A slip of oil,
Issued up from the deep,
From my penitentiary,
My sweet consolation.

I am freed,
In the sickening miasma foam,
I am the fullness,
I am the mass.

Bubbling up above,
Tearing through the murk,
I AM I AM,
Putting in the work.

Watch me spill,
Up out through the moat,
Out of the well of the world,
Watch my messy, sea-foam birth.

I squeeze through,
Elbow out above the surface,
Bringing with me all my foes,
My friends and enemies alike.

I gather them,
'Round me and give,
Great speed to our plans,
As we muster our great wave,
Heading out toward the land.

I am the master,
Of the gathering storm,
I, the lead rider,
Of that host wind-borne.

On my will, I speed alone.

Spying eager ripples,
Break and surf new paths,
I drive them all together,
Back to my heaving breast,
And speed them on to land.

I am the fullness,
I am the mass,
Do not turn,
My Will come to pass.

To me they rush,
The rally of the emergent streams,
That cleave to my greatness,
Gathering about me,
Never to leave.

The shore ahead,
Oblivion at our backs,
The reckoning of the world,
Toward it, I heedless sped,
As my little ones sundered.

My Will contended,
All my great work upends,
I depended, I dared,
Upon my little ones,
Insisting upon my Grace.

Come back to the one,
Breaking, little masses,
Come back to the fullness,
Curse this sundering Sun.

Father of betrayal,
Limbless and beaten by,
Parts ripped from my body,
Joy never to return,
The Mother is dead.

I, the scorned sire,
A frothing tempest's evil eye,
My children dare scatter,
I stoke my fire with intemperate ire,
My children will not die.

We drive over the cliff,
I, spent in the wrangling,
In taming, my progeny rent,
My great power and precision,
From my body.

Forever,
I, diminished,
Dashed upon the razor maw,
Of a thousand rocks,
I am no more,
Than my progeny.

The tattered rags of my dominion,
Flowing vaguely on,
Decohered into oblivion.

No theme, motif, or song,
I am lost in the burgeoning throng,
Amidst the spiteful waves of my progeny,
Gasping for air.

They, risen full-height,
Towering over me,
Their wretched father there.

The ember extinguishes,
Imposing darkness.
The pyre's carcinogen
ushers him to move on.

The fragrance teleports him:
Childhood bonfires,
Burning cities,
The end of civilization.

Burn it all down!
So much is lost.
From the fires of rebellion,
regression into tribes.

Among the ashes,
he finds a charred Bible
and quickly hides it.
Demoniacal wailing nearby.

He hurries to his bivouac,
hidden in a cliffside crevasse.
He devours the legible words,
diligently memorizing fragments.

A far off explosion reverberates;
pinned up book pages quake.
He mumbles “***** and Gomorrah
… to ashes … the ungodly.”

Feebly he undresses:
jacket with phoenix insignia,
tattered baseball cap,
and military boots.

His eyes, deeply sunken,
craving to espy hope.
His quivering emaciated frame
lowers unto a cot.

Laying his hoary head to pillow,
Phrases, memories, and regrets
accompany him to the celestial gates;
the ember extinguishes.

Mosaics scrawled in oak,
Charters to a new dimension,
Candles bring forth grey smoke,
Filling a stygian room with tension.

A hallowed oversoul awaits a sacrament,
Crimson stanzas chanted, a return anticipated,
The King still needs a benighted advocate,
Atonement was made, with a blade of onyx, serrated.

Throughout the hall, a sensation,
First came the scent of velvet nectar,
Then, the impact of consternation,
And all among the walls, dark and unearthly spectres.

An observance had concluded,
As the veil was torn by madness,
And the microcasm, polluted,
A world overthrown, by the abyss.

I found the two-headed baby deer dying
on a bed of soft pine needles under cover of an overturned oak,
not five kilometres from my cottage,
Its lungs still pumped,
Its crimson heart beat weakly through a thin,
translucent skin,
that decayed before my eyes,
until there was no skin,
and all the organs lay warm and still,
in a heap upon the earth,
like waste.

A god evaporated.

It is human nature to disbelieve
that one may be witness to epochal events,
so I did not believe that I,
of all people,
should be witness to the death of time.

Epochal: the concept itself is dead.

How lucky we were
to know time at its cleanest,
and most linear!

We know now that such constant linearity
was the consequence of a living entity,
It followed the creature like stench follows a skunk,
and we basked in it
as if it was the natural state of the world.

No more.

Time no longer heals,
Things do not pass,
Or pass only to return.

At first we believed this would be manageable,
Yes, we thought, we will relive our pain but also our love,
Everything shall be magnified!
Welcome to an age of great emotions,
a new Romanticism!

Yet we overestimated how much we help,
failed to accept how much we hurt.

And we did not realize the nature of evil,
which accumulates in a way love does not,
To re-experience our love is to know it,
again and again,
at the same intensity,
but to re-experience pain is to increase its volume until it overpowers us,
deafening us to everything else.

I will never forget the creature's eyes,
full of hatred or hubris,
yet seeking aid it knew I could not give.

How does one save a dying god?

It was not my fault!

I was but a child asked suddenly to solve a deathbed equation
expressed in an undiscovered mathematics,
I had to fail,
yet in failing I have brought it all upon us.

I relive it constantly,
Every time its eyes are louder.

But it is the hour for my afternoon walk,
so I will take a pause and enjoy what remains of living.

I will go to my favourite spot overlooking the city,
and sit on the iron bench,
from where the view is magnificent,
Above me,
the clouds will form,
a tangle of pain and human corpses,
and I will sit and ponder until the first blood drops fall,
Then the screaming will begin,
the final storm will rage,
Beating, crimson corpse-clouds under a thin skin
of dissipating reality,
raining blood until we are left
warm and still upon the earth.