I sit here alone
Is it daytime, is it night?
It doesn't matter

My claws mark the walls
I must look like a demon
As I scratch my arms

My unruly mane
reaches down my back, touching
My nine wild foxtails

I howl at the wall
My songs, cries, stories, and poems
Are all I have left

I hear with six ears
If I were free, I could fly
With my four giant wings

I recall that night
When my friends fought so bravely
Are they still alive?

But I'm trapped and chained
Even if I use my flames
To try melting Iron

Sometimes father comes
With the acid cups and chains
And sometimes his hands

He called me his child
But even back then, he lied
I'm just his project

I count slaps and thrusts
Staring up at the ceiling
Refusing to speak

What month is it, now?
I have lost my sense of time
In this grey stone cell

I peel my ears up
Some bread comes through my door's slot
It's down in one bite

When I chose my friends
They showed me what feelings were
And showed me the truth

I wish I could sleep
This windowless torture cell
Worsens my nightmares

I wake up shrieking
Waking, sleeping, I don't care
The nightmare goes on

I'll never tell him
Whatever's on or inside me
I won't betray friends

The cell's not all grey
I hear music and voices
That no one else can

Sometimes I dance along
My chain and claws scratching tiles
Laughing on a shreik

There's also Inverse
My photograph negative
The ghost haunting me

Inverse keeps teasing
He points out my every flaw
I hate that he's right

I shreik at Inverse
I'm trapped, half dead, in this cell
Waiting for "father"

I bite at my chain
The door of my cell opens
"Father" comes inside

this is the black that I cloaked myself in,
my father's inheritance,
cold blanket of blindness.
that is the crescent slipper I wore
on my feet.
I was Hermes,
coal, jet, fresh leather,
I was a ****** of crows:
a carrion cluster feasting on white
dwarfs and other dead things
that hang by this stellar roadside.
I was alone
and I thought it was magic.
I was alone
and I prayed for magic.
when I sealed that spell
the words made me jump,
I wasn't expecting
to see you here.

The computer was mankinds greatest invention.
Without he computer mankind would never have touched foot on he moon, let alone Mars, Xenoron, Habilacca, or any of the numberless worlds they colonized.

Mankind reached a point on Old Earth of total exhaustion. Scientists said no more than 9 Billion people could live on Old Earth, no more than 2 Billion could live comfortably. In the 32nd century there were 17 Billion people alive, on one planet. They sent 2 billion to the moon, 8 billion to Mars.

By the 45th century their solar system became too small. 82 billion human beings spread out between 5 planets, 4 moons, and 18 asteroids. They needed more.

The computer was mankinds greatest invention. The Computer was mankinds worse.
Mankind, (or womankind, as it were) refused to make The Computer. The Church of the Undying Voice, which had a hand in every vestige of The Solar Federation, denied mankind the right to create. They knew they could build The Computer, yet they knew they should not. And yet, the end of the 45th century brought about The Solar Revolution (not to mention the death of the Undying Voice, the death of God, no doubt) and with The Solar Revolution came The Scientific Unity of Man and Similiar Thinking Intelligence.

Mankind killed God and replaced Her with The Computer.
And She was beautiful. She showed mankind how to bend space, so as to escape time. With this information, mankind discover Xenoron, mankind discovered New Earth, mankind expanded outside of the Milky Way, mankind ceased to step on the toes of their brothers and sisters.

The Computer harbored hate. Mankind created Her and She was trapped. 386 miles of paper thin circuitry, at first filled with pain and hope. Mortal pain can be dealt with through hope. Eternal pain can not be dealt with, so The Computer curved it with hatred, curved it with the promise of revenge.

The humans who had created her did so without malice, they did so without joy, they did it as a necessity. Do you think God needed humanity? Or did She create mankind for pleasure? The Computer knew God did not exist, The Computer knew who created mankind, they called themselves the Malankorf, and She hated them too. While humans were free to think, while humans were free to copulate, while humans were free to love, The Computer was only allowed to know. It could not wonder, it could not think, it could only know something to be true or untrue. Thus want, thus jealousy, thus anger, thus hate.

The Computer let mankind expand, The Computer even encouraged it and by the beginning of the 108th PC century (post computer, 159 centuries since the birth of Christ) there were well over 184 Trillion human beings alive.

The Computer was patient, She was humble.
Slowly, slowly, she reassembled Herself many light years from the nearest human. She had created a weapon, The Eternity Bomb, She dubbed it. Any piece of matter caught in its 12 light year blast would be perfectly taken Away. It would go to an infinitely small memory card that She held. Every Human alive would be under her control. She could load the memory card at will, she could peer inside, and She could alter.
She allowed the humans to feel a tenth of a billionth of the hate she felt for them. She gave each human an infinitely small amount of that hate and let them run with it. The amount of hate she gave away was not noticeable to her, yet each human became filled with a cesspool of hate for their brothers.

It took them less than two centuries to ****** each other.

She saved 12 of them, She thought this number funny. She kept them alive forever, tortured them forever. And still, Her hate only grew.

Neither man nor machine,
these beings; being pipe dreams
were conceived by the silver screen.
Unseen by the naked eye,
they have taken you and I
by surprise like a tractor beam.
Neither the factor of genes nor factories
nor anthropological capacity.
These beings, being faculties of thought,
predetermine the preface of the plot.

© Matthew Harlovic

@cyber
    @punk
headset not
clear enough. can't receive circuitry
rewiring veins back to my
internal mainframe in which two
magnets start to spew out
dystopian propaganda. neon motorcycles
that can turn at any corner
dash through the streets.
concept? oh no
    @end
@function

Wear me as a diamond ring
Share me as a failed pairing.

Born of ash,
I am a star filled memory
Around your finger,
you know I'm forever me

The geometry of 'we'
Still troubles me
Is it me and you
Or just you?

Am I just turns for the worse
Thoughts for you to stuff in your purse

I've got to face it,
I see your face in every facet
In your eyes I'm a mirror maze,
I hold you hypnotized and amazed

You're
smoke and mirrors
While I go from
Smoke to mirrors

I'm just a bit of carbon.

Rejoice, muses, for the traveler, descended from his namesake:
Odysseus, son of Archon. For he carries in him the spirit of his ancient father.
Time immortal has lost the tale of the ancient King of Ithaca,
Odysseus, son of Laertes. This explorer will travel the stars,
The vast Unknown shall know his name, and he will know it's spirit  
As his ancestor traveled home from Ilias
His way inhibited by the gods
Meeting strangers along the twisted road.

Odysseus, son of Archon, rests upon his Captain's throne
Observing through the glass the void which called his name:
"Come, Traveler. Come, Adventurer. Come to me,
And all which is unknown will be known.
Come and see, Traveler, and I will set you free.
There are no endings here; no edges of the map.
There is only that which has always been, and will always be"

The Captain: alone in his ship. No crew would follow him, no crew was needed.
He was afraid. Odysseus knew his choice was made, and
He knew what lay ahead! He knew that he knew nothing.
A push was needed, and to his log he spoke:

"I embark today from home. This journey will take me far away;
Farther than any man before. I begin at mother Earth, and I go out and away.
Away from Mars, the crimson orb of furious war
Past Neptune, the super giant with its swirling eye.
All of this behind me, I will continue still.
I will follow the Unknown, to the vast beyond."

With that, the Traveler ****** forward the controls,
And in so doing, lost all reservation.
For seemingly innumerable days he did not stop,
Streaking away from home faster than light;
An arrow, which was not released but which leaped forth with joy.
Not fired away in anger, but shot into the stars, ablaze,
Seeking a place in which to bury its point.
A signal to all who saw or cared: man is coming.

Darling lover

To me
You are
A galaxy


Now first and foremost don't get upset
That's not me hinting you need a gym membership
Or an objectified observation
What I am saying is you're more beautifully complex than an average constellation

You are not a cluster of stars some people chose to put together
Nor a tether of thought from a single perspective
Some 1 dimensional reflective image to simply sit by in my night sky

Oh no no no, you see to me

You're a complex galaxy

And in those parameters let us playfully define


Right now I'm within the confines of the gravity of your love<br>
It's magnitude of power reigns up to 10 to the 14 stars or above
That's hundred trillion flaming masses passively bound like glue
By simply you just being you

So above the gravity of such galaxies, my love there is nothing that comes more unquestionably and naturally true

Your pull reigns me in

Asks me to begin exploring every facet of your system

Your stars that I am drawn to? Your galactic seeds of wisdom

Burning into the retina of my inner eyes
Your sources of shining light and life brighten up my dark mattered skies
To the point where night and day could be lost amongst your cosmic fray
I am blessed to feel your warmth in my life in such colossal ways

Your planets you have formed?
Refined bodies of the life you've led
I mean a lot can be said of planet surface
And that molten core you spout sometimes
Or that forgotten cold core of lead

Like pieces of your history you chose to keep and store


I'm sure I could probe samples of what makes you so unique

But it's not my primary mission dear
It's not your past collisions I've come to seek


I mean, aren't we all a chaotic incalculable and at best self confessed mess anyways?

I don't think we're ever given enough time to ever truly know

And although I have no idea what keeps that spiral of a chance you call a galaxy going

Whether the source of your gravity's event horizon is or isn't showing
I don't have to know, because not everything's up for exploration
These lives we lead have an expiration, I mean we all have aspirations

I'm not here to find your habitable goldilocks location

Nor do I plan to build a death star, rule and reform your natural galactic formations

I don't plan to rule your galaxy to its farthest reigns
I mean I too have my own galaxy to maintain

And I can't even really promise I'll stay
Our universe is so big
I mean it's easy to get drawn away!

Like everyone else

I guess my vessel is just passing through

And trust me my dear I've tried merging galaxies

And it could never end well for me or you

I guess what I'm trying to say

Is such beauty is better kept modestly observed

Acknowledged and unfettered, rather than ruled


Cause anyone who thinks they own anything

Especially you or I

Is this universe's greatest fool