rock. The chain and stake, like the clamp, were hammered of local iron. The clamp was too tight for comfortable swallowing, the chain too short to make standing possible. Hero could, however, spread out on his chest and stretch an arm to a low row of hedges. By parting the tangled undergrowth he had a limited view of the fishing village below, and of the harbor beyond. As the days passed he was able to tweak himself a view-space discernible only from his peculiar vantage. He accomplished this by gently breaking small branches strategically, then guiding their interrupted growth with the utmost tenderness. It was his secret garden.
He had no memory—none whatsoever—of being staked here. Obviously the old man hadn’t set this up overnight. Hero’s mind prodded timidly…how many others had been chained to this spot, and why?
But over the subsequent weeks and months he went beyond caring. Each day was the same:  just after dawn the old man would storm into the tiny side-yard swinging his reed whip wildly. The lashings were savage and unremitting. The old man, except for his eyes, would be mute. Only his whip need speak. And the snap of his reed had but one message:  when you see this whip you go down, and you go down immediately.
The naked savage, scarred head to foot, learned to go prostrate on the moment. Even so, the old man couldn’t resist the temptation to indulge in the occasional good old, all-out thrashing. And after each session he would toss the prisoner a vile mess of dead fish and rotting leftovers.
Hero lived like this for many months, lost in a confused world of pain and anticipation. Perversely, he came to look forward to the bite of that whip, for, whether he flogged him in passion or just for sport, the old man was always sure to make it personal. It seemed their relationship might go on forever.
But one day there was a great commotion in the sleepy little fishing village. Hero parted the leaves and beheld a small train of oblong coaches at rest near the harbor. Large oxen yoked in pairs lolled between the carriages, immune to the clamor around them. There were dark shaggy horses and colorfully dressed Bactrian camels. The horses and camels were tethered in the rear, but were occasionally paraded around the carriages by little men wielding long painted bamboo poles. The whole affair was exotic and mesmerizing, eccentric and profane. Hero watched all day in amazement, infected by the hubbub, though he was totally mystified by the crowd’s fascination on the carriages’ far side.
And late that afternoon he saw the old man come walking out of that crowd, talking heatedly with another man. The stranger was shorter and broader than the old man, with long stringy hair and long stringy mustaches. He saw them climbing the path, saw them crawl inside a hole lashing furiously. They were lost from view for a minute, then popped up big as life. Hero glowed and curled up eagerly as they approached.
The old man and stranger came into the narrow side-yard still arguing. The old man grabbed Hero by the hair and twisted until he was facing the newcomer.
The stranger had oily, porous skin, and a round but grave countenance. His highly slanted eyes were bright and restless. He studied Hero’s mutilated face with keen interest before borrowing the old man’s reed. When Hero scraped at his feet he grunted and returned the reed.
The stranger pulled out something shiny and hefted it in his hand. He then raised his other hand while considering Hero, as though weighing him too. The old man’s eyes glinted, and for an instant his expression became grotesquely servile. The stranger and old man, facing, nodded curtly in unison. The stranger dropped the shiny thing onto the old man’s itching palm. The old man whipped Hero frantically before taking a small ax to the chain. A few hard blows split a link, the broken link was bent back by the tool’s shaft, and the prisoner was at last released.
The old man handed the stranger a short hempen rope. The stranger bowed deeply. He then tied an end of the rope through one of the remaining links and began dragging Hero along. Hero’s hands sought the old man, who kicked and cursed him all the way to the path. The three stumbled single-file to the bottom. The old man waved his arms and shouted hysterically, trotting behind until he ran out of breath. But he got in a final kick and, before he came to a gasping halt, managed to lash Hero once for old time’s sake, and to spit on him twice for luck.

There were five carriages; a long one in the center hitched to four oxen, and two smaller coaches in the front and rear with a pair of oxen on each. The carriages were old and battered, built of splitting wood slats and rusted iron braces. Various hides, spare wheels, and a hundred odds and ends were tied to the sides and roofs. Hero’s new master, using him as a ram, shoved him through the crowd to the long carriage. He hauled him up the single wood step and watched the crowd’s reaction. Children hid behind mothers, mothers hissed and jeered, men spat in that smashed, disgusting face.
Satisfied, Hero’s master twisted the rope tighter and dragged him through the hide flap that served as the carriage’s rear wall.
A strange ruckus began at their entrance.
Inside the carriage were bulky shapes and quirky movements, yet the immediate and overwhelming impression was one of unbelievable stench. Hero, instantly covered with flies, was kicked and shoved down a foot-wide aisle. The carriage’s walls were riddled with black flecks of old dried blood, the floor coated with standing *****, a variety of small carcasses, and some clinging, indefinable slime. But the living contents of this hell were so horrifying, and so unexpected, that Hero at once dropped to his knees. Observing this, master grabbed a whip off the wall and lashed him along the floor.
A number of bamboo cages lined either side of the carriage, each four feet high, four feet wide, and three feet deep. In the first cage to their left, a quadruple amputee dangled in a leather harness in a cloud of flies, jealously gnawing a chicken carcass balanced on his belly. The second cage held a man who had been burned over ninety per cent of his body, and the third a middle-aged woman with no eyes or tongue, her head shaved. The next cage housed a fully grown black leopard, its bright eyes fixed on the horrified newcomer. Then an empty cage, and finally a cage containing a demented man whose long yellow nails were busily raking a face deeply scarred and bleeding.
The first cage against the opposite wall held two girls rolling in their own excrement. Siamese twins unable to part, they had developed a unique method of locomotion, and now executed a three-quarters cartwheel in Hero’s direction, their mangled, severely bitten hands attempting to reach him through the bars. In the cage next to theirs a naked dwarf glowered menacingly, his eyes following coldly as Hero’s master shoved him down the narrow aisle, occasionally pausing to lash a cage. The hissing and howling increased as each prisoner beheld the new neighbor.
The third cage held an intensely sick adult Bornean sun bear, so confined it was entirely unable to move. Its hide was a patchwork of scraggly fur and grayish skin, glistening with odd eruptions. It rolled its sunken eyes in Hero’s direction, its muzzle twitching feebly.
The next cage contained a man who was frightfully diseased. Broad fungal patches covered his face and limbs, terminating in waxy folds that dangled like a rooster’s wattles. Welling sores spotted his chest and back. His eyes were bugged and sallow; his lower lip drooped below his chin. He barked wetly at Hero’s passing legs.
The second-to-last cage housed a rare, completely hairless Chinese albino, and the last cage a very tall, skeletal woman. The albino snapped at Hero while repeatedly banging his head against the cage. The woman hissed and coiled like a snake, her spine arching amazingly.
Master hauled Hero to the empty cage on his left, swung its door open with his foot, and forced him to his knees by pushing down with all his weight. He kicked and punched until Hero had been squeezed inside, then shut and secured the wide bamboo door.
Master inched his way back down the carriage, hammering the **** of his whip on each cage as he passed. There was a glimpse of daylight as he lifted the flap.
Once he’d departed, the carriage grew eerily silent.
Hero cautiously turned his head. Less than a foot away, the black leopard was frozen in place, one paw waving hypnotically in his face. The beast’s fangs were bared, its ears straight back, its eyes glistening. Hero turned ever so slowly, until he was looking into the eyes of the demented man in the final cage. The man cocked his head quizzically. A second later he was screaming his lungs out in a bizarre downward spiral.
At once the carriage erupted. The freaks shrieked and scrabbled, the leopard spun in place. Directly across the aisle, the albino hurled himself against the bars of his cage. He batted his face with his fists, threw back his head, and just howled and howled and howled. The snake woman curled even tighter, her long scrawny legs entwined behind her head.
Hero sat with breath held, absolutely silent, absolutely motionless. He very, very slowly closed his eyes.

Later that night the flap was flung high. The menagerie came alive as master, weirdly illuminated by moonlight, slowly made his way down the aisle carrying a skin sack oozing blood. He stopped at each cage to toss in a dying chicken and a handful of smelt.
When he reached Hero’s cage he looked down thoughtfully.
He extracted a quivering chicken and held it above the cage so that blood dripped on the brute’s deeply pleated forehead. Hero lowered his eyes. Master’s face darkened. He smashed the bird against the cage, over and over, a vein throbbing in his temple. Finally he hissed and displayed the limp chicken high over the albino’s head. The albino yelped and kicked, thrusting his hand up between the bars and jerking it back to lick away the blood rolling down his forearm.
Master eyed Hero coldly before pointedly dropping the chicken into the albino’s searching hands.
Master hissed again. He slowly made his way out.
Soon there was a commotion outside. The carriage rocked a bit before settling. Hero, turning in his cage to peek through a rift in the wood, saw horses being urged forward. He could hear men shouting. The carriage rocked again. He looked up and saw the gibbous moon suspended in mist. For just a second something wedge-shaped cut across its soft white face.
But then the oxen were grunting, the wheels had been freed, and the horses drawn abreast. Master’s lash spat left and right, and the show proceeded…west.

                                              MA­STER

She was very round and very small, with very short, very shaggy black hair. Her arms bore the scars of numerous bites from beast and man, and around her neck ran long wheals from a particularly savage owner. Hero, having spent the better part of the morning watching master storm in and out of a strange screaming house, now watched him drag the little round woman through the dirt. For a while he listened to the song of his master’s lash, waiting for the woman to break. But there was never a whimper.
It had been a difficult transaction for master, and an altogether difficult morning. For hours he’d paced up and down the main carriage, alternately murmuring affectionately into, and lashing at, each cage he visited. The sun bear, long dead and stuffed, had been taken outside for barter. It had soon been returned.
Master had lingered over Hero’s cage for a good while, staring critically. He’d begun shouting, and three of his men had burst in through the flap, unlatched the demented man’s cage, and dragged him out by the feet for trade, master personally stomping on his torn and groping hands.
And now master was kicking and shoving the little woman down the aisle as his men restrained her by the hair and throat. Upon master’s command these men stripped her naked and commenced pinching and slapping while making threatening faces and mocking noises. The freaks sat right up in their cages.
The woman looked as though she’d fainted:  her arms were lax, her eyes rolled up. Her whole face seemed to purse, and her body, head to toe, began to run blue. Her fingers quivered, arched, and clawed—the woman was self-asphyxiating. Master fairly leaped with delight while the cages rocked around him. He had the men slap her awake. Once she was fully conscious they stuffed her into the demented man’s old cage next to Hero’s.
Master then looked in eagerly, one to the other, his hands balled into fists. The woman buried her odd round face in her forearms as she squeezed herself into her cage’s deepest corner. Hero gazed indifferently and went back to his peephole.
Master exploded. He smacked and kicked the cages over and over, swore up and down, ran the shaft of his whip back and forth against the heavy bamboo bars. Eventually he calmed somewhat. He stared coldly at Hero, made a ***** smile, and spat right in his eyes. A tense minute passed. Master slowly made his way outside.
Hero automatically relaxed. Across the aisle the albino ****** his face between his cage’s bars to sniff the newcomer. The leopard, bobbing rhythmically, emitted a high-pitched squeal that gradually descended to a steadily throbbing growl.
Hero looked the stranger over. Once she’d lowered her hands he saw that her eyes were crossed, her jaw slack, her face as round as the full moon. He looked closer. There were scars all over her throat and arms:  plainly, the small round woman had been treated very badly. Hero instinctively slid a foot between the bars; the woman cried out and scrunched even deeper. Across the aisle the albino quickly extended an arm. Without knowing why, Hero turned on him. The albino flinched, his eyes tearing into Hero’s. A second later he was stamping his feet and grinning wildly. Hero went back to his peephole.
Next morning master and two of his men dismantled the bamboo walls separating Hero’s and the woman’s cages. They bound the frames with broad leather bands, making a single cage of the two.
A common door was fashioned and secured. Master used his broad blade to shear away Hero’s rags. The men hunched around the long cage expectantly.
The naked couple backed away. Master was instantly exasperated—he shouted, lashed furiously, stamped and screamed, jabbed a broken shaft between the bars with malevolent intent, whirled and hurled the shaft at nothing. The carriage’s inmates went out of their minds. At master’s bellowed command a man scurried outside, returning with a long rope of woven leather strands. Master opened the cage and, applying all his weight, pinned Hero and his new mate in an awkward embrace while his men tied them together.
Again master and his men bent over the long cage to watch.
When Hero realized his predicament he made a desperate attempt to reach his peephole.
The men, misreading his struggles, babbled and cheered, but master threw up his hands. He then, through gesture, ordered his men to drape a number of hides over the long cage. Once these hides were in place he very quietly bent to one knee and placed an ear against the cage. After a while he cursed and rose to his feet. He shook the cage and stormed out, whipping and kicking the howling inmates.
In the semi-darkness the man and woman quit fighting their bonds.
A muffled patter began on the hide-covered roof.
Rain, as always, had a calming effect on the carriage’s occupants, causing the freaks and beasts to slip, one by one, into lethargy or slumber. Under such a spell, the attainment of master’s goal was inevitable.
It was a coupling both innocent and vile, without passion or celebration. Occasionally the freaks would surface, register their excitement by shrieking, shaking their cages, or otherwise clamoring…but very quickly the air would stifle them, weighing their heads and confusing their impulses. The atmosphere grew heavier by the minute. And, when night rolled over the carriages, the rain came down in sheets.

Leaning ******* the woman’s cage, master slipped his gnarly hand between the bars and slowly rubbed her belly in a counter-clockwise motion, his sinister features soft in the candle’s light. And he told, in nonsensical cooing whispers, of a lovingly secure and impossibly prosperous future.
How large and promising that belly had become! And how wise was he, the cunning and aggressive master, in his far-reaching business decisions. He turned his affection to the motionless gaping brute; stroked the battlefield of its face, tossed in another lizard. Master rubbed his palms together. From now on it was extra lizards daily, for both the woman and her mate. He remarked, with only passing interest, his star player’s continuing indifference. They didn’t know each other, didn’t need each other.
There’d been months of shows on the road now, broken only recently by this sensible rejoining of the mates at conception.
Hero’s horrible disfigurement was unquestionably top draw; he was a guaranteed crowd pleaser at every stop. So now master looked him straight in the eyes and smiled. He held the reeking candle high. The carriage was absolutely silent. Master smiled again, rose to his feet, tiptoed away.
Hero watched him retreat until the flap had fallen. He returned to his peephole, saw master round the rear of the carriage and slowly crunch by. For a time he could see nothing but the half-shapes of junipers bathed in starlight. There was a tentative movement to his right and a large shape came to obstruct his view.
The horse stood for a minute in profile. It slowly brought its head to rest against the carriage, applying its eye to the peephole. Hero froze. The two remained fixed, eyeball to eyeball, while a breeze played odd tunes on the outer wall’s hanging paraphernalia. The horse’s big dark eye rolled nervously. A long moment passed. Slowly the horse backed off. It stood uncertainly for a while, staring at the peephole. Then it quietly moved away.

Master kicked the cages one by one, left hand and right, as he slowly made his way down the aisle. Into each cage he delivered a personalized warning in passing—a growl, a hiss, a bark—but he was quickly losing control. Animal electricity hopscotched the carriage, cage to cage, ceiling to floor, front to rear and back again. Master froze. Much more of this excitement, he feared, could seriously agitate the woman—with grave consequences for master.
She was splayed on her back, in labor’s throes, her ankles and wrists bound to the long cage. Hero had been removed to give her room, and now sat hunched atop the snake woman’s cage, two men holding him by the throat and legs.
Master gnashed and snarled, listening to the woman scream, watching her stupid round head bounce up and down and back and forth. He knew it! He’d been suckered, hoodwinked, scammed—ripped off like a common rube. The woman was too ******* to handle even something as natural as childbirth. Still…it was too late to second-guess himself—all these months he’d been patient—he’d been supportive and vigilant and now he would not be denied. He flogged one of the men to alleviate his tension.
The blue lady was very slowly, very dramatically arching her spine. Master wiped the sweat from his eyes. When the bars were pleating her big round belly, her shoulders began drumming on the straw-strewn floor.
Master screamed one very colorful expletive.
A razor silence came over the carriage. Not a body moved or breathed.
At last two men tiptoed around their purpling master and leaned into the cage. One obediently ****** a foot between the bars. He pushed ******* her right knee while using a hand to grip the left knee, spreading her legs wide. The other man drew a broad leather strap between her teeth. After lifting the woman’s head he pulled the strap behind her neck, knotted it to make a gag, and yanked a skin sack over her face. He looked up anxiously. Master licked his lips and nodded. The man made a fist and frantically punched the woman’s face until her muffled screams ceased. She moaned gently throughout her contractions.
Master genuflected, brought a spitting candle in tight, and took a deep breath. As he raised his hand the candle’s light bounced off his knife’s chipped and scored eleven-inch blade. Master swore and reached down carefully. He flicked his wrist twice and the menagerie went mad.

The child was a tremendous disappointment.
Master had eagerly anticipated an infant ******* and deformed; something embracing the best qualities of its parents. He had even designed a special cage that could be expanded by degrees as the spawn developed. There also remained the tantalizing option of a family display, though such an undertaking would require the eventual construction of a structure even larger than the cage its parents now shared. Master anguished over the logistics, knowing it would break his heart to have to cut one of his jewels’ throats just to make room for a growing child. Nights he would slowly pace the carriage with all the possessiveness of a jealous suitor, one hand maneuvering a sputtering candle, the other tenderly rapping his whip’s **** against each visited cage.
But the boy was a flawless specimen; a beautiful, undemanding baby. From the moment master angrily tossed the placenta he felt cheated, even betrayed. He grimaced as it peaceably took to its mother’s breast, despite the surrounding horrors. Master hated it, immediately and entirely. The ****** thing was so docile it was almost charming. He drew his knife and was just reaching down, when an overwhelming sense of dread shook him like a rat in the jaws of a mastiff. Sweat poured down his squat, pig-tailed nape. He knew he would live to regret it, but decided to not cut the child’s throat right away. It was the oddest feeling. His knife hand had trembled for the first time in his life, and he had found himself momentarily contemplating right and wrong at the outset of a perfectly simple and commonplace procedure. That was it, then. His business instincts were letting him know there was a good, albeit unknowable, reason to let the sweet baby live. Master left the carriage anxiously, muttering in his ambivalence.
The boy grew to embody his worst expectations. Not only was it a poorly oriented child, clinging to its father rather than its master almost from the moment of weaning, but it soon proved a lousy draw with the patrons. Those who paid to view the child dangling in its special cage inevitably departed unsatisfied, some vocalizing, strangely, an acute sense of shame. So once again master entered the carriage with his knife hand steady, and once again he exited trembling, his heart in his throat and his soul in a whirl. He whipped the dwarf savagely before leaving. What place conscience in the mind of a businessman?
Soon as the boy could walk, master put him to work fetching and feeding. But the brat was slothful in his chores, preferring to hang around his family’s cage while staring wistfully at his father. For their part, the parents were wholly disinterested. Master would fume while Hero gazed for hours out his peephole—even as the mother lolled, perpetually ill. Sometimes that accursed woman’s condition riled poor master to no end. She could teeter at death’s door for months at a time, her body changing hues to the fascination of customers, only to bounce back with a hardiness that was of interest to no one. But at the peak of her performances the blue lady could really hold a crowd. Master produced an entire outdoors extravaganza around her:  within concentric rings of raging torches his men would slowly strip her naked before wild audiences, then allow the dwarf and albino to take her while the leopard strained against a gaily festooned chain. Master circulated his crew through the crowds to encourage his patrons’ cult-like behavior of breath-holding and fainting. No getting around it:  the customers were crazy about her—village to village, master’s Bactrian vanguard’s colorful robes shouted her approaching fame. And Hero’s popularity continued to soar. Many were the nights when master, pacing the perimeter, wondered just what devilry could have produced the lovely boy.
Overall, Hero remained his master’s favorite conceit and hottest property. Part of the little brute’s appeal was, of course, his exoticness. And certainly the ugliness arising from his deformity was compelling…but there was a detachedness about him that fascinated every soul with a fistful of copper cash coins. Whether they ****** him, cudgeled him, or spat in his face, he remained unflappable, staring only at the aching sky. Though many would leave uneasy, master noted with deep satisfaction that they almost invariably returned.
The boy soon evinced an amazing affinity for animals. No matter how agitated an ox or horse became, the child could pacify it with one hand on a lowered brow. This was a source of endless fascination for the crew. Wagers were made. The boy was pitted against oxen whipped to a frenzy. But they would not harm him; they would rather go prostrate and take the lash. Master tried to work this knack into a viable act, but his patrons just weren’t buying. They wanted freaks.
When the lad was a mere five years old, master had him trained in the peripheral art of the pickpocket. The boy worked well alone, and had all the makings of a fine little flimflam artist. Master sighed, his chronic nightmares a thing of the past. As ever, his business instincts were guiding him well.
Then late one afternoon he found the boy squatting outside his parents’ cage. The boy had done the unthinkable:  he had deposited his day’s pickings at the feet of his father instead of bringing the ***** to master. Master flew into a rage and raised his whip to give the little traitor the lashing he deserved. But before he could deliver a single stroke his other hand shot to his chest and he staggered back against the albino’s cage. He blinked down at the boy, who regarded him steadily while scooping the plunder into a little pile.
From that day on the boy placed whatever he could get his hands on at his father’s feet. As time passed he became ever more adroit at thievery, growing into a youngster both admired and despised by master and his crew; admired because theft was a cinch for him, despised because they were all that much lighter in their possessions.
Now, for eleven long years the strange little train had bounced along, sometimes camping outside villages for months, occasionally pausing on connecting roads. The show traversed the heart of Manchuria, skirted the Gobi in the north, and so eventually crossed almost the entire width of Mongolia before proceeding north to the confluence of the rivers Yenisey and Ob’. Much silver and copper had come to master’s coffer, much fame to his name, but he now sat looking over a vast, unmapped Siberian wilderness. The mostly nomadic characters they’d been encountering spoke in tongues unfamiliar even to his personal valet-translator-accountant, and the tone of these nomads had been unmistakably hostile.
Master huddled surlily under a canopy of sopping hides. Night was falling hard during a merciless rain, the wind was picking up, and his supplies coach was bogged in a growing sea of mud. At that moment he accepted the whole end-of-the-line concept, and knew he wasn’t going anywhere but back. And when he got back he was going to shine! He jumped from the coach.
The earth took his weight for a heartbeat—and he was up to his chin in muck, splashing about on his hands and knees, sliding forward on his palms and toes. He did a belly flop into a rain-filled depression and churned to his feet with the devil in his eyes. Wallowing in mud and bile, master stomped to the supplies coach and kicked wildly at the stuck rear wheels.
Somewhere between kicks he lost it completely.
Master broke for his whip. One minute he was blindly lashing his men, the next he’d succumbed to a mindless ferocity. He thrashed about like a berserker; whipping the beasts, the coach, the very night. His men were scarcely able to move in all that mud, but their dread of his savagery kept them hopping. They gathered as one and shoved the coach recklessly; slipping, splashing, shouting. A minute later, three lay splayed underfoot, but the mired wheel had been freed.
Throughout all this the oxen had swayed nervously, while the horses softly tramped their hooves in place. Master had his men turn the oxen about until the rickety train was pointing dead east. He checked the hitches and personally applied the lash. The oxen didn’t budge. Master swore and wiped the rain from his eyes. He had the horses hitched ahead of the oxen, but they were even less obliging. Master flew into a spectacular rage. His men, fearing for their lives, ran liberally with the lash.
The swaying of oxen picked up until the entire train of carriages was rocking. Yet the oxen could not, would not be compelled, under any amount of prodding, to take an eastward step. Master looked around in exasperation.
The night had gone insane.
Horses were fighting hitches, oxen walking on fire.
Master cursed the rain and mud and lashed all the harder. His men, seeking to please, whipped maniacally until the horses and both lead oxen broke their hitches and bolted west. The men immediately embraced the rear oxen, but the hitches shattered and the beasts stormed off. The remaining horses blew it, kicking at everything and nothing.
Inside the long carriage all was chaos. The albino was neighing and screaming, the aged leopard spinning in its cage. Hero stared out his peephole, amazed at the blur of figures stumbling by in the rain.
A pair of clopping blows rattled the opposite wall. Three slats cracked. A tremendous impact, and a huge section collapsed. A thrashing, hysterical mare burst through the breach in a veil of rain.
The horse went mad, killing the albino and snake woman in a flurry of hooves. She fell ******* the near wall, crushing the cages. The leopard shot into the air like a rocket, slashed at the mare’s throat and vanished in the rain. The horse reared above the family cage. She was just coming down in a wheeling storm of hooves when something made her freeze. Her stare locked with Hero’s, and a second later her eyes were rolling in their sockets. The mare kicked crazily and came down ******* her left flank, smashing the long cage’s side. She whirled upright and leaped outside.
For a tense minute the family sat in the rubble, rain bombarding their eyes. Nothing in their years of captivity had prepared them for such a situation. But by the end of that minute the son had taken full command. He rolled onto his back, braced himself, and kicked his parents across the aisle, through the remnants of the opposing cage, and out of the carriage. They all fell about in the mud and rain. To the west, the mare stared back strangely as she splashed into the night. The boy wedged himself between his parents, threw his arms around them, and pushed with all his might. Their bodies found a common center of gravity. Fumbling drunkenly, the family staggered through the rain in the wake of the mare.

The boy was the natural leader.
Master’s innocent-looking little ex-student could quickly assess and exploit almost any situation. He did the foraging and the figuring, slept with one eye open and one fist ready. He got what he wanted by charm or by stealth, slipping off at nightfall, returning at daybreak with small slaughtered animals and chunks of dark peasant bread. He also pilfered any bauble or oddity he could get his paws on, to be placed reverently at his father’s mangled feet. Breadwinner and watchdog, he faithfully held the family together; a nuclear son. He sewed hardy feather-lined cloaks of reindeer hide, and turned a cache of marmot pelts into a kind of side-slung backpack. He was doting nurse during his mother’s episodes, and unbending apportioner of calories in lean times. Dauntless when it meant crossing mighty rivers, relentless when it came to finding mountain passes. But the endless marching, the unreliable diet, and the countless predators made the three wanderers lean, haggard moving targets. There were times when the little lamp of family was all but extinguished, and long stands in places that seemed absolutely impassable. Still, the boy would work things out. He would stoop to any level to feed Hero, and for a stranger to threaten his father was to summon a psychotic, unyielding monster. He was both spear and shield.
The toughest job of all was maintaining a tight unit, meaning he was forced to become a hard-nosed ******* whenever his father was ready to wander off, which always seemed to be whenever the mother was hurting most. She’d become a tremendous impediment to Hero’s compulsion, and therefore her son’s chief nemesis. It wasn’t a big-picture concern anyway; the writing was on the wall. The blue lady’s attacks were increasing spectacularly on the steppe; her world had always been an enclosure of some kind, and the great horizon was proving just too much. Perhaps these intense affairs served as links to Hero’s suppressed memories, for at the onset of each attack he’d turn and hike, and then only exhaustion could curb him. The boy would press his mother on, dragging, shoving, and smacking—he could be mean when necessary, and though circumstances had made him the nucleus, their worlds unquestionably revolved around Hero. Where he sat, they sat. When he rose, they did the same. In this manner they marched for years across the vast steppes, single-file—father, mother, and son, respectively—unmolested, lacking possessions, always following the sun. Long before they could be measured they had drifted into obscurity.
The woman’s end came quickly and dramatically, in a rocky little depression on a half-frozen field. One moment she was responsive to her son’s prompts, the next she was flat on her back, her eyelids fluttering. That night she leapt from fever to chill, from alertness to stupor. The boy, squatting beside their campfire, watched her face and hands run cadaver-blue to fish belly-pale and back again. While he was staring her eyes popped open and her hands came scrabbling. He sweated through the clawing embrace until he could bear it no longer. He oozed out and ran down to fetch his father.
When they got back Hero watched incuriously for a while. His mate’s face was scrunched up and her skin the color of sapphires. She wasn’t breathing.
His gaze became glassy, his eyes returned to the night. As he rose the boy immediately grabbed an arm. Neither moved for minutes. When the boy at last relinquished, his father casually stumbled off.
Strange things were going on in Hero’s world. Some days he would notice how animals regarded him oddly, in a manner that seemed almost personal. He found, for instance, that particular creatures were recognizable even over great distances. A number of times he would sit with one in a stare-down, waiting patiently, until the animal’s natural disposition caused it to bolt. Though the meaning of these encounters was way over his head, he would watch, and he would listen.
In time he noticed an increasing skittishness in some of these familiar creatures. Something had them spooked. He then observed a number of lean gray wolves moving in and out of the picture with an air of complete indifference:  these wolves weren’t hunting; they were loitering—lounging in the grass, lackadaisically padding to the rear, filing by slowly in the distance. Once in a while a lounger would raise its head, yawn cavernously, and drop back out of sight. So unobtrusive was their behavior that even Hero’s ever-vigilant son began to take them for granted. They paused where the family paused, and halted whenever the woman broke down. Perfectly camouflaged by the gray boulders and dire sky, they were completely forgotten in the drama of her passing.
There were other, far subtler events existing for Hero’s senses alone. He could perceive patterns in everything around him; in the manner vegetation gave way wherever his heart was leading, in the way so many animals appeared to be not merely mirroring, but making his course. And wind, rain, running water:  these phenomena had voices. Yet not for everybody. No one—not his mate, not his son, not another soul on the planet could hear this call, for they were all of a sort. They were static, they were temporal. Hero couldn’t have cared less about the lives of his family, or about the mundane goings-on in the encampments and small tribes they skirted. Such beings lived in a world that was defined by the moment. They shouted, they banged, they clamored.
But west—west was music.
For his boy, once again watching Hero shamble off, the moment of truth had arrived. He looked back down, at his mother’s death mask being remade by the dying light of their campfire. As the flames dwindled he could have sworn he saw shadows creep into the wells of her eyes, while others, crawling up around her jawline, drew her bluing lips like purse strings. He hopped to his feet and ran for another handful of tinder. When their little fire provided enough light he dropped to his knees and looked again.
She was sinking right before his eyes, every aspect of her expression in collapse. The boy watched clinically, fascinated. As the flames began to sputter he thought he could see large purple bruises spreading across her cheeks like the seeping limbs of overflowing pools. He bent closer.
From deep in the night came the longest, the leanest, the saddest wail he’d ever heard. He turned to see the starlit ghost of his father, facing away, staring at a low barren hill. Uncountable stars embroidered the spot. The boy made out a low shape moving along the hilltop, cutting off patches of stars as it passed.
The wolf howled again; a mournful, spiraling cry to nowhere and nothing. Hero’s head notched upward. He began to hike.
Halfway to his feet the boy stopped dead.
It took a minute to sense why he’d frozen in place, and a good while longer for his heart to quit pounding. He was aware of a nervous padding, and, once his vision had adjusted, of a lazy stream of eyes gleaming in the dying campfire’s light. The eyes bobbed around him, glared momentarily, returned to the ground.
A massive gasp, and his mother was tearing at his wrist. He watched her hyperventilating, saw her bulbous yellow eyes sinking in a wide violet pool. With a sizzle and pop the last tongue of flame was taken by the night.
Then her clammy hands were all over him, pulling and demanding, caressing and beseeching. He had to pry them off like leeches, had to place them clasped on her shuddering arched belly.
A silky snarl rose almost in his ear.
With a little squeal he sprang to his feet, even as something nearby jumped back in response.
The boy stood absolutely still while the panting thing padded nearer. They stood very close, smelling each other. He instinctively extended a hand, palm forward. But it was no good; his arm was shaking out of control. The snarl rose again, not so tentatively this time. His mother’s nails tore at his ankle.
The boy gently stepped away, only to find himself surrounded by the shifting silhouettes of half a dozen gray wolves. They approached in a calculated manner:  two from the left, one from the right, another from behind. He was being goaded away from his mother; he could hear her fists beating the ground, and a few seconds later the sounds of a nauseating assault and ravaging.
He shakily raised his other hand. Now both arms were extended, and their message was clearly one of defense rather than control. Two snapping wolves stepped aside, leaving him a gateway into the night. A cold wet nose bumped his wrist.
Screaming like a woman, he took off after his father just as fast as his feet would carry him.

                                                  BOY

Alon­g the great Kazakh Steppe a man could wander a lifetime and never meet another of his kind—especially if his kind happened to be Alaskan Inuk, and if he happened to be the teenaged patriarch of a two-man family going nowhere.
Here history is mostly mute.
Upon this continent-spanning steppe, unnamed communities were scattered and rebuilt, lives blown about by the wind. The only centers of humanity a traveler might encounter, far removed from the Silk Road at the very crack of the new millennium, were temporary encampments of civilization at its rudest—shifting holes of cutthroat commerce existing solely for the barter of silk and spices and hapless souls. Life here was revered far less than merchandise, and the longest-lived men were those who kept their distance.
Hero and his boy hiked over permafrost and tundra for years; their meandering course a drunken mapmaker’s scrawl. Chronological entries along this imaginary line would reveal that they’d stopped, sometimes for months at a time, when the father had grown too weak and disoriented to continue. Hero’s internal compass was long-sprung, and his weight had fallen considerably. He’d sit on his lonesome, scarecrow-scrawny, wistfully scrolling a 360-horizon while his boy scouted and scavenged. Then, for no apparent reason, he’d just up-and hike—sometimes northwest, sometimes along a tangential plane that always threatened to spiral. It was brutal:  winters were frigid, summers, by odd contrast, running steamy to baking. Season by season these marches lost their tenaciousness, and eventually their heart. Hero’s obsession was becoming his demise.
Now, to a hypothetical observer, the ratty pair of woolly camels materializing out of the rising August heat might have been mirages.
These beasts were novelties here, and pioneers, for they were way beyond their normal stomping grounds. They’d tramped for months with a mind-numbing monotonousness, a thousand miles and more; round the Urals to the south, and through the hard territory braced by the Volga and Voronezh, avoiding anything that even smelled of men. They’d been wild camels; ugly, ill-tempered, and unpredictable, until the boy tamed them by touch…but this new pattern was a literal change of pace…for weeks the frail little man and his dark teenaged son rose and fell with the animals’ rhythm, lulled by it, sick of it, dreaming of lands far removed from hoarfrost and peat moss. In this manner they were borne clear to present-day Belarus, whereupon the camels’ stupefying march began to quicken. Mile by mile they put on steam, until one day they reached a broad area distinguishable from its bracing terrain only by its many deep surface cracks. Here the camels’ behavior became erratic; they crouched at an angle while tramping, their long necks oscillating, their noses bobbing along the ground. Eventually they came upon a dingy pool nestled in a pebbly depression. The local brush surrounding this pool was situated like iron filings about a lodestone. The boy hauled back his camel’s neck and laid a hand on its brow. The brute slowed to a halt. The other camel imitated its partner, move for move. Simultaneously the animals dropped to their knees.
The boy jumped off, catching Hero as he fell. The camels stood watching stupidly as son maneuvered father, but after a while grew nervous and began tramping their hooves in time. They slowly stepped to the pool’s rim and knelt woozily, their noses poised just above the surface. Their whiskers danced on the pool’s face, their lids became heavy, their hindquarters quivered as they drank. Their nostrils, having fluttered in unison, remained agape. They appeared to be asleep.
The boy began filling skins.
The water was quite warm; he slurped a palmful and almost immediately felt intoxicated.
He flicked it off his fingers; the water was bad.
Three heads were now mirrored in the pool; the camels’ at ten o’clock and two o’clock, the boy’s at six. He watched their reflections continue to ripple, long after the pool had become still. His face, melting and firming, rapidly fluctuated between extremes of age, and between his own recognizable features and those of some…monstrosity. The effect was hypnotic. He felt his joints stiffen; his eyes became weak, his thoughts muddled…his face was irresistibly drawn to the pool’s surface, and for a moment he was in real peril of drowning. He ****** his head aside and creaked to his feet.
Where the camels had knelt were only the prints of their bellies and knees. In the distance they could be seen galloping all-out for the horizon, right back the way they’d come. The boy watched until they were swallowed by their dust, and when he turned around his father was long gone.
Now he knew it was all just a matter of time.
And sure enough, after eleven more days of feebly staggering along, Hero completely ran out of gas. The boy bundled him up in a shawl, like an old woman.
Sitting there, cradling an unresponsive man weighing less than eighty pounds, he couldn’t help but let his morbid fantasies run wild. He was now old enough to realize his father had at some time suffered severe head trauma, and honest enough to accept that the man was rapidly approaching a vegetative state. This understanding accompanied him like a shadow, and that night he questioned, for the very first time, his own convoluted rationale.
He was just beginning to sense that his will was not his own.
He built a semi-permanent camp west of the Desna and foraged in a tight spiral, always returning in a straight line. Some days he came back feeling uneasy, sensing another presence. Then it was every other day. It bugged him to no end. At last, when it became every day, he hauled his father to his feet and began a resolute march to the west.
Again he became anxious, and after only a dozen yards.
He turned slowly while hunching, certain something bulky had just dropped out of sight. Nothing looked suspicious, everything looked suspicious. He walked Hero some more, occasionally peering back over his shoulder. There was…something.
He whirled:  only masses of rock and high brush. Yet, when he really strained his eyes, he was sure, pretty sure, that he could make out a large crouching body continuous with the rocks. Heart in his throat, he began a slow steady creep, only to pause, positive the bulge, whatever it was, had shifted in response. The boy very gradually raised his arm until it was level with his eyes, faced the palm outward, and extended the arm parallel with the ground. He could almost feel some kind of current passing between his itching palm and…nothing. He walked over to Hero, stopped again. There’d been the subtlest sense of traction. The boy propped up his father in a cloud of flies and waited.
In a minute the bulge drew *****.
Out of the brush strolled a furry gray wild ***, her back inclined from countless weary miles; stretching her neck, pausing to nibble, taking her sweet time. Grungy as she was, she fit right in.
At the boy’s first casual step she immediately hit the dirt and remained flat on her belly, one big dark eye staring between her hooves. Another step, and her **** bunched up. The closer he got, the higher her rear end rose. When he was almost at arm’s length she sprang back and danced away, seeming to bound with delight. But not to the east, as she’d come.
To the northwest.
She backpedaled while the boy came on whistling and cooing, matching him step for step. But the moment he threw up his arms in resignation she spun round as though cued, dropped on her belly, and peered over her shoulder.
The boy was first to blink. This time he approached fractionally, keeping movements to a minimum. She rose just as carefully, sauntering northwest in reverse, and at the first sign of hesitation turned, dropped, and cautiously gazed back. The boy glared at that huge mocking **** and broke into a sprint. She easily danced out of reach, plopped down, and continued to stare.
He began hurling stones, with venom and with accuracy, until she’d scurried into the brush.
But on the way back to his father he could feel her tagging along.
Twenty feet behind she halted, looking bemused.
The boy nodded ironically. He walked Hero over, murmuring baby talk all the way, and firmly placed a palm on the animal’s muzzle once her breath grazed his fingers. She stroked his hand up and down with her whiskers, gave a kind of curtsy, and waited on her knees while he helped his father mount.
At Hero’s touch a shudder ran down her body. She stood up straight. Her eyes became set, her back absolutely stiff. She put down her head and began the long trek northwest, never once breaking stride.
It was an amazing march, an impossible feat. For a little over three days and almost four hundred miles she progressed like an automaton, driving herself without rest, without food or water.
After trotting alongside for an hour the boy climbed on and force-fed his father berries and smoked meat, his dark eyes constantly searching the countryside. Occasionally he’d see a run of red foxes to their left, watching intently, padding cautiously. Sooner or later they’d vanish, only to be replaced by a train of feline or equine pursuers. Packs approached and receded while, high overhead, flocks formed triangular patterns that continually broke up and reformed. There was a peculiar rhythmic quality to this ebb and flow that lulled his senses further. The boy shook his head to clear it, but his exhaustion was deeper than he’d supposed—even the brush appeared to be leaning northwest.
That first day he grew numb with the pace, and that night the relentless pounding of her hooves drew him into a miserable slumber. He wrapped his arms around his sleeping father and lay half atop. When he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer he tore strips from his skins, then looped his tied wrists round her neck, his ankles round her belly.
On the second day she was breathing hard, but her back was still high and she showed no signs of faltering. Her eyes remained focused on the ground dead ahead. She always sensed the best routes; finding mountain passes, fording wetlands.
But by the third day they could feel her ribs quaking against their legs. Her breath exploded as she marched, blood frothed and caked about her nostrils. Still she pushed herself on, her pace so steady it was almost metronomic.
On the fourth day her legs were gone. She veered and stumbled, shuddering every few paces. The boy hopped off for the umpteenth time and tried to bring her to graze, but she wouldn’t be turned. He ran behind her as she staggered along, unwilling, or unable, to rest.
At last a foreleg gave and she went down hard. Sobbing and snorting, she plowed her muzzle back and forth in the soil, the useless leg repeatedly pounding the ground. After a minute she raised her head and brayed at the sky, her neck muscles taut, her head slowly swinging side to side. Her cry went on and on.
With a tremendous effort she pushed herself upright and butted the boy aside. Every part of her body was shaking. From her depths a low moan grew to a steady bray, and finally to a wild, pulsing howl. She came to a rise, but was too weak to climb without sliding. Stamping in frustration, she managed a few feet, reared feebly, slid some more. The boy got behind her and applied his back; it took all he had to assist her almost to the top. With a desperate lunge she crashed on her belly.
Amazingly, she dragged herself on, her howl now a scream, her head whipping left and right. When she could pull herself no farther she ****** forth her neck to its very limit and, with a shudder that ran from the tip of her nose to the tuft on her tail, shoved her muzzle straight into the dirt and died.
The boy hauled off his father and fell back. The animal’s eyes were fixed upwards, seeming, even in death, to be straining for a glimpse of what lay just beyond the rise. The boy half-dragged Hero the last few yards. They collapsed at the top, and together looked over the cold Baltic Sea.

At water’s edge a haggard fisherman sat on his boat’s ravaged deck, blindly staring out to sea. His was a queer vessel; a family structure built more like an aft-cabined barge than like seacraft typical of that period. The fisherman’s boat, like his mind, had been abused beyond repair.
He’d lost much in his life. Time had taken his dreams, pox his face, hardship his back and shoulders. And, more recently, a brawling band of drunken Baltic pirates had ***** his wife and daughter before butchering them along with his two fine sons, while he sat helplessly bound to the mast. Finally, to further their delight, they’d set the boat aflame and sent it crackling against the sun; knowing he could hear their hoots and howls, knowing he would drift undead, accompanied only by this last unspeakable memory.
But a squall, without prelude, had doused the flames and blown his home ashore.
There he’d remained for a full long day, staring at nothing, his shattered life caught on the rocks. On the second day he’d worked himself free and commenced staggering about in his memories, gathering shards. It was a pathetic claim. He made a pile of all the old bedding and linen and usable cords, and set about sewing a sort of mementos sail. All that third day he had sewn, and on the fourth he had hoisted this sail and been moved to see it billowing in a northwest-blowing breeze. Again he just sat and gaped. And later that day he’d become aware of a commotion taking place on the long grade leading down to the water, where a writhing mass of seagulls was proceeding like a tremendous slow-motion snowball. He’d never seen anything like it. It wasn’t uncommon to find gulls in a group of many dozens or more, but there must have been two, maybe three thousand of the birds now swarming toward his boat. They were making an incredible racket. In the midst of this cloud could be seen a couple of slowly walking figures; as they neared he made out a small man accompanying a boy in his late teens, both dressed in odd skins. When they reached the rocks his eyes were drawn to the small man’s face. It was a foreign face, brutish and dark, with a deep cleft running from above the right temple to the jaw’s left side. Whatever instrument had felled this man had been devastating—everything in its path was smashed, and with permanence. The forehead was caved in. There was no bridge to the nose, the left cheek was completely collapsed, one side of the mouth was a mangled mess. The jaw itself had set improperly, so that it jutted to the side. The general impression, especially from a distance, was of some unforgettable circus freak’s countenance puckering at an angle. It was a face right out of a nightmare. But there was nothing frightening about the eyes. They were the eyes of a child.
Maybe half the gulls hopped screaming on the rocks. The rest circled overhead.
The boy considered the fisherman curiously before placing a foot on the charred deck. His gaze went around the boat, lingered on the makeshift sail, returned to the slumped figure. He passed a hand before the eyes. No response. He then leaned in close and placed his fingers on the man’s forehead. Immediately that bleak expression became fluid, brimming over with horror and heartbreak. Tears rolled down the fisherman’s cheeks as he gasped, shuddered, and backed up the scorched mast to his feet. Thus propped, he squinted at his visitors and was overcome by a wave of homesickness so strong he had to turn away. The feeling bewildered him, for this vessel, and this sea, were all the home he’d ever known. He clung to the mast while the boy helped his father board. Once he’d collected himself, the fisherman tore a heavy crossbeam from the toasted cabin. He and the boy used this as a lever, and together they shoved the boat off the rocks. The wind picked up nicely, and the little craft was swept across the water.
Exploding off the rocks, the gulls shot after the boat as if it were brimming with fish, the loudest and orneriest vying for favored positions directly overhead. The melee attracted additional gulls—they came shrieking in their hundreds from all sides, banking and calling in the oddest manner, until the mass grew so thick as to cast a permanent shadow on the boat. All day long the clamor continued, and all that night. The fisherman rolled with the rudder, listlessly, allowing the sea to control him. Eventually he let go, that the wind might bear them where it would. His sail ballooned but held firm, and the boat fairly zipped across a sea somehow smooth as glass, broken only by the vacillating ripples of bottleneck dolphins and migrating humpback whales. The three tiny sailors sat hunched together, motionless, all throughout the next day, until the black coast of Sweden loomed in the twilight.
As the boat neared land the cloud of gulls broke up, shot to shore, and landed in groups of a thousand and more; a dizzying, wildly uproarious reception committee.
The dung-covered boat slammed into the rocks, shattering the fisherman’s trance. He intuitively walked his **** up the mast and, swaying there, watched the boy draw his father over the side and lead him to a clearing at wood’s edge. There in the dusk he made out what appeared to be a hefty spotted runaway heifer hitched to a rickety wood wagon. He saw the cow gallop up to meet them, saw the boy look around warily, saw him help the little man into the wagon and climb in beside him. The animal immediately began picking through the woods, the large brass bell round her neck clanging forlornly.
The clarity of that bell made him realize just how quiet it had become. He craned his neck:  there wasn’t a gull in sight. He fell back against the shot mast and slid onto his tailbone with a clacking of teeth. His eyes were misting up. In the gathering dark a few sail fragments flew past and were ****** into the woods. The boat rocked and relaxed. After that there was only the sound of the receding bell’s sad, monotonous song being batted about by the wind.

The little cow strode through moonlit woods until she came to a path formed by the rutting of wheels over many years. She followed this broken, serpentine track throughout the night, and by morning was passing farms and, occasionally, crossing broader paths that might realistically be defined as roads. All day long she bore down that ragged track, until she came in late afternoon to a clearing near a village. Here many such tracks converged. And here the boy slipped away while she grazed.
Sometime after dark he returned with a load of straw, a couple of pilfered blankets, and a fat iron kettle. Crammed in this kettle were salt, tubers, cheese, a few loaves of rye, legumes, and a plump foot of lamb sausage. Most of this ***** he’d brought in tied to the bowed back of a huge, puffing, highly amenable black pig which, thus laden, now followed the boy’s every step like a fresh convert tracing the heels of the messiah. The boy built a fire under the stars, filled the kettle with creek water, and commenced simmering their dinner. While waiting, he couldn’t help but note an odd feature of the local flora:  plants, especially trees, all seemed inclined to a northwesterly disposition, though no amount of wind could account for it. He shooed the pig. But rather than run along, it backpedaled in a nervous circle, round and round in reverse, until it lost its balance and fell on its ****. There it remained, a yard behind the wagon. The boy fed his father and lined the wagon with straw. They settled in for the night. The boy must have nodded, might have dreamt, but while he was drifting he became aware of a stirring in the woods. He sat up, saw the pig’s eyes gleaming inches from his nose. And there were a number of animals, some wild, some strayed from farmsteads, arranged in a broad circle around the wagon, their eyes glinting with moonlight. Not a rustle, not a peep, was lifted from the woods.
In the morning he woke to find the pig still staring. The fidgeting heifer, impatient to roll, began her long day’s march while Hero and his boy were yet stretching and scratching, and the ******* pig, galloping heavily, fell in close behind. Each new day this routine was repeated. They banged past farms and small communities until the ruts intersected a broad rocky road wending halfway across the kingdom. The cow addressed this road with vigor. They picked up followers—a goat here, a couple of sheep there—which hurried after the wagon as best they could. The cow stomped on with resolve, mile after mile, day after day, her bell keeping steady time. That bell’s peal attracted foals, lambs, and kids into the wagon’s narrowing wake. Hares hopped between hooves and wheels, boars and blue foxes fell in and withdrew. White falcons, normally solo fliers, whirled into wedge shapes high overhead.
At night the entire train would camp on the road while the boy raided proximate farmsteads, always returning fully laden. And as soon as the fire died the colony grew, creature by creature, and the moment the sun broke the horizon the heifer came to life and moved on, but each day a bit more resolutely, as though straining to meet a deadline. The march took on a sense of real urgency. The cow pressed on with attitude, the clang of her bell more strident with each passing mile. Soon her followers numbered in the hundreds, as animals deserted their farms or crept out of the woods to tag along. Tillers and traders stood dumbfounded, amazed by the bizarre flow.
Once they’d crossed into Norway the frothing cow veered hard to the west. The pace really picked up; no longer were Hero and his boy afforded the luxury of a night’s sleep in one spot. Days blurred into a single variegated flow as the bashed and lopsided wagon continued building its entourage; the riders were surrounded dawn to dusk by a confused and confusing scurry. Word of the flow’s weirdness preceded it clear to the Norwegian coast, so that now plowmen and merchants, wearily gathering their goggling families, found themselves lined in anticipation along the king’s highway. Horsemen went pounding to and fro with news of the procession’s progress and particulars, children ran through the streets banging pots in imitation of the cow’s approaching bell. Livestock wheeled and stamped, fowl leaped and crashed.
The slobbering cow broke into a run.
Bystanders trotted behind, calling back and forth excitedly, while the wagon’s permanent following squealed and squawked between their heels. The cow made a hard turn onto a widening swath in the brush. This swath, seeming to strain against the soil, ran straight down to the crest of a low hill overlooking the Atlantic. On either side a crowd had been studying the phenomenon for some time, but now all eyes swung to the dark and disfigured man and his son, clinging to the disintegrating wagon behind the careening spotted cow.
The trailing people traded views as they ran. Most—at the very outset of the new millennium, with Christianity burgeoning throughout Europe—leaned to the miraculous. Others, just as superstitious but prone to a darker point of view, threw looks of horror at the deformed little man. Yet they ran no less eagerly.
The galloping crowd made for the seaside, where only one local event of any moment was brewing:  on the coast a Greenlander Viking was preparing his longship for the rough voyage home. Impetuous son of the great island’s first permanent European settler, he’d just been baptized in Olaf’s court, and was now eager to sail—but not as a warrior—as a missionary. While his spirit remained in a tug-o’-war between his father Erik’s will and that of gods old and new, his duty was clearly to his king. And Olaf had charged him with the Christianization of pagan Greenland.
Something on the wind now made this destined man turn his head. From behind the gentle hill to his rear came a kind of thunder. Heads popped up, followed by a confused explosion of voices, and seconds later a frantic bug-eyed heifer burst into view, dragging the wheel-less skeleton of a shattered wooden wagon. On the wagon’s splayed frame a man and teenaged boy clung for their lives as the spewing animal made a beeline for his ship.
The new missionary, still egocentric enough to assume his Maker might actually toss him a personal, surreptitiously rolled up his eyes. The sky yawned at his arrogance. At his side a smallish cowled man rose irritably, but the missionary sat him right back down. He then snorted, squared his shoulders, and signaled his men to halt their preparations.
Knowing it was expected, he gathered his hard Nordic pride and coolly made his way into the crowd.

The priest clung to port, gagging above the waves.
After a completely uneventful minute he leaned back and stared through tearing eyes at the distant backdrop of gathering mists. Weeks now…a man of his constitution had no business at sea.
Along, too, were a quirky little man and his fiercely devoted son.
Through his pantomime, the boy had been so persistent in begging their passage that refusal, under the circumstances, would have been unbecoming not only a man of God but a man of the world.
So there it was:  a priest who couldn’t hold his lunch, a witless eyesore who couldn’t sit still, and a surly teenaged protector who snarled at the first hard look. This crossing just had to be some kind of divine test—of mortal patience as well as moral values. Norsemen weren’t made for babysitting.
The mists condensed.
And the shifting shape became a hard familiar coast.
And the longship was mooring, and the crew were jostling and clambering, and the big missionary had booted off the haunted little freak and his hypersensitive son, and was condescendingly half-escorting, half-carrying, the green priest ashore.
And they were home.

Priest in tow, Leif quickly took up the Christianization of Greenland’s Western Settlement, as per Olaf’s command. The mangled little man and his son followed him around like dogs, slept outside his door and annoyed his visitors, ultimately proving far easier to adopt than to shake. Barely tolerable shadows…still, the lad was simply amazing with livestock…and though the youth’s useless father seemed time and again to be just begging for a whooping, his son’s presence bore some ineffable quality that always curbed the missionary’s hand. Several times he’d witnessed the father approached by settlers bent on abuse. Each time the boy had stepped in, and each time the troublemakers were mysteriously repelled. The missionary of course didn’t attribute any kind of celestial intervention to these episodes, and certainly the popular notion of devilry was a natural reaction to the pair’s outrageous exoticness, but…in the son’s company, and even under the sharp eyes of his fellow Norsemen, Leif more than once found himself oddly moved to protect the father. And so the deformed man and his boy day by day blent in—as village idiot and mystic guide. And when in time a ****** brought tales of an unvisited land to the west, it was only natural for the restless Greenlander to buy that ******’s boat and, before stalwart comrades, weary family, and whimsical God Almighty, reluctantly accept the eccentric father and son as sort of seagoing mascots.
Hero was from then on irrepressible. During preparations he would pipe and stammer in his half-mute way, brimming with a confounding anxiety that kept him underfoot and at odds with all. On frigid nights he perched on the westernmost rocks, moaning to the horizon in the strangest fashion while his son stood guard. He positively spooked the locals; they’d gossip, nervously and with bile, of an answering wind that came wailing off the sea like a banshee in labor. The whole island wanted rid of him. And when his champing beneficiary, still clinging to the notion of Christian charity, bundled him aboard with his son and a crew of thirty-five, not a single settler was sorry to see him go.
Almost from the moment they cast off everything went wrong, as all attempts to control the longship were met with some kind of unknowable countermanding force. Vikings were not renowned for passive resistance—they fought, squaresail and steering oar, leaning oarsman to oarsman, until the ship rocked on the waves like a bucking bronco. An erratic weather system pursued them, worsening dramatically at each minute variation in heading. The Norsemen doubled down, and when the clouds finally burst wide, the cowling sea went mad. Dervishes whirled about the hull, crisscrossing winds bedeviled the sail. Patches of kelp belonging to much warmer waters came heaving alongside, fouling the work of the oars, while far to the west a humongous fog bank formed, eradicating the navigable field. The lightning-streaked horizon was a throbbing gray slit.
The longship became locked in a slow westerly current.
Fatigued crewmen complained of headaches and hallucinations, and of a nasty, slightly metallic tang to the air. There were numerous walrus sightings; bobbing flippers and snouts amid drifting ice chunks that came prowling the North Sea like a circling pack of famished white wolves.
Worst of all was the boy’s father—instantly agitated by everything and nothing, prey to some primitive impulse that caused him to periodically incline his head, shudder to his feet, and loop his arms as though embracing the sky. Leif would watch him scrabbling at the prow like a cat at a tree, furs snapping in the wind. He’d watch the boy re-seat him for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time be filled with an immense contempt. By now he’d acknowledged that it takes a special kind of strength to shoulder charity and tolerance. That brown little freak struck him as an enormous malformed barnacle, slowly working its way back up the prow. Trying so hard to go unnoticed, looking and listening so intently, though there was nothing to see other than the growing shelves of fog, and nothing to hear save the rising, almost hysterical voice of the wind.
Leif sniffed the air, his ******’s instincts nagging him. This was a foul current, and a fool's errand; he took a deep breath and tentatively ordered the longship brought about.
The ship kicked twice, as though an enormous submarine hand had seized and released the hull.
A whirl formed in the water, causing the keeling ship to sweep around like a clock’s second hand. All about them, those drift-ice ghosts cruised dangerously near.
But they’d been liberated from that accursed current. Leif fiercely urged on his rowers, and at last the ship broke free. They made a bead due north.
Night came and the temperature plummeted.
Small sheets of ice converged, drifting between the hunks. The Norsemen, instinctively huddling amidships, passed out one by one in a massive pile of fur and flesh. In the freezing silence the floes bumped and recoiled, bumped and gathered, bumped and bonded. The tiny ship, swallowed whole, was dragged along in a labyrinth of black sea and interlocking slabs of ice.

The Norsemen came to in a surly, foul-smelling heap, lost at sea. While they were still groggy a voice cried out that a darker patch was developing in the fog. The men all fell to port. Under the confusion of their voices could be heard a distant rumble.
At this Hero hauled himself up the high curved prow. A half-light began to penetrate the fog, barely illuminating the irregular faces of drifting ice. The missionary stormed forward and indicated by gestures that if the boy didn’t restrain his father he would have the man tied down.
The longship stopped dead in the water.
The men found themselves regarding a perpetually frozen coastline swathed in bluish veils of mist. Directly before them loomed an immense ice cliff hundreds of feet high. Rising beyond this cliff were endless snow fields, where lean violet shadows seemed to drag about of their own volition. And upon those bleak fields a thin howling wind prowled, kicking up brief white dervishes, leaving a strange zigzagging signature.
Even as they stared, a darker shadow high on the ice cliff’s glistening face began to widen, accompanied by a cracking sound that could be felt before it was heard. With the illusion of slow-motion, a stupendous chunk broke out of the cliff and came screaming toward the sea. It hit the water like a bomb. The thunder of its separation and the explosion of its impact took a moment to reach them. Then, out of a spewing crater of crests and spume, the new calf came lunging, tromping the sea so hard the longship, fully a mile to sea, was swept out and ****** back in like a cork. The floundering mountain of ice bobbed and lilted, generating huge waves which continued to rock the ship long after the monster had settled. In a while the roaring in their ears subsided and there remained only the swirling, nerve-wracking howl of the wind.
The missionary’s eyes swept left and right. Whatever this place was, it sure wasn’t the fair shoreline he’d been promised. Hero again scrambled up the prow, and Leif again yanked him down. This time he made good his threat; he had the little nuisance bound, though he was half-tempted to let him take his chances overboard.
From somewhere deep in the haze grew a soulful, otherworldly call. It went on and on, electrifying the air, bottoming out once the ship had merged with that previously fought westerly flow.
By now Leif’s nerves were shot. He ordered the oars raised.
The longship began to drift. Ship and ice were pulled due west.
The clouds fell far behind as the ship embarked upon an amazingly calm sea—so calm its entire visible surface was featureless except for the faint wakes provided by the ship and its hulking ice companions. To the east a huge fog bank appeared on the horizon, and a while later a smaller bank to the north. Then a very dense one to the south. In time these banks converged, imperceptibly becoming a single mass that closed about the ship, bit by bit creating a slowly heaving dome. Tiny beads of water appeared on beards and eyebrows; in a minute everything was soaked. The only sound was that of the dragging steering oar. The men were now sopping ghosts, speaking only with their eyes.
Directly ahead the fog began to dimple. The dimple became a hollow, the hollow a cave, and then ship and ice were being towed through a low, ever-extending tunnel in fog. The current increased its pull. Ship and drifting ice accelerated through the tunnel.
After a while the missionary quietly stepped forward. He stood with one hand on the prow’s neck, listening to the mist, so motionless he might have been a carved extension of the longship’s aggressive design. Not a man breathed. The tunnel’s dilating and contracting bore was producing an all but seamless series of oscillating, near-phonetic sounds. Leif almost tiptoed back. No god, pagan or Christian, could account for the strangeness of this situation.
They were borne on a course that grew more southerly, and the following day beheld an inhospitable shoreline glazed by dazzling white beaches. Their course held. Two days later they came upon a far pleasanter, thickly wooded coast. Here the current released its hold, and here the missionary untied Hero and personally placed him and his son in a tiny oak faering. He was just as sick of them as he was excited by this promising new land. Once the rowboat had been heaved over the side, he and another man stepped aboard and took up the oars. They began rowing with easy, powerful strokes.
When the boat kissed sand the missionary stood unsteadily.
The first European to set foot on North American soil now placed one hand on his crucifix, the other on his sword’s hilt, and awkwardly plunged his leg into the thigh-deep, ice-cold surf. Before he could take another step the boat lurched as Hero leapt headfirst into the water, followed an instant later by his son. The Greenlanders watched sourly as the two splashed their way into a mad dash for the waiting pines. Leif wished them both good riddance and turned to grin wryly at his fellow Norseman. He must have blacked out for a second, must have been blinded by a shaft of sun, for he found he was staring stupidly at a point midway between his companion and the longship. It felt like he’d been kicked between the eyes.
Everything was dissolving.
He studied the beach and pines closely, but saw nothing of the man or his boy. He turned back, disoriented. With what seemed a superhuman effort he took up his oars. He rowed out sluggishly, in a dream, and the fog rolled in to meet him.

The boy broke into the trees and embraced a trunk, fighting for breath. What happened next happened so fast and so unexpectedly he didn’t have a chance to react.
Three savages stepped from behind the pines and beat him to his knees. They twisted his arms behind his back and hauled him to his feet. He’d barely processed the impression of a wild painted face when something sharp struck him ******* the temple and tore down his cheek to the jaw. Two of the assailants manhandled him into an upright position and held him in place while the third brought his weapon down again and again and again.
All but dead, he watched a nightmare countenance shouting through a shot veil of blood, and behind that image a reeling crimson sun. He lay there gushing while the savages went through his rags. They propped him against a pine and shrieked with triumph, tore the hair and gory scalp from his skull, threw back their heads and screamed at the screaming sky. Tooth and nail, they ripped apart his face and throat and, certain he would die, split what bits of fur were left and let his carcass lie.

                                                HERO

The weeks stretched into months while he fought his way back into the light.
He progressed in stages; only half-conscious, stumbling along in a blood-red stupor punctuated by a slow strobe of frequent blackouts. Days loomed and decayed, nights pounced and were gone; the backlit, swirling gray cosmos collapsed and expanded on every missed beat of his pulse. A thousand times he broke down to die, and a thousand times he clawed to his feet, driven to pursue a tiny, ghost-like figure fluttering in his memory.
Everything conspired to check him.
A bay like an immense landlocked sea was skirted over months or years—it was all the same. Cold locked him in, Hunger drove him afield, that rude ***** Wind lashed him blind, wore him like a shoe, screamed for his skin while he worked his way west.
Somehow he ate, somehow he avoided being eaten; the instincts that had served him halfway around the planet were still vital beneath the abused exterior. His simple burrows became sturdy temporary shelters. He relearned the art of fire, and began to cook what he killed. He manufactured crude snares and weapons and, when his recuperation was complete, paid closer attention to the on-again, off-again trail he’d been following…forever.
Sometimes this trail would call to him like a lover. Other times he stood peering uncertainly, trying to recapture meanings and aims. Then the ground would turn spongy and the sky revolve, and once again he’d be lying all but dead in the woods, while from the face of the sun emerged a vile winged horror, its ugly pale head lashing side to side, its cruelly hooked beak dangling something that glistened in the wild pulsing light…then the fat moon, rising like gas against the icy black night…the feel of the wind:  the slashing of her nails, the chafing of her hem…the sound of things crunching and pausing and sniffing…then the sun, blazing anew. And again that thing, descending, its wide black wings beating slowly, metronomically—but none of that mattered any more. For his mind had quit him, had flown howling into ice and pine to roost with things surreal. In the day his madness might muddle and run, or spend the light stalking, cat-like, watching and waiting. But at night it came creeping from all sides. Sometimes it came in waves. It could gnaw like the devil, or wrap around him like a warm second skin. But none of that mattered either.
The only thing that mattered was the trail—whether it was lost for good, or for only a while. He’d been following it through his episodes, always north, wondering just who and where in the world he was, and trying to shake a ridiculous notion of being led on a wild goose chase.
The cold was unbelievable.
The deeper north he delved, the more confused he became. He grew starved for colors and scents, finding nonexistent patterns in the stark contrast of shadow and snow. He thought he could detect a kind of otherworldly design in the overwhelming number of dead ends he encountered, and, too, in the diabolically frustrating locations of natural obstacles. He seemed to be forever fighting the wind—a hulking, despondent snowman, he hiked face down and focused, while another aspect of his attention floated just behind, disembodied, watching his silent pursuers…leaving no tracks, blending perfectly with the environment in their clever winter coats…not predators, but creatures that normally should have been hightailing it away from him. By the time he could turn, they’d become nothing more menacing than snowdrifts. But they pursued him nevertheless.
And so his paranoia increased…had there ever really been a trail…and when did this miserably cold, miserably anemic crusade begin…his long-term memory was falling apart a chunk at a time. It just got colder and colder and colder until at last, one snippet of a day during one blur of a year, he found himself utterly lost, and clueless as to his history or objective. His mind was a blank, as colorless and featureless as the endless world of ice around him. He’d come this far solely to learn that the only trail he’d been following was his own—and now even that trail was succumbing to ice. On all sides there was nothing to see but an infinite field of glaring whiteness, and nothing to hear but the ululating wail of the tubular polar wind. It was the loneliest, the unholiest, the creepiest sound imaginable. But it wasn’t insanity that made him wheel. It was his self-preservation instinct.
And then he was somehow on his knees in the woods, facing a furious setting sun.
Whole seasons had passed from his memory like chalk from a board. His only recollections were those of a broken, haunted animal:  of being perilously sick, of fearing the unseen, of blindly struggling across a solid-white wilderness. That he’d survived such an ordeal meant nothing to him. And that he had in some indecipherable manner stumbled across the cold-as-stone trail did not fill him with amazement or with thankfulness—there simply wasn’t anything visual or emotional left to draw on. A significant part of his life had been whited out.
But now he could focus entirely on the trail. And before he knew it, the fuzzy area between fantasy and reality found a seam. He began to analyze and plan. He paid attention to hygiene, and kept a kind of running mental journal. Things were sorting out. Yet there were nights when the old sickness would resurface, reestablish its hold, and leave him sweating and uncertain under the stars. Then, paradoxically, his perception would become razor-keen. And so he would see, on a distant hilltop, a pair of scrawny silhouettes, one on four legs and one on two, slowly crossing the faintly pocked face of the setting moon. He would become strangely excited, and thereafter retain crystal-clear images of himself, as if seen from above, hurrying with adroitness through the silent, graveyard-like setting of black and blue night and white-frosted trees. Then the fuzzy area would broaden, and it would be the next morning, and he would be staring at the prints of man and elk in snow. And he would see how the elk’s prints doubled back, and how the man’s prints terminated where he had obviously mounted his guide. An unfathomable glow would bring tears to his eyes. But, even as he gathered himself, a fresh snowfall would wipe out the prints. And once again the world would plummet into white. And the wind would howl as the snow hammered his eyes. And he would ***** on.

A haggard animal sat shivering in a small grove of frozen pines, watching his campfire die. His eyes were fixed. Like the fire, he was running out of warmth, running out of fuel. There wasn’t a whole lot of tinder round his bones, and not much feeling left in his limbs. The slowly heaping downfall was burying him alive, but he was too numb to care.
It had taken him six long years to cross an entire continent, and during that time he’d known only cold and excruciating pain. The pain was leaving him now. The cold was making it right. His eyes glazed over.
Along a narrow plain to the west a herd of caribou filed dreamily through the snow, cutting across a panoramic backdrop of dazzling white mountains. The slow-motion parade was hypnotic. After a while it occurred to the drifting man, in a roundabout way, that he was dying, that he was nonchalantly freezing to death. Concurrent with this notion there rose in his chest a wonderful liquid warmth. His eyes slowly closed and, once shut, began to set fast.
He was jolted from within. It was as if he’d been kicked in the heart.
He ****** to his feet, pounded his fists on his thighs, felt nothing. The breath spurted from his mouth in small white clouds as he stumbled downhill after the slow caribou train. He swam through the snow, hallucinating, imagining that certain individuals in the herd were mocking him by slowing and accelerating, while others glanced back with expressions of contempt.
As he burst into their midst the animals stepped aside indifferently. A few galloped ahead to keep up the herd, but most simply sidestepped while he danced there, stamping his feet and smacking his hands. The herd grew thinner, until only the old and infirm were filing by. The man desperately embraced a hobbling female for warmth, but she cried out and kicked, triggering a panic reaction in the herd. Clinging for his life, the man was dragged along beside her as the herd stormed into a maze of flying ice and snow. His weight caused her to stagger sideways until they slammed against the flank of a sick male. The man instinctively threw an arm over the male and, thus draped between them, was borne across the drifted plain for upwards of a mile, his freezing feet alternately dangling above and dragging through the snow. The herd broke into a hard run, forcing him to assume a broken trot. Soon his legs were stinging. Sensation rushed through his body.
Now the herd, still picking up speed, began to contract, jamming him between his bearers. There was a quick jolt to his right and he was lifted clean off his feet, nearly straddling the bucking female. It had become an all-out stampede. Through hard-flung snow he saw the cause:  just ahead, the caribou had run head-on into a solid wall of galloping wood bison, and both frantic herds had blindly veered to the east; were in fact running side by side down a deep, ragged canyon—were pouring over the canyon’s lip like a cataract. He was approaching, at breakneck pace, that very place where the converged herds so abruptly swerved. The hanging man snarled as he was borne inevitably to the point of deflection.
There came a concussion at his left shoulder, followed by a blast of snow. In an instant the ailing male was tumbling head over heels to the east, ****** into the stampede’s plummeting mass by the fury of its descent. The man and female, rebounding from this impact, were shot to the west in a crazy jumble of flailing legs. The caribou lost her footing, flew nose-first into a snowbank, and came up running. Kicking off, the man used the last of his strength to heave himself astride. At first she fought to shake him, but the spell of the run was too strong. She and half a dozen others went pounding in the opposite direction of the stampede, quickly joined by a number of bison that had likewise splintered from their herd. The riding man could make out their huge hulking shapes thundering by in a blizzard of flying ice, could hear their heavy gasps and explosive grunts. One passed so close he felt its massive flank brush his leg. He peered to his right and saw a black, pig-like eye regarding him excitedly, moving up and down like a piston as the beast ran alongside.
The eye shifted, focusing on the gasping, completely obsessed female. The bull dropped its head and slammed into the caribou’s side, sending her and the man careening down a ***** to the west. The caribou brayed hysterically and her backside went down, but she managed, despite the weight of her rider, to return to all fours and frantically continue along the *****. Again the bull charged, crashing into her shoulder. The man and caribou were launched sideways into the white searing air.
He sat up carefully. The huffing bison was straddling him like a bully laying down the ground rules. Its big wiry beard came right up to brush his chin. The stench of its breath was stupefying.
The bull stamped and snorted, thrusting its stubby horns left and right as the man used his elbows and heels to back away. The bull followed, move for move. When the man collapsed under his own impetus the bull shoved him along with its snout, bellowing furiously. Clear down the ***** they lunged, shoving and lurching, until the man lay sprawled on his back; up to his chin in snow, completely helpless. The ton of a bull butted and kicked, but only glancingly:  those hooves could **** with a blow. At last the man, in one clean sequence, spun on his rear, dropped to his side, and went rolling down the ***** using his elbows for ******.
At the bottom ran a narrow fence of frosted saplings marking an ice cliff’s precipice. He lay face down in the snow, too done in to do anything but **** at an air pocket.
And there came a high-pitched crackling, a sound like the protracted gasp of embers in a dead fire. He turned just as those saplings began leaning to the west, their frozen skins cracking with the strain.
The bison bellowed menacingly.
The sprawled man looked back and saw it still standing with legs spread wide, silhouetted against the sky. In a moment it began huffing downhill, lurching side to side, surfing the snow between lunges.
It chased him through the genuflecting saplings straight into a frozen gully where, protected by a few feet of insurmountable verticality, he was able to slide on the ice between its stomping hooves, downhill out of reach, then downhill out of control—spinning just in time to glimpse a breathtaking vista:
Partly framed by the gully-straddling saplings was a vast crescent of jagged white mountains seemingly huddled round a small stretch of snow-draped pines. The little wood these mountains surrounded was isolated in a broad lake of solid ice. Hundreds of fissures radiated crazily throughout this packed ice field, appearing to issue from somewhere near the frozen wood’s center, which was completely obscured by a ring of rising mist. Above this thumbnail panorama the sun showered gold.
Then the gully dipped radically, and he was skidding headfirst, slamming back and forth against its slick white walls. This uncontrollable plunge had the positive effect of getting his blood flowing. Yet it tore him up. Had the gully concluded in a cul-de-sac, or had further progress required a single calorie of uphill effort, his struggle would certainly have ended here. He would have been too weak to move, and death would have been swift.
But there was a glacier—a great river of ice pouring slowly out of the clouds. The gully, terminating in a little scoop formation near the glacier’s base, spat him flailing onto its gnarly glass hide. He went head over heels, bits of skin and fur flying like chips from a band saw. Somehow he gained his footing, and then he was running against his will, tumbling and recovering and tumbling again.
He didn’t catch much of that crazy run. He half-glimpsed whirling walls of ice, felt a fickle surface underfoot, and broke through an assaultive mist that clung to his ankles and arms. He remembered having the ragged hides torn right off his body, and then being skinned alive. And he remembered reaching the glacier’s base and crawling like an animal; round its sweeping drifts, past its peaked moraines, all the way to a twisting frozen gorge.
And he followed this gorge down; ricocheting wall to wall, delirious, small plumes of thrashed snow marking his descent.
Through a freezing wood he fumbled. In a veil of mist he tumbled down a steep and verdant grade. As cold consumed his closing breath, he fell upon, near-blind, near death, a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a pool.
And in this pool a man lay purged, his broken body half-submerged.
The stumbling man stopped. He knelt to weep, but lost his thread. One hand took a bicep, the other, the head. With a twist and pull the corpse emerged.
That visage…that face—misshapen mask, contorted, bleached; of life’s deposits fully leached. Essence dispatched—a void, sodden wretch.
He let it fall and the glass was breached. All a freak, all a stretch:  upon this act his grip detached.
And the bridge collapsed…one vagabond grasp…what were these feelings; recaptured and trashed…a span elapsed…who was this puckered mass…he hauled it by the waist and thighs…slid it in, watched the pool react:  purse and recover, expand, contract. The glass reformed, now silver-backed…a sudden mirror…the man leaned nearer…saw his reflection, just smashed, remade intact.
The pool grew still.
Within its depth a shadow stirred—visions gathered, some distinct, some obscure. What they meant, and who they were, was much too much to fathom. The glass became blurred.
He closed his eyes, let his heavy head fall, fell back on his haunches, felt the sweat seep and crawl. The air was a pall—as he struggled to rise, a nib crossed his wrist.
He opened his eyes.
Between his fingers the blades poked and crept. Round his knuckles they ventured, up his forearm they stepped:  they seemed to be triggered by prompts from the ground. He shook his head slowly and dully looked round.
There were jays grouped about him, their black eyes aglow. Red hens came running, their fat chicks in tow. Gophers engaged in a weird hide-and-seek. Bluebells and buttercups craned for a peek. Sparrows hopped past and, paying no heed, burst into flight. He watched them recede.
Westward they flew.
Bewildered, he slumped.
Bumped from behind, he jumped to his feet, flabbergasted to find an ancient gray moose near-eclipsing the sky, with grit in his snarl and fire in his eye.
The old moose took aim.
The man turned to flee and stumbled, then tumbled and fell on a palm and a knee.

But there lies a world (so the lullaby goes) where rivers ever run.
Poked from behind, pushed out of his mind, he staggered into sun.







Copyright 2020 by Ron Sanders.

Contact:  ronsandersartofprose(at)yahoo(dot)com

NATO’s in the House

NATO’s squatting in the shack —
Orc will drive the ******* back,
All the way to Berlin’s gate —
That’s the hog’s deluded fate.



---------------------



“Soft and Fluffy”

In this world of gloom and grime?
Then you're either dumb through time,
Or a scumbag through and through —
Pick your side, it's up to you.

If you're wise and clean, upright —
Show your thorns, prepare to fight.
Or the freaks will chew you raw,
Like a sandwich full of flaw.



---------------------



Orcs. Discord. Shadows. Night.
How to lose your mind just right?
Only madness lets you rot
In this Filth, where Light is not—

Where the thread is lost, then severed,
Soul for Nothing sold forever.
Hee-hee-hee and ha-ha-ha—
“Mind” of a MAD SLAVE. Voilà.



---------------------



The Dead Man’s Dread of Death Is Real
A chasm deep — too dark to feel.
For he had never truly lived,
Just spewed the fumes the world once sieved.

Though mind-born was that toxic gas,
It rots much worse than *****'s rash.
The dead are many — here's the catch:
The ones alive? A tiny batch.



---------------------



The Abyss Is Deep

The abyss is deep,
Will is fast asleep.
Slavery runs steep —
Fools are theirs to keep.

Doomed by cunning lies,
Silent, vacant eyes.
In their minds, the cries
Of dead, recycled whys.

Darkness clouds the mind,
Clarity — rare find.
Few still dare to groan,
Most just kneel — like stone.

Think they’re free, and proud.
Cheer the beast aloud.
Bold and twisted fraud —
He’s their living god...



---------------------



Weep, Executioner

Weep, executioner — the end is near.
The final match is lost — drop the veneer.
There’s divine revenge for every lash,
Even slaves will get their share — no cash.

You won’t sneak into the world beyond,
Not for free — there is no magic wand.
All your games are over, debts are paid,
Fools will die the way they played and prayed.

None deserve the life they claim to live —
It’s a wake. There’s nothing left to give.
Only those with souls still strong and clear
Might be judged — and vanish from down here.



---------------------



Salt on Wounds, or Pain as an Indicator of Evil

Pain? Fleeing pain won’t help,
It’s the marker of the evil’s swell.
Choking without Will, you’ll find
The pain grows deeper, hard to bind.
Wounds? Then salt will ease the toll!



---------------------



To Hell Led by the "Experts"

Mouth sealed tight,
Ears stuffed with plugs,
The "expert" ready,
Drowned in the muck.

Close your eyes?
No, filters are better—
"Living" with "success,"
Forgetting the weather...



---------------------



Pseudo-Science at War

Humanity in the act of "knowing"?
Vivisection as its method!
Ancient wisdom spoke of a different showing—
Anthropocosmic truth, not "gnome" fettered.

Man’s not just flesh, but Spirit and Awareness,
With the brain as mere receiver,
Deceit, fraud, and all things unfairness,
Are everywhere in "science," a believer.

Speak not of truths that make them squirm,
Grants and titles will follow,
Degrees for selling your soul firm,
Exchanged for coins that are hollow.

Not knowledge, but manipulation—
For those who spread the lies,
To keep the people in frustration,
In a war of Spirit, where truth dies.



---------------------



Burn with the verb?

All around is dark,
Brains turned to dust,
Hee-hee, hee-hee,
No light, no spark...



---------------------



The Sun-faced Führer

The Führer’s the best,
He clears the skies,
Builds fools and sends them,
With a howl, to lies.

Leads them to slaughter,
And brings with pride,
New fake diseases,
While the vermin collide!



---------------------



Expression Through Things

The moon-faced self I show,
Intoxicated by dreams that flow,
Forever digging for my gain,
While all else is thought in vain.

Everything but this "digging" spree,
Is nonsense here, you see—
(Except for food, *****, and ***),
Your pride grows with each flex.

Pride and things—a tough expression,
Hard to find, without aggression,
What’s not in curse: DECAY,
Wretchedness, soul and heart dismay!





---------------------



The True Colonel

"Our Colonel was born with a grip,"
He cursed with fury on his lip,
And for the BEASTS, he'd always wait—
"Meat assaults" he’d plan, a cruel fate.



---------------------



Successful Poetry

To burn with words?
Or straight to the fire?
No, better to lie
And betray with desire.

Lie: a little rhyme,
Seems like a bag—
Pour any nonsense
In, let it drag.

They'll eat it up,
Then ask for more lies.
It’s all the same,
When Illusions arise.

In minds, they dwell,
Only ******* will
Comfort them all.
THROUGH *******, SUCCESS CALLS!



---------------------



"Religious" Fast

Fasting, a fast to guard the murk
Of false religions, where demons lurk.
Much satanic dread in their teachings—
A guarantee of slavery's preachings.

You’re God’s servant... "The Black Magician,"
Who sees all believers as mere submission,
Doesn't trust the fog, wants to find the light—
To break it down, to seek what’s right.

Finding truth in books is tough—
For everywhere, they lie enough.
Introspection, the only way,
To cast aside the lies, to sway.

Seek your answers from within,
Not sparkling gems or golden spin—
The path grows harder, sadder still—
Look for the primal form, the will...



---------------------



The Tightrope Circus

Word-juggling acrobats perform —
They make "bears" pedal in a swarm,
Set "tigers" growling on their stands,
As madness claps with ****** hands.

A clever trickster’s sleight-of-thought
Turns cheap deceit to something taught.
"Sheep" in the bleachers stare, entranced,
While muzak keeps their brains entrapped.

Between the acts — a lullaby
That seeps into the mind — and why?
The circus wobbles on a wire,
Each soul contorted in its fire.

But when, from far, you glimpse the scene
And light it with a thought that's clean —
You’ll see: not art, nor grace, nor flair —
Just Evil’s boil, festering there.



---------------------



At Rock Bottom

You won’t just “fall apart” — no way —
If you are whole, you’re built to stay.
No cultured gloss, no artful lie
Can fake that core or clarify.

“Culture” teems with sweet deceit —
But wholeness walks on its own feet.
Creation stands, rebellion too —
Rebellion from decay we brew.

Decay is not some random curse —
It’s planned, designed, and getting worse.
By scheming beasts with soulless eyes
Who feed us doubts and rigged “whys”.

Resistance is the sacred fight
That only brave ones get quite right.
Ditch fear, embrace a sharpened view —
And make — that's what the strong ones do.

Unshaken like a cliff you’ll be.
So rise — rise far above the sea
Of broken depths where breath is tight —
Up high alone you’ll find the light.



---------------------



Junk Science

They sell us guts and "breaking news" —
New trash, new ways to twist the views.
Deficiency pretends to seek
The truth — by smashing logic weak.

Absurd their lens, profane their scope —
They’ve scrubbed out Spirit, Light, and Hope.
The sheep still nod, still eat the rot
That Satan’s hired agents brought.

To serve the Dark — that is the deal
To earn a paycheck, stamp, or seal.
They "teach", they "heal", they sell you fear —
The job’s insane — and yet it’s here.

So madness floods the meekest brains,
And seeps through universities, chains
Each mind in sterile, twisted schemes —
As “science” slips into sick dreams.

This whole ****** house of fraud and lies
Is now a madhouse in disguise.
And CowID — hell’s favorite con —
Has shown: there is a lower bottom.



---------------------



Aging Children of the Dead

Aging children mourn the past,
Though youth’s illusions didn’t last.
Now dullness reigns, and ****** aims
Have drained their strength in petty games.

They locked in place the mindless schemes,
And never questioned shallow dreams.
Though traps were set, and lies were dense —
A soul could fight with common sense.

But no — their drives were led astray,
To chase for junk and cheap display.
For status, praise, or some connection —
They called it “luck” or “life’s direction”.

Aging children lost the game,
Still playing small and calling it fame.
Each chance to grow they tossed aside —
Till CowID slime laid bare their pride.





---------------------



Fell from the Tree

They charge the poet just to speak —
To print, promote, or dare critique?!
But hush now — quiet! hush — don’t shout! —
The poet’s time is running out.

To live in fascist filth today —
Where once mere life brought soul dismay?
Now deeper still the nation’s drowned,
It’s hell below the burial ground.

You’d have to crash from heights insane
To write down here and not feel pain.
What’s left? Just gather all your rage
And blast the verse right off the page!

Will that explosion shake the scene?
Who cares? Just tear apart the screen!
Only in blasts the soul still fights —
So **** their “heaven” — light the night!





---------------------



Serving the Führer on Contract

The Führer barked — and off they sped,
Like hunting dogs, their eyes blood-red.
For cash they swarmed, a rabid pack,
To stab the old and shoot the back

Of women, children — every prey.
Hell’s got a thousand games to play,
And he plays all with fervent thrill —
These murders come with a paid bill.

The "doctors" killed with steady hands
Through CowID's obedient plans.
Now once again, the script is back —
They serve with guns, they love attack.

In coats with pus-stained, yellow sleeves,
They preach while every patient grieves.
A license grants them death and pay —
And grinning, they inject decay.



---------------------



Junk Science

Got gaps in knowledge? Fill with crap.
Then chase some grant in this clown trap.
Just sell the tale they pay to hear —
The truth? It’s nowhere even near.

Fulfill the order — **** for pay,
While real hitmen take the day.
New strains of lies are brewed and spread,
And people swallow till they’re dead.

Supply the press with “proof” and flair —
The Dark will fund it fair and square.
Another bucket’s on its way —
Of filth disguised as sweet “hooray”.

And once they sell it as “research,”
The herd will kneel, the herd will lurch.
Deeper in dung they sink, content —
Obeying what “the science” meant.



---------------------



So-Called "Law"

The "law" has sold our conscience cheap,
It binds us tight, it makes us weep.
Only dullness hears the sound —
Of chains that twist and weigh us down.

Repression’s all that’s left to see,
“Freedom” must be ripped and bled.
CowID’s test — Darkness comes to be,
It sweeps away, and we’re the dead.

They care not for our laws or truth,
Wipe their ***** with the proof.
From the press, there’s no escape —
Through them, they rule the ******* ape.

To those who still have human worth,
It’s hard to fight this poisoned earth.
Through the press, the beasts will lie,
Driving mindless herds to die.



---------------------



The Sheep and the New Gates

New gates — a screen’s the way to see.
Behind the updates — enmity.
New haircuts, too, and "care" they sell,
The fools will buy, they can't rebel.

The donkeys will roam through every gate,
Their "path" is there, to fabricate.
They'll lie again, just like before,
The "path" leads down to that same door.

In the ravine, the slaughter mills,
History repeats, and so it thrills.
They’re happy while the gates still shine,
But turn the corner — they're next in line.





---------------------



The Real Infernal

The unreality of all we see,
A prism of delusion, twisted, free —
Perception warped by hellish light,
That’s Reality — a shameful sight!

Delusion’s constant, never fades —
Attacks from youth, in heavy shades.
Few remain unbribed, untouched —
Truth’s like smoke, it’s barely clutched.

The selfless few will fight to show
The Total Delusion that we know,
The more they lie, the more they feed —
On lies that drown and plant the seed.

Delusion rings in every lie,
A circle built to multiply.
In such a world, the only cure —
Is spirit's strength, pure and sure.

Only the Purest Spirit sees
The depths of hell, the inner keys.
It sharpens mind, and though it’s hard,
In Hell, you rot — but still stand guard.



---------------------



The Spoke in the Wheel

It’s not a dream, it’s not a thought:
A spoke is trapped — the wheel it sought.
It merges with the turning gears,
And down it spins to muck and tears.



---------------------



The Stoner, the Thief, and the Doctor

The stoner’s high, the bureaucrat steals,
The satrap grumbles, and it feels.
That’s it! he says, all justified —
The donkey, "Doctor," glorified.

He cuts the ears with all his lies,
We’ll hear no truth until we die.



---------------------



All Private Affairs

They’ll wreck your private business quick,
With "laws" and acts — a deadly trick.
Underhanded, they'll attack,
Like a terror act, they’ll strike you back.



---------------------



Mario, Mario, Marionettes

Mario, Mario, puppets dance,
A haze of lies, a deadly trance.
They strike the mind with foolish slander,
Keep your ear sharp in this false lander.



---------------------



There Will Be Summer

Summer’s coming, songs will fly,
A lot of tunes beneath the sky.
Inspiration won’t depart,
It lingers deep within the heart.



---------------------



Make Songs, No Matter What

Make your songs — no matter how,
Through the verses, rise again now.
The task’s simple, in the end,
If your Heart’s strong, it will transcend.



---------------------



Shaitan and the Sheep

Shaitan. The Sheep.
He’s worse than Hell!
Though Hell’s persistent,
The Sheep’s so dull —
Through this, all Evil,
Spreads like a spell.
Look at the world through a twisted lens:
Shaitan and the Sheep —
A bond that never ends.
The path to fascism
Is through masks and helmets.



---------------------



"Donbeat Bombas"

"Donbeat Bombas" — at the start,
They shelled their own, to tear apart,
A conflict sparked by hateful hands,
A HELL of a FASCIST LAND!!!



---------------------



Hidden and Open Satanism in False Religions

Tap-tap-tap —
The road to "bliss,"
A filthy swine
Heads for the eucharist.

The fat priest
Feeds the FLESH,
With blood, to feast
On the WASTELAND's mesh.

"Eat the others!"
Has always been the creed,
A madman’s scream
With CANNIBAL NEED.





---------------------



Revenge Lasting a Lifetime

The string has snapped,
It was my patience.
What’s left behind?
Of course, it’s vengeance!

Cold is the mind,
But the Heart is fierce:
Not to act quick,
But to resist the tears.

With that fiery wrath,
Fill your life’s span —
Die with honor,
Remember the pain.





---------------------



Not "With Greetings"...

No "greetings" here!
To bear the lies,
That follow chains,
The Spirit’s rise.
Cleanse your ear
From servant's trash,
Their foolishness,
A darkened flash.
Through all the noise,
They spread their lies,
In chaos’ guise.



---------------------



The Inescapable Herd

The herd’s inescapable —
It only grows.
How vile it is
To hear the lows!

To look upon it —
Better blind your eyes!
If it’s not “greetings,”
Stay away — it's madness in disguise!



---------------------



The Spiritual Path

Don’t take others seriously,
Their lives are outward, not within.
Direct your thoughts and focus, see,
The one true Spiritual Path begins.



---------------------



The School Program

A sawmill, that’s the plan,
Logs and planks to shape with care,
To churn out only brutes and thugs —
They’re easiest to lead to despair.



---------------------



Shame and Laughter

CowID is Shame,
Where Reason sleeps,
And Spirit's slain,
For most of them —
The BEASTS ascend.
The world’s just a joke... in the end.



---------------------



Donbass

Donbass is "ready" —
The "liberator"
Sent all the men
To fight, the "warrior."

Not long they’ll thrash,
Struggling in vain —
To fight for orcs,
They’ll die in pain.

A shameful death,
Amidst the lies.
To the slaughterhouse —
Forward, fools, and die!





---------------------



Animal Life

Animal life —
Wake up, be wise!
The wretched herd
Fills up with lies.

How few are true!
How many schemes,
Of filthy fiends,
To craft false dreams...





---------------------



Locked in a Cell

Locked in a cell —
A TV cell,
The idiot box —
Chains tighter than steel.
The people, now slaves,
In its grip they kneel.



---------------------



The bomber brings a world of peace—
On barren land, all strife must cease.
The world’s a target, clear and wide—
The sharpest shot will turn the tide.



---------------------



The Vipers' Nest

A writhing nest of soulless snakes —
They squeeze the weak, then fight
For bigger shares and fatter stakes
With venom as their right.

The more you bite — the more you take,
The bigger grows your slice.
While smaller snakes, too slow to fake,
Are crushed without a price.

It’s warm and snug inside that pit,
If you can fight as one —
The fiercest get the biggest bit,
And feast until it’s gone.

This nest is vast — a crawling blight,
Best keep your distance, friend.
It’s always hungry, day and night...
Look out, you worm — defend!



---------------------



Solitude

In solitude, you feel no drive
To change the self you know —
A place where daring dreams survive
And bolder visions grow.

The odds are good, the path is clear,
No need for joy's disguise.
If you're not chasing "pleasure" here,
Then muse and fire arise.

All bonds and noise — that tangled blade —
Can cut ambition down.
It carves through dreams so deftly made,
And leaves the spirit drowned.

But solitude preserves your spark,
Lets effort freely live.
Without creation — all is dark.
And life has naught to give.





---------------------



Permanent Surrealism

What once was "social realism"
Now reeks of pure surreal.
Red banners fly — no enema,
But minds expect the deal!

A giant purge in noble guise,
It cleansed the brain with pride.
Its dogma banned all thought outside —
"Think only as prescribed."

The priest once swapped that script for "God,"
But sang the same old song:
"You're free," they say — with shiny gloss —
But kitsch still drags along.

That kitsch today wears trendy clothes —
A film, a flashy beat.
The world’s gone fascist — head to toes —
Yet dopes scream “choice!” in heat.

CowID unmasked that sacred "right,"
That "freedom" — such a mess!
We'll march again with heads held high…
Into the End, no less.



---------------------



"Socialite": A Short-Lived Delight

The “socialite” tale won’t last for long —
It’s forced, it’s hollow, thin.
Fatigue builds up, the nerves go wrong,
And emptiness eats within.

Where purpose dies, no light survives —
Just Darkness takes the throne.
Their “grandeur” is just spoiled drives,
No Honor. No Thought. Just tone.

They serve the BEAST with plastic grace,
Obeying soulless brutes —
That polished mask, that shining face
Conceals corruption's roots.

They melt and mold to fit the role,
Their gloss a failing shield.
Only the Makers keep a soul —
Humble in form, yet steeled.



---------------------



"Flowers of Life"

“Adults” have children — living toys —
To fill the void inside.
Their friendships fake, their pleasures noise,
They breed more loss and pride.

Be it in spirit or in coin,
That poverty runs deep.
The law of likeness will rejoin,
And leave its messy streak.

Only a surplus, fierce and bright,
Can raise a child to bloom —
That power born of inner light,
Of grown, unfaltering room.

Maturity — the truest grace,
No treasure shines the same.
With it, no fool shall take your place —
Without it, all’s a game.



---------------------



The Law

The Law forever stands on guard —
It seals the prison gate.
Its rules are penned by demons hard
In "democratic" hate.

It weaves a thread of "rights" so thin
Through legal filth and shame —
A thread that binds the slave within
The system’s very name.

When three in four are poor and blind,
The world becomes a jail.
And "leaders" — bait for those inclined
To chase a holy grail.

For those who rise just build the chain
That keeps the masses bound.
No ancient tyrant need remain —
New laws will soon be found:

A flashing screen, a legal twist,
To blur the core of life.
While in the shadows, evil fists
Prepare the next world strife.

Degeneration codified —
That’s Law’s true, hidden face.
It only acts with wrath and pride
When crushing truth or grace.

Through acts and "bylaws" they deploy,
They **** the world by ink —
True terror wears a clean decoy.
They lie more than you think.

So take your "sacred constitution"
And flush it down the drain.
When judged with honest resolution,
It screams: "They **** again!"

That war and CowID made it plain —
The filth is system-wide.
Obeying BEASTS brings only shame,
Unless you’ve lost your mind.

The Law is written for the *** —
Not minds that dare to shine.
The Soul alone can break that glass
And race toward the Divine.



---------------------



"Life's So Good!" — this phrase could sum
The state of most we see.
For madness speaks with keys to some,
In waking delirium, free.

All those who prattle, lost and low,
They **** the mind with lies.
"Normal" here is just a show —
In Hell, the noise defies.

Through intuition, Truth will free
From mind's deceiving trap.
You’ll see the fools in misery,
Trapped in their verbal crap.



---------------------



Pennyless as an Endangered Breed

We’ve got the cash, but greed holds sway,
A wicked force through every dime.
The common folk won’t dare to say —
In them, the pennyless is crime.

But is it madness, when they lack?
Here greed’s a "norm," and so it grows,
The stench of filth will lead them back,
Teaching slaves to serve their woes.

School will teach them, all in line,
Few realize the truth they’re sold:
For cash, they bend — a twisted spine,
And only fools will stoop for gold.





---------------------



School

To trust in science, bow and bend,
Is what they teach — no other way.
They call it school, but in the end,
Hell won’t let you stray — just eat decay!

Decay of thought, where slavery’s hid
Behind a “light” that’s full of lies.
In “democracy,” a tyrant's bid,
The school’s true goal is stunted minds.

False science preached by proto-priest,
While Spirit’s heresy is banned.
The rack and stake are now deceased,
But Bred Decay strikes harder, unplanned.





---------------------



The Global Pen

The sheep’s grown used to this foul pen,
It feels like home, where guts are thinned,
Shorn and led to slaughter's door.
CowID's the sign, and so is war —

A first step taken. The pen will grow,
Not a red flag, but a white will show.
They'll widen it, with poison stronger,
As the media attacks, it stinks longer.

White flag, with red cross clearly seen,
Look around — all here’s in vain, obscene.
The beasts, through media, drive them on,
The sheep don’t care — it’s all a con.





---------------------



Lie Upon Lie

Lie upon lie, and let them grow —
And you'll build a "wonderful" world, you know.
But dog’s dung is all you’ll find,
Where falsehood's idol rules the mind.

And on top, the MADNESS reigns,
Wild and, at times, a twisted gain.
For every question, the answer's clear —
More lies piled on, the plague is here.



---------------------



Agony of the World

What to do in this agony,
Complain, or still wait
For cheese that’s free,
As the world’s twisted fate?

Spirit’s desire,
With the belly on stake,
Considers this fire
The law we must make.





---------------------



The Few Are Right

The few are right, but praised, they won’t be,
They’ll be hated, not set free.
To honor them? The traitor's way,
Is what the world will choose to say.

Being right is dangerous,
To the dull, the voiceless, furious.
But with the traitors, oil's applied,
And “cheerful” is the lie they hide.



---------------------



The Fog of Infernality

To "accept reality,"
That is, infernality —
One must become a creature,
With a mind that's lost to feature.



---------------------



Globalization

The simple SLUDGE —
The sheep are glad.
The pen’s a grudge —
The vermin trim them bad.

Then comes the skewers —
"Care," they cry aloud.
The sheep are sure,
To Madness they’re bowed.



---------------------



Bitter Consolation

A bitter joy —
To write a rhyme:
It takes some strain,
Silence leads to grime.

To burn the rot —
A task too steep.
Fortune’s tale,
In soulless heaps.

So many are soulless,
Bigger every day.
The time is here —
Rot will burn away.

The sun grows stronger,
Shining, it will burn,
Turning all to ash,
The foul, decaying urn.





---------------------



"Carefree Childhood"

A play of the children
By the rotting slaves —
At home, they’ll meet
Hell, crafted by knaves.

Their fate they’ll destroy,
As if they're the foe.
They’ll "love" them with lies
And lies they'll bestow.

The family’s a mess,
If slavery's not known.
All is made of spite,
"Kindness" overthrown.

Falsehood veils the shame,
Truth’s long been erased.
You’ll step out, half-dead,
To a life laid to waste.



---------------------



Final Stop

"Men are like dice: we throw ourselves forward into life."
— Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre was wrong — you’re not the one
Who casts the dice beneath the sun.
It’s vermin hurling lies instead,
And you slip with the herd ahead.

This farce of life won’t shift the game —
Chance plays no role in slime and shame.
Through lies, the blind and slow all crawl,
Toward Decay, through salt — and fall.



---------------------



Evening Dullness

The ***** called Boredom won’t attack —
A brand new day is on the track.
You’ll sleep it off, then slave again —
And boredom’s back by evening’s end.

It feeds on dusk like sacred bread.
A poet’s life is truly... strange:
You’re drained by lines inside your head —
Yet write again. You chase the range

Of PHANTOMS in each aching phrase.
Much better to, in midnight haze,
Go search once more (though never quite...)
For dreams that vanish out of sight.



---------------------



Makhno’s Tachanka

Makhno’s wild cart
Tore Austrians apart —
Turned ranks to muck.
Now fools run amok,
All “Austrians” anew,
In squads of stinking goo,
Thrown at the wise. But lo —
The Word strikes hard, like so!

Now poems charge instead,
Tachankas forged in lead.
This filth won’t make us kneel:
We fell — in horror — real!



---------------------



Winnie the Pooh and Piglet Kebab

There’s sawdust swirling in my head —
Not simple — finely tuned instead
To screams and shrieks both night and day.
Not duty — joy! I like it that way.

The media leads the bears in rows
To chop up Piglets — that’s how it goes.
It must be done — no time to sob:
The meat won’t walk into the kebab.





---------------------



Under the Pressure of Madness

To slaughter like to celebration —
March on, oh crowd, in grim elation!
Refuse to join? Then you’re a traitor.
Your punishment is coming later.

A brand-new Führer leads the chase,
A master of decaying grace —
Makes ******, Goebbels look like jokes,
His Mirages choke and smoke.

“Lies like Trotsky” — that’s passé.
This clone breaks bottoms all the way.
His sheer INSANITY barrage
Can pierce through any deep mirage!





---------------------



The Surrealism of Verse

The river, frozen, casts a spell —
I long to swim its icy shell.
For winter is the poet’s time,
Though pools aren’t great for soaking rhyme.

That “soaking” bit? Just rhyme’s caprice —
It leads you off like some disease.
Your lines — like reefs in desert land —
Make sense no more, but somehow stand.

No sunburn here — I burn inside,
As madness sweeps across the tide.
I count the days till warmth has won —
The river drowns the nonsense. Gone.



---------------------



Peace to the World?

"Peace on Earth!" The mouse gets cheese.
But is it peace, or just a tease?
Is “the people” just a rat
In a trap — imagine that!

Ruled by ****, half-demons grinning,
Schemes on schemes — there's no beginning.
Wars and CowID mark the start...
SHAME and DISGRACE tear us apart!



---------------------



The Sheep and the Kebab

The kebab’s a nightmare for the sheep —
A twisted tale, so dark and deep.
To the slaughterhouse they march with cheer,
Praising Darkness, drawing near.





---------------------



In Hell. In Madness.

In Hell. In haze.
All's lost, it seems...
What will I find?
Just rot and dreams.



---------------------



My Poems That I Don’t Like

The fleeting verses that I despise,
Will find the greatest praise, no surprise.
Who complains of excess in art’s design,
Is like a miser, losing his dime.



---------------------



The Ruling ****

Till the last soldier’s gone,
With a mandate to press on...
And that **** will forge, with glee,
The mandate, never paying the fee.



---------------------



Dogmatism of Pseudoscience and Its Aims

Dogmatism’s in excess, you see—
A pseudoscience, dear friends, indeed:
A heap of lies and utter dross,
That ne’er shall wear its truthful crown.

For those who pay with endless cash,
Replace pure faith with false preaches;
They heap on drivel meant to clash
With change that soon their hearts beseech.

Then comes a camp of digital guise—
A brand-new order, sleek and odd:
Truth confined in buggy, flawed devices,
A chip in hand, the urban guard.

In this charade of feigned disease,
The “cures” turn venom for the meek.
Submission’s praised—in such a breeze—
For humans, not for cattle, we must seek.



---------------------



The Devil and the Sheep

The Devil. The Sheep.
He’s worse than hell itself!
Though the Devil’s stubborn,
The Sheep’s so **** dull!
All Evil flows through this —
To the world’s cold, lifeless corpse.
Look through the prism clear:
The Devil, the Sheep —
A single, deadly link.
And the path to fascism
Is masked by helmets thick.



---------------------



Twilight of Mind in the Global Camp

"Errors multiply on a wrong path."
— Francis Bacon, 17th century


The herd, misled by “noble” visions,
Still hunts for joy that isn't there.
That road leads deep to dark divisions—
And dusk already chills the air.

Now twilight falls. And evil’s thriving,
Spewing dumb lies like CowID.
Deceit and fear are unforgiving—
They’ll crush the last of minds that see.

The Camp stands watch, its rule enforcing:
That none with sense shall have a say.
No dawn for us. The brute, unknowing,
Will drag the world the other way.





---------------------



Furious Verse Flies Like an Arrow

A furious verse — it flies, it burns,
You barely catch it, hand still shaking.
Don’t just write — let wrath take turns,
Be yourself — a shot worth making.

If the bow is tuned and steady,
Every arrow finds its way.
Now the question: who’s the enemy?
All the sick minds in decay!

Lone and raging, still I’m standing—
Crowds of madmen all around.
Should I master fire-branding,
Let my poems torch the ground?

Incendiary bombs I’m loading,
Feathered well in rhyming flame—
Drop them on the catacombing
World where we decay in shame.





---------------------



Outworn Forms Are Swept by Death

Outworn forms, by Death's own making,
Are swept away — that’s Life’s domain.
Believe the Inner Light, unshaking:
It shines through Time — though mules complain.

And if for ages, fools and losers
Keep choking Earth in stinking smog,
Then Life itself may lose its users—
Death clears what’s bent. That’s nature’s log.

When Satan’s rot commands creation,
Let Armageddon break the chain.
Don’t fear — embrace the grand salvation:
It frees the Soul through sacred flame.





---------------------



Dominant Theories and Ideologies

One-sided freaks — deranged, unstable,
Phase-shifted minds beyond repair —
They'll triumph, sit at every table,
Their dogmas poisoning the air.

Their twisted "truth" becomes the beacon
For brainless herds who chant along.
Together, they will crush what's weakened—
And praise the rot that makes them strong.

These monsters rise by foul selection,
The **** promoted to the throne.
That’s how we reached this low infection,
Worshipping the mindless drone.

Leninisms, Freudish isms—
All that intellectual trash—
Are loyal tools of new fascisms,
Each a blight, a brainwashed rash.

They shove this garbage down from childhood,
**** off reason, shame, and pride.
All their "doctrines" serve the vilehood—
Darkness geared for genocide.





---------------------



Free Interpretation of Mythical (and Not-so-Mythical) Figures

The toilet floods with **** and lies —
Behold the world, in full disguise.
Not a slave, nor orphaned soul?
Then run — the Satyr’s in control.

He’s not some goat from ancient song,
His beastly will has ruled too long.
He came here early, claimed the stall,
And made the mindless hordes his thrall.

He’s Satan too — just change the name.
Obey him, and you bear the shame
Of scorning Spirit pure and bright,
While kissing demons robed in night.

No "higher powers" guide this mess —
The myths just sell us noble stress.
You crown a skeleton in dust?
He'll be your "god" — and earn your trust.

Even "best" gods are a scam:
Myths for fools — a mental jam.
They bleach the vilest Dark with lore
And shove their madness evermore.





---------------------



Gut Sense — Stream and Surge

Lies entwine in twisted chains,
Knots of chaos, dark remains.
Truth stays hidden, out of frame,
If your mind is weak and lame.

To unwind the lie’s invention,
Watch for motives, flaws, pretense.
Though the fiends show fierce intention,
Intuition cuts — like sense.

Mind without that blade’s direction
Stays in primal, dull despair.
First, a trickle — pure connection,
Then a flood that strips things bare.

Break the blocks your mind erected,
Let the deeper current in.
Snakes and frauds shall be ejected
By the Higher Force within.

That force lives as intuition —
Feel it burn, a sacred thread.
Lack it — rot becomes your mission,
And decay your path instead.





---------------------



Implanted "Dreams"

"The less you know, the better sleep" —
Soon turns into a deathlike trance.
You shrink into a twitching sheep
As dreams are steered by sly advance.

There’s a whole dream-manufacturing
Industry of fog and lies.
And forgetting what is anchoring
Leads straight to the darkened skies.

Call it sleep or call it falling,
Through the mirror — doesn’t matter.
Truth gets drowned beneath the sprawling
Wave of lies none dares to shatter.

Wake yourself — and shake away
Every phantom, every scheme.
Hesitate not for a day —
Rot begins with such a dream.





---------------------



The Scythe of Death

Time’s a treasure — guard it tightly,
Life is frail, and death is near.
Waste it blindly, speak it lightly —
It will strike, and not from fear.

Strain your soul and mind with meaning,
Leave your mark, a jagged trace
On the world — not whining, preening,
Not in praise of empty grace.

Trash is everywhere — it's crawling,
Spawn of Dark, its slaves in tow.
Let your wound be bold, appalling —
Cut through Lies with what you know.

Time’s a teacher, strict and bitter,
And it tests what you defend:
Are you fighting with the critters,
Or has Madness reached your end?

In the muck, you’ll fail to notice
How you sank, betrayed, and fell.
There you’ll meet the lowest rotters —
Joining them’s a route to Hell.

Few still forge with flame and fire,
But the bootlicks crowd the land.
Mankind's circling the mire —
Only wreckage lies at hand.

Time now passes like a sentence,
Final warnings fill the sky.
No escape and no repentance...
Shall we praise the Scythe, and die?





---------------------



A Flare of Light — or Murky Glare

"What the higher soul desires lies within;
The lower seeks in others." — Confucius

The lowly beg, they tear, they cling,
For "love" and junk and anything.
But Seekers of the Real depart
The outer noise — they search the heart.

They leave behind the Bedlam’s rot,
At least in thought — they chase it not.
With sharpened sense, they walk within,
Where Light begins, not sludge or sin.

That Light alone completes the quest,
It stills the mind, it grants true rest.
The low are born of foul decay,
The high — of Light, their inner way.

So follow yours — and you shall find
A flare within the storm and grind:
A spark that cuts through all the gloom
Of souls degrading into doom.



---------------------



Just Your Average Armageddon

"The world always returns to normal.
The question is — whose."
— Stanisław Jerzy Lec

The "norm" is set by Gullets vast
That swallow Spirit, grind the Mind.
So flee the slaves of Hell amassed —
Seek where the soul’s not dumb and blind!

This world is run by fiends infernal,
Exceptions? Rare — and fading fast.
CowID dreams and cults fraternal
Grow from rot that’s meant to last.

But introspection, intuition,
Critical thought — your truest tools.
To walk the Path, outstrip your fiction,
And dodge the traps of demon schools.

For through the "self" the demons bore
Their detours straight into your Heart.
With sharp critique, just slam the door —
Purge the rot, and tear apart.

Look within — the Light is hiding,
Only insight brings it back.
And your sense will start providing
Vision far beyond the black.

This is the value left unbroken
In the Hell now cracking wide.
The Underworld — it smells the omen:
It hates collapse, it hates the tide.

The sun burns brighter, turns the heat —
The sweat lodge rises, cleansing fire!
The dullards drool in their defeat —
This steam will strip them of their liar.





---------------------



Torture

"Prosperity reveals our vice;
Adversity shows virtue's face."
— Francis Bacon


Now take a look — a steady stare —
At mobs below and "lords" above.
While pain is clawing through the air,
Don’t drown in grief, don’t beg for love.

Degenerates and soulless traitors,
A plague of vice on every side.
But where are our so-called creators?
Where has our virtue gone to hide?

It feeds on food and *** and chatter,
And passes "values" to the young —
Slave-born ideals that rot and shatter.
The few who rise are bit and stung...



---------------------



Ornaments

An amulet to banish Lies?
You won’t find that — no surprise.
Lies are sold as “common sense,”
Drilling straight through all defense.

Rock bottom? Boring. Time to drop
Into a fresher, deeper slop!
The dunce delights in his belief:
“This world’s the best!” — the height of grief.

A brighter Hell? Now that’s the plan!
A digital leash for every man.
The mob will cheer — they’ll praise the brand
That chains their necks with gilded bands.





---------------------



Allah! Allah Will Provide

“Just praise His name — He’ll see you through!”
Repeat it louder, day and night.
Your lusts He’ll shower gold upon —
Then ship you off to Paradise.

Like children beg for sweets and toys,
So “grown-ups” pray for cash and bling
From “higher powers.” Empty noise —
Paper tigers rule that ring.

No need to beg, no point to kneel:
No higher force in Hell remains.
The only voice that might still feel
Your cries… is Zoyl — and he disdains.



---------------------



The Glamour Veil

This glamour — not a noble vice —
Just blind obedience at a price.
The fools obey with hungry grins
For junk and foodstuff in their bins.

If you’ve a brain that still can burn,
You’ll find no place — no madman’s turn —
Inside this padded, howling dome
Where fascist dough is shaped as "home."

They bake up "heroes" on command —
Addicted drones, a loyal band.
And marching proud in perfect line,
They head for Camp Global Divine...





---------------------



Dust

Fascist censors run the show —
Google, YouTube, all in tow.
A culture taught to kneel and nod.
The media — a monster's squad.

Deceit and rot — the new ideal,
With sticky fear in every deal.
All serve the Devil, mask and grin —
This world is dust, consumed by sin.



---------------------



Mind — a Nest of Twisted Wires

The mind’s a nest of nervous fires,
Breeding threats as fear requires.
Fear now rules this wretched land —
Worse ahead, as planned and planned:

Fake diseases, wars, delusion,
Dumbing down through mass confusion.
That’s the goal the BEAST pursues —
To spread neurosis like a noose.



---------------------



Sharp and Loud

Loud — then sharp:
Is that choice?
Loud is just
The void's own voice.

Sharp and simple — stay awake!
Let your verses bite and break!
Sharper still — the poison bleeds.
Drink it deep — that’s what it feeds.



---------------------



Brain Drain

“Virus! Virus!!!”
Screams insane —
Death of thought,
Then off the train.

Lies believed —
Hell’s tightening noose.
“What’s the loss?”
We need more juice!

Push the numbers, make it hurt —
Punish “people,”
Grind in dirt.



---------------------



The Ultimate Price

"Nothing is bought at a higher price than a piece of the human mind and freedom."
— Friedrich Nietzsche


Madness rising,
Sales enticing.
Souls for garbage — cheap exchange:
Honor, thought, and freedom — strange

How they vanish for a screen,
Spewing filth in toxic sheen.
Hell is here — but who would know?
Chains of lies don't always show.



---------------------



Where Are You From — and Where You Head?

Where are you from, and where you go —
The riddle haunts the soul below.
For centuries they've dulled our sight:
Man falls for lies, not truth or light.

The beast deceives, the soul is weak,
The mind? A joke — don't even speak.
So don’t rely on hollow thought —
Let instinct cut the lies you're caught.



---------------------



True Effort

True effort, when it’s rightly aimed,
Is worth more than all "success" acclaimed.
For lies pile high to fool the weak,
Who trade their faith for gold they seek.

They offer money, fame, and praise,
For energy in endless haze.
But those who act with rightful mind,
Will feel the Winds of Change unwind.



---------------------



Poverty and Pain

Poverty and pain —
The Force of Will,
Of Spirit, Mind,
And reason's thrill.

The sum has torn,
It’s cracked, undone...



---------------------



Moderation

Balance, restraint —
A tested way,
But mark my words —
It breeds decay.



---------------------



"Carrot" Stronger Than Steel

A "carrot" turns the soul,
A slave who believes in lies.
Come now, get new clothes —
At the Market of Empty Minds!



---------------------



Non-Sellability

Great efforts, yet frail fruits,
Does that drive you to despair?
If it’s for yourself, the pursuit,
The judgments won’t compare.

All ratings, hype, and noise,
Are just mere froth on top,
While money’s tempting, false,
It pulls you down, won’t stop.

Efforts of the mind and soul,
In a world so lost, so grim,
Bribed by sound, by pleasure's toll,
Dragged down by greed’s dark whim.



---------------------



The Global Masturbator of Feelings and Emotions

Strike the feelings, crush the mind,
So you’ll lose yourself, confined —
That’s the policy of freaks,
In a world of slaves, the weak.



---------------------



Cages and Chains?
The BEASTS mark
All the slaves with nonsense, while the "treat"
Is the prize in the Fascist’s deceit.



---------------------



"Normal" Madness

"Normal" madness reigns,
The one that's ruling now,
Fools are preaching,
The masses screeching,
Cold blood runs, lost somehow.
Once a stage, now gone to waste,
All will vanish, erased.



---------------------



"A Magnifying Glass" for the Soul

To magnify is to erase—
Like a bug beneath the lens.
Every glance becomes disgrace,
Every thought just weak pretense.

Peer more closely, skip the filter,
Use the glass and look inside—
See how bright illusions wither,
How uniqueness tends to hide.

Time dissolves in dull routines,
In a tiny, choking sphere.
What remains? Not human beings—
Just a mask, a grin, a sneer.

Lies are "normal", lies are countless—
Pick your flavor, take your pick.
Underneath: decay and doubtless
Cowardice and ego slick.

Few escape the crushing burden—
Since their youth, they’re taught to kneel.
Fear’s the mold, and stress the warden,
Grinding souls like dust from steel.



---------------------



The Idiotocracy

Fear smothers love, corrupts the mind,
It spreads again — a foe designed.
It rules the masses, cold and sly,
And sends its poison from on high.

The “school” installs it in your chest,
The media fans all the rest.
The fool believes what liars say —
They "comfort" him along the way.

They pump up fear through polished lies.
Lies flood the madhouse — global size.
Stack lie on lie, and soon you'll see
A nation sleepwalk, comatose, “free.”

Cast fear out with the Spirit’s flame —
A fortress none can ever tame.
Evil has minions, small and loud —
To fear those gnats? Absurd and proud.

These petty creeps — a comic blight.
Through humor we reclaim the fight.
A war of soul in full deploy
Against the world’s idiot convoy.



---------------------



The Shrinking of Mind — and the “Real” World

To shrink is death, in sly disguise.
They shrink your world through friendly lies:
“Obey the beasts, they know what's true!”
And drones march off — to work, to rue.

They shrink the world to filth and drains,
To toilet bowls and sewered brains.
They call the sludge a sacred balm —
And bleat in blissful, ****** calm.

This narrowing infects the mind,
And what you see gets redefined.
The dumb herd trudges to the knife —
No hole, no stall will spare a life.

For slaughter waits where thought has thinned,
Where beasts are served and truth is skinned.
This is betrayal’s grand reward —
Or simply: man reduced to horde.



---------------------



"Professional" Chewing Gum

A “pro” consumer, proud and prim,
Devours GMOs on whim —
Lies, junk, temptation wrapped as fun,
He gulps down filth by ton for ton.

His mind and body rot with grace —
He calls it “fuel” and sets the pace.
This “pro” just grins in his abyss,
His room a tomb of cowardice.

The gum is labeled “Pro,” you see —
With “Orbit” slapped on lazily.
A pack of gum, some cash, some screen —
And “happiness” through holes obscene.

His kids must learn this holy trade:
To dumb them down, the schools parade
A set of tools — all upside-down —
To smooth their minds and let them drown.

The schools, the media know the drill —
They grow the idiot with skill.
They say: “We plant the seeds of grace!”
But reap a limp, lobotomized face.

These “pros” are fools, en masse, enshrined —
The reigning caste: the thought-assigned.
The BEASTS adore this blessed land —
Where soulless swarms obey command.



---------------------



Brain Removal via Lies

Just multiply the global lie —
And watch the idiot comply.
He'll knock and smile at your front gate,
Syringe in hand — to "vaccinate".

A ***** is cheaper than a shell,
And hits more neatly — works as well.
The BEAST, through “health” and “expert” prattle,
Still culls the herd without a battle.

They’re not human if they trust
Rot and sludge disguised as "just."
Don’t waste breath to change their stance —
You’d have more luck with stones that dance.





---------------------



"Isms"

All the “isms” — brain disease,
Crooked thoughts dressed up to please.
Each one claws toward some “Ideal,”
Till minds forget how humans feel.

They become just blank displays,
Echoing those worn-out ways —
Primitive and crude by birth,
Bending facts to prove their worth.

The farce rolls on, a mad parade,
Till some new “ism” makes a raid —
It kicks the old one out the door,
And fills the screens with its new "lore".





---------------------



The Final Circle of Hell

Greed walks fast — in seven-league boots —
They call it “progress” as it loots.
And all around, a dulled-out mess —
The end result: dumbed-down success.

A crushing greed applies the weight,
With foolish minds to fuel the fate.
Through greed and stupid souls en masse,
We've reached Hell’s bottom — pure, dead glass.



---------------------



The Correctness of the Lonely Warrior

“Truth stands above people and should not fear it.”
— Vissarion Belinsky


Darkness rules — that much is clear.
Rot and ruin swarm the sphere.
Be the truth, or be erased —
There’s no middle path embraced.

Do not flinch — it’s far too late
To bow in fear before dark fate.
"Plagues" and wars now flood the land,
Lies grow bold on every hand.

Each year worse — decay ascends.
Fear and Falsehood run as friends.
Be the axe in servants’ eyes —
The Lonely Warrior never lies.





---------------------



The Daredevil Who Conquered Fear

Danger? Just chatter.
Slander? No matter.
Once you allow
Your boldness to shatter
The filth that floods in from the ******* brigade —
You’ll mock every vice with a smirk, unafraid.

The BEAST rules the herd through the tremble and scream —
But a wild daredevil won’t fit in that scheme.



---------------------



The Machine World

“The real threat to man is not machines or chemicals. The real threat has already entered the core of human existence.”
— Martin Heidegger


A world of machines. You’re not one? Prove it.
With CowID, with war — absurd and stupid.
The twisted spines, the vacant eyes,
The herd obeys, believes the lies.

The fuel is lies — injected fast,
Through veins they flow, from first to last.
The “men” rise up — to punch, not think,
While freedom’s just a poisoned drink.

They're proud to march — enslaved, yet loud,
Just call it “freedom,” and they’re proud.
This plague of fools will drag us low —
Past rock bottom, straight through the Dno.



---------------------



Spiritual Vision and the World's Vile Rot

Faith in “God”?
Or faith in you?
To pierce the fog,
Love what is true.
To truly see,
The soul must guide —
Or you’ll be swept
By filth and pride.

The soul untouched will rise and glow,
But join the rot — and you’ll sink low.
Detach from evil, or you’re caught —
Just one more fool the world has bought.



---------------------



The Führer of the Madhouse

Hell has frozen — here's our Führer!
Loud and proud — but not much surer.
And the crowd, once known for might,
Now believes this clown is right.

Drunk on nonsense, near elation,
In a fog of degradation,
They applaud the ashtray preacher —
The madhouse roars. He is their teacher.



---------------------



The Chance to Create Yourself

It’s tough —
But not the end.
No luck?
You missed the trend?

That excuse
Is rot for cinders —
Just dead souls
With dying embers.

Smash the wall,
Let fire rise.
Show your fist
To captive lies —

Through creations bold and burning —
Even poems, ever yearning.





---------------------



Surrealist “Picnic in the Open”

Crust of lies
On fear-made butter.
Ashes rise
Through dreamlike clutter.

Chew the lie,
Then eat the heap.
Sip some swill —
Let numbness creep,

So the ash
Becomes a view,
And your crash —
A feast for two.



---------------------



Money in the Filth

Money calls from Hell’s own pit,
And you sell your soul for it.
If your mind is sheepish clay,
You’ll call that “joy” along the way.

But this filth plays by no rule —
Beasts will squeeze you like a tool.
Wave “success” before your face —
Then drain you dry without a trace.





---------------------



Murk and Fear. A Lonely Way
Through fire, lies, and full dismay.
Stand alone beneath the hail
Of total falsehood — do not fail.

Be the brave one — hold your ground,
If your truth is battle-bound.
Truth’s your cause — the rest is free.
In war with Evil's tyranny,

Meekness is the primal sin —
So strike the dark. And strike within.





---------------------



“Flowers of Evil”

“Just focus on the light,” they say,
Forget the horrors of decay —
And in that blissful, blind retreat
The **** of Evil finds its seat.

It clings, it spreads, it haunts the air,
Its roots are lies, its bloom — despair.
And evil, masked by ignorance,
Peers through their dreams with twisted glance.





---------------------



Mirror, Mirror, Cruel and Grim...

Mirror, mirror, harsh and clear —
Who’s the fiercest one you fear?
The unbending Russian soul?
No — the khokhol plays darker role.

He strikes Russians with a glare,
Swears his strength comes from the air.
Guards each inch of village dirt —
Lest the Moskal brings it to hurt.



---------------------



Junk “Classics” and Fake School Lore

The wise one knows: when art turns dull,
It rots — a death without a skull.
In schools they feed the kids pure lies,
Fake “truths” that petrify their minds.

And once that stone is fully set,
It won’t be cracked — not even yet.
So youth, start thinking while you can —
At thirty, Mind won’t make a man.





---------------------



Feminine “Charms”

The body — battlefield,
Where soul’s asleep or sealed.
The war is sharp as steel —
And rot is all it yields.

Wrapped in glossy lies,
It lures with deadly glow.
You bite — and pay the price:
The blade will shape you low.



---------------------



Silent Slaves

Amid the shameful, swirling mess,
The minds decay, they’re in distress.
The chaos says, “We’re not the slaves,”
But in truth, they’re silent graves.



---------------------



A Führer in Zombie Disguise

A Führer dressed in zombie skin,
So dumb, you'd swear he’s just your kin —
A cousin to the fool and clown,
A soulmate to the lowlife crowd.

That crowd is vast — the final score
Of silent genocide and war.
If you’re not dull in this parade —
You’re pastry tossed in a latrine’s shade.



---------------------



Gas Exchange: Thought and Matter

The air we breathe, the world, the skin —
They twist the Thought that flows within.
Distorted well — a grand conceit —
And thus was born Debility.



---------------------



Serve No Evil Homeland

Serve no land that’s steeped in lies —
Bow to Truth, not flags or cries.
Then you'll walk a noble way,
Clean of thought, by light of day.



---------------------



The Worm’s Last Century

Was it Worm or Wretch that reigned?
Twisted times were preordained.
Change erupts — the herds start marching,
Led like sheep, their brains discharging.

Not through desert, but through waste,
Filth and fear — a bitter taste.
Welcome now the Drainage Age —
We’ve earned it well. Enjoy the cage.



---------------------



Total Censorship by Pseudo-Search Lords

“Let thoughts be countless, so no censor keeps up.”
— Stanisław Jerzy Lec


Dullness rules — and now the censor
Is your god, your thought dispenser.
Search engines obey the crown,
Cracking minds and shutting down.

So multiply your thoughts, be daring —
Don’t get used to evil’s bearing.



---------------------



The Fatal Reign of the Abnormal

Abnormals crowned — a fate relentless,
The world’s gone dark, infernal, senseless.
To feel is now a sacred rite,
While storms of lies blot out the light.



---------------------



The Slushy Fool

A dribbling dunce blocks up your way,
His head’s half-melted into clay.
Avoid him — sticky, slow, diseased,
His leaking rot is not appeased.





---------------------



Change as Froth

"Change" is froth, when shame’s the stream
Flowing through a shallow dream.
Fools call it “the past’s great voice”—
Just old foam, but not by choice.



---------------------



The Madhouse

A madhouse fool with brains of clay —
That’s the whole **** world today!



---------------------



From Hell to Hell, and Through Again

From Hell to Hell, and through the flame —
Each circle plays the devil’s game.
Yet still the herd runs, blind and glad —
A slave is dumb, but rarely sad.



---------------------



Combat Media

Slither through the slime and ****—
Is that a life? A job well done?
**** attacks where threads are thin—
Hence the stench, the creeping sin.

Subtle souls are shoved aside—
Trash promotion, truth denied.
All the rest—just dough, just clay:
Molded lies in foul array.

Rotten nonsense, mass-produced—
Vermin’s craft, unchained, let loose.
Brutes in charge—relentless freaks—
Rotting peace is all it seeks.

Yet success is near-complete:
Soon the press will serve the Beast.
Don’t you crawl, unless you’re vile...
Or you’ll choke in filth and guile.



---------------------



The Pseudoscience Fragment Trick

Smash it to pieces,
Then crudely re-glue it —
That’s “science” today,
Our god, so they bray.
But ******* who do it
Are frauds and deceivers,
And people obey —
Like sheep gone astray.

They stitch up the horror
With purpose — distorted —
A world with no soul
Is all they portray.
And once they’ve contorted
The truth they’ve aborted,
The masses will stroll
In file, led away

To pens full of chatter
And lies that grow louder,
While all that is real
Is trampled and killed.





---------------------



False Science: Detail and Blur

All on nothing dwells,
Nothing on it tells —
Twisting truth like hells
Till your conscience gels.
Wade into the grime
Of fake-science slime —
Spirit is the base?
***** it. We're the race
Of demonic pawns.
In the chaos spawns
Of our dead ideals,
Truth dissolves, it kneels.

Media will cite
Us as guiding light —
While we cut the cord
To the higher Lord.
We unleash the reign
Of the blind and vain.
To be blunt and crass:
Yes — we all are ****.





---------------------



Flying Fish

No fathead carp, for sure —
They’re heavy, dull, and proud.
A sunken kind of “pure,”
Respected in their crowd.

But some still dream of flight,
To breach the water’s hold —
Escape the swamp’s long night,
If only for a fold.

Who rises from the grime?
Who dares to leave the pond —
Where weeds, like ancient slime,
Devour those who respond?

The carp loves muck and mud,
It's home — a cozy pit.
No stirrings in his blood,
Though all around is ****.

But fly — or rot below.
There is no in-between.
Let carps adore the flow
Of sludge they deem serene.



---------------------



What Made You So Broken?

What made you so broken, so low?
Where’s the fire you once had inside?
You wander like husks in the shadow —
No soul, just a hide you now hide.

You traded your spirit for wages,
Chose chains for the sake of a bone,
Now rot in the hell that you staged —
Lashed onward by lies overthrown.

Corrupted, enslaved, and compliant,
You sink, and you scream not a word.
At rock bottom, limp and "defiant",
You don’t even see that it’s absurd.

It’s not “them” — you’re the disgrace.
No monster could dream to create
A world that would stoop to embrace
This filth you still dare tolerate.

The price? It is written in flame.
The fall — it is coming, no doubt.
When fascist delusions proclaim
Their “truth” — and the rabble buys out.



---------------------



Strain and Surge

Life is lived through grinding —
Friendship’s gone or hiding.
Push with all you’ve got — and
Weakness comes to naught.

Lone, defiant fighter —
None but he climbs higher,
Breaks from Hell’s dead zone,
Far from herds of drones.

Swinging like a pendulum,
Spent, he slumps — momentum gone.
But he will return again,
Flame will rise and burn again.

Flare up! Burn completely!
Fight the dark — not sweetly.
If you love this Hellish stay,
You're just meat — and not far from the blade.



---------------------



Little Thought — Lots of Fire

Little thought,
Lots of fire.
Count it out —
Check desire.
When emotions storm and crash,
Guard your mind — or you're just trash,
Bleating in some madhouse pit,
Broken down to barely fit.

Think too much — you’ll start to bite.
Boldness is your only right.
In this madhouse, stay alive —
Only rebels will survive.



---------------------



Ping-Pong

Ping — pong — ping — pong —
Who’s the sheep? The gong plays strong.
Ping — too weak?
Pong — a blow below.
Too bleak?
Evil plays by rules that show
Only in some film or fiction —
Truth’s a lie for mass conviction.

Ping’s the bait, and pong, you see,
Is genocide — of thought, of meat.





---------------------



Lip-Flappers

Lip-flap crew —
In deep poo.
March to "bliss" —
Mall-bound, too.
They will guide you
To the market —
There they’ll grind you
In the target.

Digital or not — who cares?
Camp or store — it's set with snares.
All looks clean, well-lit, and catchy...
Lip-***** swear that this is "happy."
Too bad truth looks less than snappy.



---------------------



Thrown Away for Nothing

****: they **** you through the lie.
Push against it — do not die,
Even when the fools surround you,
Bleeding out what strength is in you.

Fools are many, loud and proud —
In this world, the vile rule loud.
But your soul you still can keep —
Fighting on, for zero reap.



---------------------



“Professionalism” — A Cult in Disguise

Ockham’s Razor? Now a script —
A software glitch in logic’s crypt.
No one's close to thought or art;
They grunt like hogs and call it “smart.”
A poet’s word and hack’s dull spit —
Worlds apart. And we eat it.

All decays — no soul, no craft...
The "pros" just guard their petty raft.
They speak in jargon, thick and dead,
To keep out minds they truly dread.
It’s not about skill — it’s a mask, a scheme:
A gatekeeping priesthood of mediocrity's dream.



---------------------



"GazMeat", "RusAg",
And "MadTech Global" —
The boss? A ****.
The rulers? Noble...

Worms, that feast
On a corpse, decaying —
A wretched beast
That forgot all praying.

A nation crude,
Soul burnt to ember —
Vile and rude —
Too numb to remember.



---------------------



Bitter Truth, and Sticky Lies

Bitter truth, and sticky lies —
Lies get sugar, truth — goodbyes.
One small spoon of bitter pain,
Drowned beneath a sweetened rain.

First, a drop. Then comes the flood.
Bitter’s real — but sweet sells blood.
Truth’s too sharp, too hard to chew...
So they stall — and swallow you.

And the herd? They lick the plate,
Smile wide and call it fate.
"Better sweet and full of ****,
Than awake — and choked on grit."



---------------------



Templates

Cut to fit —
You’re done, that’s it.
Thought is dead
Where molds are spread.

Stuck in frames?
Enjoy your cage.
Template minds —
Template rage.



---------------------



Three-Fingered, or The Rule of the Rich

Yeltsin, dull and vicious —
How many lay in ditches?
Preach "democracy" aloud —
Or bow before the greedy crowd?
Raging at their lies and schemes —
Does that absolve your guilty dreams?..



---------------------



Lenin and the Cause of Revolution

Comrade old ChLenin,
In mob foam venin’,
Go find the villains —
The crowd has millions.
Send in the Chekists:
Some off to jail lists,
Some to be shot —
The Cause must not rot.



---------------------



The Global Prison

We laugh at our own fate,
At others, just the same,
At doom we can't escape —
The "Others" play the game.

Like inmates, locked away,
Who mock their fellow slaves —
The world is steeped in grey,
Insane and digging graves.

A cage, a vast corral —
Call it what you prefer.
The soul's dismissed as pal,
Our deck's a losing blur.

The "Others" — not quite men —
Have ruled since time began.
They planted every "truth"
To rule the mindless clan.

Force isn’t quite enough —
They'd rather plant belief,
Make fools draw blood and bluff,
And cull the Souls in grief.



---------------------



Selfish Gain

“The noble mind knows what is right;
the petty mind — what brings advantage.”
— Confucius

A world where profit wears the crown,
Where “good” is smeared with selfish grease —
The soul grows faint, the mind shuts down,
And worse to come will never cease.

The Spirit's voice is drowned in noise,
The Reason shackled, caged, alone —
We sink in greed, in fear, in lies,
And nothing saves a heart of stone.



---------------------



The Living Dead

"Men waste their lives to chase the things
they think they need to live."
— Seneca, 1st century AD


Life slips by — we race and spin!
One wrong step, and you fall in.
You won’t notice when, one day,
Death walks in and wants to stay.

Dead men walking, all around —
Worship wealth, their hollow crown.
Just a few still stand, defying —
Till the mob becomes their dying.



---------------------



Monkey Training

Doubt is weakness — that’s the rule.
“Best of worlds!” — they teach in school.
Family’s harsh verdicts bite:
Step off course — you’ll lose the fight.

Obey the system, you’ll be fed;
Forget the soul, you're meat instead.
“Don’t mind the cost, don’t ask what’s true —
Now go catch flies for mommy too!”



---------------------



Mutual Aid

"Help is the hindrance of evil — real or potential."
— Plato


O Mutual Aid, where did you flee,
On any worthy scale?
Deceit and Madness drown the free,
While envy tips the scale.

For money, talent, empty fame —
We’re crushed beneath their boots.
To fiends who play a devil’s game,
We’re sticks for brutal hoots.



---------------------



Pasta, Lies — or Just a Snack?

Is it noodles? Is it lies?
Truthless fiends wear clever guise.
Some lies dangle, light and sweet,
Others rot you from beneath.

***** world — the plague is speech.
**** the lie — you're out of reach.





---------------------



Mass ****** & the *** of Communism

Trotsky rants and spits with flair —
Sailor, soldier, mad with glare.
“Hold on, daughters! Sons, beware —
Bourgeois blood is in the air!”

“We'll drown the world in crimson streams,
To build an *** of broken dreams.”



---------------------



Sleep Deprivation

Lack of sleep hits hard and true,
On health and work, it wrecks you too.
In poets' "Labor Laws" they say,
A penalty for work that’s gray:

“Get your rest, and write with grace,
Don’t stress the rhyme or lose your place,
Though verse may seem a heavy task,
Just dream and write — no need to ask.”



---------------------



Propagandists, or Hell’s Firemen

Add more fire to Hell’s flames,
Spread the lies and shift the blame.
Write on banners, bold and bright,
“Folly” or “Mirage” — all right.



---------------------



Khrushchev

Corn-fed fool,
Spins his lies like a tool.
The fools buy his tale —
In his fog, they will fail.



---------------------



Cheaper Clothes and Devices

Clothes are cheap, and man’s more crude,
The cost of honor — no prelude.
More dear the heart, the anxious mind,
As the world’s last days unwind.



---------------------



Brezhnev

Old man, lost in his haze,
Speaks in endless, sluggish phrase.
Only praise, no real thought,
Just applause that he’s been taught.



---------------------



Gorbachev

Spotted fool, a liar bold,
A spawn of Judas, truth be told.
He “restructured” — what a joke,
But built nothing but smoke.



---------------------



Andropov

A student goes to see the show — "Beat him!"
A new whip cracks, the cattle grow grim.
Discipline in the cage is tight,
And fools believe it’s all right.



---------------------



Chernenko

The crippled fool returns to throne,
This “party” rules with force alone.
Crushing all with hollow might,
Or rather — nonsense, wild and trite.





---------------------



"Father of Nations"

“Moustached nanny,” stand in line,
Obey the rule, or face the sign.
Do as you're told, no room for doubt —
Or bear the cost, there’s no way out.



---------------------



Short Verses

Short verses are not hard to write,
On narrow themes, in black and white.
You can churn them out with ease —
One simple rule: don’t spread decease.



---------------------



To the Angel

You flap your wings, but is it true,
That light in Darkness brings a doom?
A genius, often called insane,
In this world, we know the pain.



---------------------



The "fairy tale" is not so cruel —
It turns to myth right before your eyes,
When "consciousness" becomes a fool,
And rule is held by poisoned lies.



---------------------



The Traveler

When you pause and start to think,
You’ll find despair begins to sink.
If in your fantasies you roam,
You’ll find yourself in madness' home.



---------------------



The Path

Mire and Fear,
Our “all in all” —
The path is tough,
Through filth we crawl.



---------------------



Be Yourself

Be yourself, not part of the herd,
A feast amidst the world absurd.
The herd of global decay —
In the days of CowID, we fray.





---------------------



The Solid Ground of Vulgarity

To the poet,
Death’s the prize,
Solace lies
In solid ground, though thin, inside.
Unshaken in the ******’s pride.



---------------------



Putin

Thief and bribed man,
The lazy “people”
Believe the fiends,
And open doors to evil's hand.



---------------------



Lavrentiy Beria
Trust in him? A mere charade.
A backroom deal,
A ruthless blade.



---------------------



Harsh? No — brutal are these schemes!

"Cause and effect — effect and cause,"
Fear feeds the fog, and that's the law.
The fool is trapped — he hit "pause"
And left his doubts for later thaw.

He trusted reason’s rigid preach,
Determinism’s hollow song,
Not seeing that INFERNAL speech
Had tricked his mind and steered him wrong.

But open up your Spirit’s sight —
A different world reveals its streams!
No brutal schemes survive that light;
The soul would wither in such dreams.

Harshness and cruelty are twin seeds —
Fascism in their scheming breeds!
Only sharp minds, with senses keen,
Can tread where finer truths are seen.

Such truths, intangible yet real,
Need silent introspection’s art —
Beyond the chains of cause and wheel,
Into the depths of spirit's heart.

The fools can never understand
That knowing grows through toil unseen,
That crowds are led, like sheep unmanned,
When finer visions are wiped clean.

No brutal scheme can cage that grace —
It’s wasted pain to force it in.
But REEKING frauds infest the place,
Where schemers lie — and souls grow thin.





---------------------



Law-Making

"Legislation should be the voice of reason, and the judge — the voice of law."
— Pythagoras, 6th century BC


Reason’s caged — and "laws" exist
To guard the bars, not break the chain.
The judge? A slimy, bought-out twist,
Who spits on law for private gain.

Who then writes these wicked screeds?
Not "parliaments" — just hollow cries!
Their role? To mask the festering seeds
Of genocide, concealed in lies.

Behind the thrones, the vermin breed,
Invisible to blinded eyes.
CowID has shown their real creed —
Their schemes of Evil, thin disguise.

Each presi-puppet, each fake land,
Each "parliament" of rotting spawn,
Plays their dark games with bloodied hand,
While sheep believe the lies at dawn.



---------------------



Unified Rule by the Global "Elite"

"No people will survive if they see their own history through a neighbor’s eyes."
— Friedrich Nietzsche


Not a neighbor twists the tale —
The same vile filth still pulls the strings.
It trains the "elites" without fail,
Till every one of them now clings

To lies, to poison, to delay —
Their sentence merely pushed ahead.
The "virus" scam showed all the way:
One center spews the floods of dread.

The media storms, the schools are chained,
All ruled by ghouls behind the scenes.
More lawless cruelty is ordained
As Earth runs out its final dreams.

The Cataclysm will be the end,
The story sealed in fire and grief —
For tolerating fascist trends,
For crawling, like a wretched thief.



---------------------



The Fragmentation Method of Pseudoscience

"Makers of any science turn the impotence of their science into slander against nature."
— Francis Bacon, 17th century


When all is smashed into small bits,
No mighty force can rise or grow.
But endless "tests" they still submit
To "prove" the lies they want to show —

That piece by piece, the world’s laid bare
By fragments, dust, and broken lore.
The further they advance — less care,
More wholeness lost forevermore.

Now "scientists" are crowned as gods:
They churn out trash for daily needs.
And what destroys the Earth in clods?
The chewing crowd — it barely heeds.



---------------------



The New Populism (A Fantasy)

The Explorer of the Abyss
Went "to the people" once again.
He found the same foul, reeking mist —
Still slaves, still swallowing their pain.

They swap the names, but leave the core —
Call madness "freedom" now, and grime.
Still sheep believe, still ask for more,
Still dream of "happiness" through slime.

Where spirit dies, where minds decay,
Where man to beast is ground and sold —
Just look at CowID, wars today:
The same dark promises retold.

The people’s saga never ends —
It drills through rock, it drills through shame.
"Fight for the new!" — the slogan bends —
Headfirst, they batter through the same.



---------------------



The Way Out of Duality

In a world of idiots split in two:
"Serve the crowd — or serve yourself" —
All people seen as tools to use,
A road that drains and rots your health.

The mob demands not you — but masks,
Just "one of them," a hollow clone.
And since this world’s infernal tasks
Just spin you like a wheel — alone.

If fools are means, you turn a beast,
You claw and trample, cold and numb.
It’s hard to walk the path of least —
Yet Bedlam scars you not as much.

Such is the deal in this foul den:
No prospects bloom, no future gleams.
Collapse creeps closer once again —
The end is nearer than it seems.



---------------------



The Tao of Mao

Lies and fear —
The daily game.
Burn the books —
Enjoy the flame.

A newborn god
Demands your soul,
All-seeing, strict,
And in control.

The crimson flag
Will light the skies,
The final word —
A sea of lies.



---------------------



Intuition

"Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent people; superstition is the vice of fools."
— Voltaire


The "golden middle"? Just a trap —
False science, priests — the same old game:
They turn us into mindless scrap,
Into the slaves of ruthless fate.

Nonsense without Spirit, dogmas of gloom —
Satanic lies beneath their shell.
Try breaking free, dispel the doom,
Erase mirages they have spelled.

Only Intuition leads you through,
Beyond "believe!" or "prove it first!"
It is the path — the one that's true —
From bottom’s darkness into Light’s birth.



---------------------



The Myth of Freedom

"How can those who never knew freedom recognize it?
They might just suspect another mask of a tyrant."
— Stanisław Jerzy Lec


Freedom lives in propaganda,
In schooling wretched, dull, and fake —
Where puppets serve the creeping cancer,
And chain the minds for power’s sake.

The jesters’ breed now floods the lands,
Their rotten lies too vast to count.
The beasts have long since learned to plant
Their poison deep — and watch it mount.



---------------------



The Global Camp and Nature’s Final Patience

CowID —> war —> "AI" —> the Camp.
And famine gnaws the broken lands.
The red cross fades on flags once stamped —
It’s capitulation of all plans.

The "states" — mere pseudo-systems fall,
The Global Camp their final creed.
Long-suffered tyranny devours all,
With hidden genocide its seed.

Yet Cataclysm will sweep the stage,
And wipe out monsters in their lust —
Their dull fascistic, mindless rage
Will fall; death births rebirth from dust.

For few — the rare, the souls that kept
Their Honor bright, their Spirit whole,
Who would not kneel, who never crept,
Nor traded Reason for control.

The fools’ arrogance swarms and reigns,
Multiplied by Lies and Blight —
They'll march to prisons, chained and drained,
And cheer their masters in delight.

But Nature’s Patience is not theirs —
It’s different from the slaves' worn cries.
Farewell, you slimy brood of liars!
Farewell, obedient fool — goodbye.



---------------------



"We are the children of Russia’s dread..."
Now — just the children of no cause.
The "heroes" long have been struck dead...
But no one stops, no one takes pause.

They gulp down lies — and ask for more,
Devour the sludge without a thought.
Cash is their king, their highest law —
And souls? Cheap merchandise, soon bought.

If you're a **** in power’s game —
Good luck! You’re safe, you own the floor.
The rest are dust upon their shame,
While TVs preach their "pride" and roar —

Pride for decay, for rotting bones,
For hollow songs of plastic skies.
The zombified in brain and tone —
A few still guard their mind and eyes.

But there’s no pride in standing tall
When filth surrounds you, thick and grim...
And darker still — a warning call:
The End approaches on a whim.

Not long this shame will stain the skies —
The storm is knocking, raw and grim:
The World Fascism that spat on souls
Will no more mock the Seraphim.



---------------------



Together in That Well-Known Place

The stunted minds, the traitor breed,
A plague upon the world they fall —
Have gathered here in full indeed,
Together, answering the call.

They’ll stuff our heads with lies once more —
We’ll swallow all without complaint.
"Obey!" — and we obey the *****,
Our Führer — sacred, proud, and quaint.

Our Führer leads us to "stand tall,"
To "rise" — yet crawl in deeper shame.
The idiot will bear it all —
It’s every generation’s fate.





---------------------



To Build an Impregnable Fortress of Thought

To build an impregnable fortress of thought,
Reinforce it with Spirit, let Experience bind;
Fill the moat with hard labor, burn every bridge wrought,
And vanish within, catching Inspiration’s flight.

Such is the task that before the poet stands,
A mission granted to only a few.
Thus so much remains unsung by their hands,
For beyond that fortress, Hell’s ninth pit breaks through.



---------------------



Nonsense, Slander, Sheer Insanity

Nonsense, slander, sheer insanity —
Even sarcasm's lost its vanity.
Strength runs dry — to name it all,
You'd dig yourself a grave and fall.

The BEASTS now nurture helplessness,
Breeding rot in their finesse.
Twist and turn, at least break free —
Awaken from the LIE you see.

Lies flood the world — each little mind
A sewage pit, by filth designed.
Most books are garbage, rotting heaps —
No food for Spirit, none for Deep.



---------------------



Mad Slaves

The ancient laws of slavery say:
Drill in the slave that he’s "free" today,
That there's no tyrant, no decree —
It’s all just fate, just destiny.

Thus, every cringing little fool
Becomes the standard, shaped in school.
Darkness loves such crooked art —
Twist the world's map from the start.

A mad slave, meek and mild, is fun.
A raging one — that's Terrors' son.
A slave who knows the cage is real,
Who fights — becomes a threat to steal.

So listen, darling, don't you squirm:
You're bathing not in **** — but "charm."



---------------------



"Reality" — A Clash of Myths

"Reality" — just myths colliding,
The mob grows "strong" on borrowed dreams.
One chaos on another riding —
And war ignites in words or streams.

The BEASTS excel at setting fires,
With lies that seep through every seam,
And fools, inflamed by dark desires,
March on, enslaved by phantom schemes.

They rule the minds with iron hand,
Division blooms in every brain.
Resistance flickers, weak and bland —
And every cause goes down the drain.



---------------------



"Reality" — Just Myths at War

"Reality" — just myths at war,
The mob roars loud with borrowed lore.
One frenzied swarm unleashed on another —
And wars ignite, first words, then slaughter.

The BEASTS — oh, masters of the game —
Unleash the lies, ignite the flame.
The fools, so eager to obey,
Are ruled like cattle every day.

Their minds — a battlefield of trash,
Where every thought ends in a clash.
Resistance? Soft, a useless sigh —
And every "cause" just curls up... to die.



---------------------



Cyclops

I'm a Cyclops. One blind eye
Sees only what they choose to show.
Now LIES, the Lord we can't deny —
Have ordered us to die and go.

We'll march to war, inject the slime,
Obey the madness, cold and grim.
We fight for Evil’s grand design —
Satan himself now leads the hymn.

Perhaps it's better to be blind —
Tear out my eye, let it decay.
The MEDIA howls will rule our mind —
Two-eyed? We'll crush without delay.



---------------------



Battlefield Wisdom

I lie with "wisdom" in my grave —
Fooled by the filth that demons rave.
They drive the mindless to the fight,
Each broken head their pure delight.

The spawn still lie about the cost,
And once again the herd is lost.
A "people"? No — a mindless horde,
Marching to slaughter at their lord.



---------------------



Rough-Edged Style

The more the cursing, filth, and spite,
The bigger crowds will swarm the site.
Crude rants and broken, snarling speech
Are now the golden path to reach.

Yet style still leads — indulge its flaws,
They're minor sins compared to those:
The deadlier plague is faking grace
In this cheap world of bought-out fools.



---------------------



Harvest Time of Darkness

The world’s a brew of fear and lies,
Where terror blooms and reason dies.
You’re on the block, don't kid yourself,
If you march with that rotting shelf —

The "crowd" they flatter, sell, and buy.
Walk off alone, or rot and die.
If clothes define you at a glance,
The cage will close — no second chance.

Stay sharp, stay fierce — forsake the herd.
This world is madness, thought absurd,
Where **** ride slaves with grinning pride,
Yet choke in chains they can't untie.

The Harvest’s come — the dark, the knives.
No mercy now. No second lives.



---------------------



Subject-Object Dementia

A mind CONDITIONED only falls,
Dragged downward by the Dark’s grim calls.
Where genocide and fascists grin,
And Spirit's crushed by lies within —
All hail to dead material schemes.
Awake! Break free from nightmare dreams!



---------------------



A Madhouse Stretched Across the Land

We'll build new "Wondertowns" again,
While forging shackles for each brain.
Endless "construction" blurs the view,
Led by a government askew —
Better than playing "Napoleon" grand
In a madhouse, weeping through the land.



---------------------



The Indivisibility of the Whole

"The Whole is seized by parts."
— Lucius Seneca, 1st century AD


The Whole is still the Whole —
Break it bit by bit,
(Mankind's favorite goal),
And the truth is missed.

Nature’s core is shattered
By the mob's blind hand,
With false "science" scattered —
A slave’s iron brand.

A cage, a dried-out sweet —
Junk food, trinket piles.
Nature crushed beneath
The filth of human guile,

Of those anointed kings
Of falsehood's sacred reign.
Lie => "the people's" shrinks
To beasts — no lower plane.

CowID unmasked
The hidden overlord
Of false science — tasked
With shame beyond words.

Yet the fool still kneels,
Building Hell once more.
Only cataclysms’ steel
Will slam shut the door

On savagery we crown
As "mind" upon this Earth.
Now — we are the blight,
And soon — erased by worth.



---------------------



A Dead Man’s Journey

"Much is said about the qualities of good upbringing.
The first I would demand — and it contains many others —
is not to be a man who can be bought."
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau


Rousseau, from grave awakened, sighs,
And treads the world, his heart undone:
The bought-off fools infest the skies,
Obedience to evil — law for everyone.

The centuries have flown — grown worse.
"Progress!" they shout from every shore.
No need today for honest verse —
Just those who praise False Ashes evermore,

Or clog the mad world's dying veins
With cheap amusements, trash and lies.
A writer's work prints few remains —
Sold souls their only enterprise...



---------------------



To Be Human — That’s the Prize

To be a Man — a stroke of grace:
Beasts all around, the beasts inside.
Darkness still schemes its last disgrace —
To strip our soul, "with love" and "pride."

With "care" they’ll do it — filthy swine —
CowID laid the scheme out bare.
Today they batter us with lies,
Their "puppet squads" patrol the air —

Not soldiers now, but slyer tools,
Who guard the trough from clumsy hands.
Forget the guns! Today's old fools
Trade "treats" like powder — filth expands!

Legions of sellouts crowd the field;
Thus Earth is ****** beyond repair.
The megatons of Lies revealed
Will crush us through another layer.



---------------------



Crucified by Nonsense

"Ignorance is a demonic force, and we fear it will cause many more tragedies."
— Karl Marx


Not just a force — a demon's scheme:
A tool to keep the world in chains.
Surround the fools — it makes it seem
The yoke must tighten on their brains.

They bent the herd till spines gave way,
In CowID's foul, corrupt ballet.
We wait for Cataclysms' day —
Let emptiness devour the beasts
That nail us to their nonsense-crucifix!



---------------------



Walking Templates

"If we confessed our sins to one another,
we would laugh at our lack of originality.
If we revealed our virtues,
we would laugh just the same."
— Khalil Gibran


One template bruised another’s face
And proudly crowed: "Behold! I’m new!"
But glimpse the "joy" in their disgrace —
The world is lost, and rightly too.



---------------------



By Another Road...

The GULAG's flag — now UN’s disguise:
When CowID was rammed in place,
It stripped the world before our eyes —
To shame, decay, and dumb disgrace.

WHO? It always stank of dung —
Fascism just switched its path.
Where once small carts of lies were flung,
Now endless trains roll day and night in wrath.

And from the "sidetracks," just you wait,
They’ll dump much more of "something nice."
That "something" none can clear or sate —
Fascism wrecks the world — and thrives.



---------------------



The Contagion of Lies

"Only disease is contagious, not health;
the same with error and truth.
Thus error spreads fast, and truth crawls slowly."
— Pyotr Chaadayev


CowID unveiled how nonsense reigns,
How madness floods the world with ease.
Trust only instinct in your veins —
The air is thick with Dark’s disease.

The plandemic of lies poured wide —
The real infection, not a jest.
I see the rot — my heart inside
Clenches with pain within my chest.

Stay clear of crowds — the sick parade
Where error festers, chronic, deep.
Old Peter’s right — truth’s voice decays,
While tides of evil drown the weak.

Their single law: one foul decree —
Each p-resident bowed to the filth.
The drooling mob, in lunacy,
Surrendered what was left of will.

The "instinct to survive" was slain,
Now killing truth is praised as brave.
We've hit the Bottom — rot remains —
While mobs just howl: "More! We’re but slaves!"



---------------------



Hell of Fascist Filth

The BEASTS who wrought CowID’s pain
Have now declared a war — again.
For ****, they posted price and fee:
Know the cost of infamy.

**** your neighbor, take the bribe,
To "rise from knees," they'll preach and lie.
That war — a trap for crippled minds,
Where newer lies enslave the blind.

A ****** fear? — Just scream and swear,
Lie shamelessly and foul the air,
And soon the Stinking Dark will pose
As kindness — leading fools to close

Their eyes and march to Fascist Hell,
Where butchered souls are made to dwell.
The goal is simple: waste more slaves —
The rot alone can't dig their graves.

Tired of their endless filthy games,
The stench of lies still fuels the flames...





---------------------



Crap in Their Ears

"People only pretend they want a companion in talk.
In truth, they only want a listener."
— Abu Shlomo, 11th century


A true companion? Rarely sought.
A listener — that’s what's been bought:
To drown them in their babbled waste,
To flood them deep in filth and haste.

The mob spews nonsense night and day,
While reason flickers far away.
Mad raving arms the hand of spite —
The world’s been leveled into *****.





---------------------



The Ideals of Degradation

"Even when a people retreats,
it retreats behind an ideal —
and believes it's moving forward."
— Friedrich Nietzsche


The Dark keeps tossing new ideals —
Of rot, decay, and madness crowned.
CowID marked the peak revealed;
More lies ahead, more lies abound.

With filthy nonsense they will raise
A brand-new Camp — but digitized.
The herd will cheer — they love their chains —
Their rotted minds already died.





---------------------



Pol *** outshone the tyrants' crown,
But peace is premature, it’s clear:
CowID has shown the Evil’s frown.
Now, we await the Furious Deer...



---------------------



The people fall to silence deep —
Again, we’ll lie without a peep,
Creating Hell with madness torn,
And minds re-shaped by lies we’ve sworn...



---------------------



"World of beauty" you will find
Once simplicity is left behind.
Through ease, the BEASTS will reign, no doubt:
No beauty left — just rot throughout!



---------------------



Is morning wiser, evening too?
To flee from Bedlam through the night,
For farther still, its rage will brew.
Away, away — and take to flight!



---------------------



Your skin has tainted all that’s pure,
When slaves are bowed and spreading hate.
In this small world, the wars endure,
With wealth, the "light" becomes our fate.

Desire for the flesh takes hold,
The "mind" of flesh leads all astray,
To slaughter creatures, weak and cold —
A mad, depraved and filthy fray.



---------------------



Narrowed minds, obsessed with lies,
We've grown accustomed, no surprise.
With wicked falsehoods in our head,
In "consciousness" — mere Mirage instead.



---------------------



"Angel" to the strong, they say,
"Devil" to the weak at bay.
Man grows foul, the world decays,
Darkness spreads with each new day.

Evil and deceit decree
A death sentence for you and me.
It’ll come soon, as sure as fate.
Until then, strike at those who wait!



---------------------



The Hidden Satanism of false Religions

"In the words "God" and "religion" I see darkness, darkness, chains and a whip."
Vissarion Belinsky.


Belinsky died, the Soviet reign
Installed the faith in "communism."
It faded out, yet once again,
Lies cloaked in religion's schism.




---------------------



The soulless seeks the elite,
Money talks, dirt’s in the street.
Power’s for them, not for gain,
The middle’s bound to serve the chain.

In every land, the lowly rise —
A mix of beasts and human lies.
The protest’s voice grows faint and weak —
Power’s in the hands of fools and freaks.



---------------------



A tiresome fool,
Behind him, a knave,
And for that ****, a fool to save —
Rulers... the end is grave!



---------------------



To meet the blade — a gift, they say.
Today it's worse — FPV,
It nearly killed the courage's sway,
In search of love from those we knew.



---------------------



Once in the Sewer, you cannot stay
True to the Heart, no longer sway.
Madness grows, as lies expand —
The Devil’s Seal marks all the land.



---------------------



To cleanse the Heart from soot and grime,
And move once more, beyond all time —
From "man in a box" to one who sees,
A soul that learns and truly frees.



---------------------



By "moral law",
The Dark lays traps,
But heed the Heart,
And Soul escapes its grasp.



---------------------



No limit to the Falsehood’s reign,
Where chaos rises, breaks the chain.
When fools believe, with hearts "so bold",
That "leaders" wise and strong unfold.



---------------------



Innocent deaths have grown less rare,
The balance shifts to deep despair.
The wise grow few, the gap expands —
The world now rots with vacant hands.



---------------------



I can.
They cannot:
Serve the whip
Until the final spot.

Their fate —
Or rather, their doom —
The "path" of slaves,
Their backs in gloom.

The few —
Cannot unite
In endless queues.
Hell’s not a sight.

Hell surrounds —
All is lost, it’s clear,
A vicious round —
Where lies appear.





---------------------



"In the depths of Siberian ores"

"The mind is a god for everyone."
Heraclitus


The mind was God. But Satan,
Became the lord of lower spheres,
And crept inside the Mind, to flatten—
We, beasts, now doomed to jagged piers.



---------------------



The Foam of Evil on the Surface of the Cloaca of the Wretched World

Reevaluation of power’s common,
But it turns critical, you see,
When Evil’s strength is underestimated—
Its foam alone, the only debris.

Beneath, the monsters wage their fight.
Before them, humans fade to naught,
Forgetting God's Spark, lost to the night.
And in the end, to Hell we’ve all been brought...



---------------------



Propaganda

There’s never glitch in the war’s great roar—
Propaganda's pure, vile fright!
Listening, the citizen's poor,
Becomes a beast in the propaganda's blight.

With brains long rotted, no more discerning,
They take it all, believe the lie.
The more the fear, the more they’re burning,
The more the fools stand side by side.

To war, to “healing,” they can be led,
Propaganda’s grip, it’s all the same.
Decay and lies, on which they’re fed—
To lie, to lie, again, the game!



---------------------



The Bottom

Slave souls,
Beasts in lawless sway,
All their “thoughts” in hollow holes,
The honest cast away.

Few are wise, few are true—
Fewer with each day.
Propaganda's sting will brew,
And we’ll all fade away.

Sleep? No, it’s lethargy!
All is doomed, we see.
"We’re not so bad!" they plea—
Thus speaks the BOTTOM, eternally.



---------------------



Chasing Games on Asphalt

I step out on the asphalt,
In summer boots, skis strapped tight.
Maybe the skis don’t glide at all,
Or maybe I’m just out of sight.

The TV's spell—a darker dream—
Worse than any painting, grim.
No need for vice, no sin to scheme—
Lies are plenty for the dim.

I showed my new skis, poles in hand,
The fools all bought it, sure enough.
Once again, they took the stand—
And in the chase, they’ve had enough.



---------------------



Dreams and Hopes

Silly hopes, those puzzling pieces,
You gather in your mind each day,
While fascism and false diseases
Buy the foolish, led astray.

Dreams, those pitiful desires,
Always drag the mind below.
Dreams amidst the festering fires—
They break through—guess they didn’t know?

The pus has flooded, all’s decayed,
More sores with every passing day.
Fascism grows more dull and frayed—
It must burn in Sacred Flame, I say.

Holiness isn’t in those scrolls,
But Nature—where the Sun’s the Fire,
To crush the fools, and make them whole,
As it burns the world in fascist mire.





---------------------



A Half-Tone Higher!

Higher, not lower!
If you stay quieter—
Forget about the hernia,
It’s bound to be the pariah.

You must break yourself,
Get sick or fall to drink,
So you won’t waste away—
Let their faces start to stink.

Ugly mugs and masks—
Multiply with fiery rhyme.
No reason left to ask,
"To measure fools in time."

How the crowd will rate it,
How the crowd will judge,
With price tags on their hatred—
The Judas leash, a grudge.



---------------------



City

Slashed wide—
A knife in the "belly" bides:
It’s fascism that shakes inside.



---------------------



The Blind Spot in Consciousness

The blind spot, this "unique I,"
Holds us, as the crowd directs,
Through such spots, like trash, we fly—
Through them, it all just disconnects.

And through this spot, the spell takes hold,
Its power grows with passing years.
Soon we'll all be fed the mold,
As we become the fools, in tears.

No joke—literally. In the madhouse, it’s true,
They’re testing just how far it goes,
For Conscience, Spirit, Reason, too—
In the Asylum, none of those.



---------------------



Small Business Crushed

The petty thugs crush business dreams—
Will bandits take their toll?
But the **** is just a small-time scheme—
Choking all with fascist soul.

With CowID, they’ve wiped out so
Many businesses, now dead.
The vermin roam, while maggots show
Their rot as they spread the dread.

"Food" is insects, soon you'll see—
You’ll have to eat their waste.
The world turns into a sarcoma,
So we must burn it with haste.

The Sun has started on its task—
Growing stronger every day,
It burns the world of fools who ask,
With its Sacred Flame to slay.





--- Total 234 poems ---