The bitter road
With walking feet and identical pace

     Fear not

For they are all just shadows underneath
Just ghosts beneath the turquoise ice

     Quiet as can be

And you will not fall
You will not falter

As you have colder blood within your veins
Than in every surreal arctic peace

I:
I stopped for breath;
It was earthy, the soil
Was putrid to the touch:
Death oozed out of the cracks
Of the river, bubbling unnaturally.
Life was naught where I roamed.
Squeezing the last drops out of the bottle,
My cracked lips groaned, the silence strangled my memory
Only the weak were erased that day.
Four years ago I think
She ruled herself with a spring in her step
Before the sludge, the acid sludge
Wiped her dreams away
And ushered in the sun of winter
To never see summer again.

II:
Speckled with dust I carried onward;
The terrain flashed with familiarity
As I stepped into the darkness of her home
If you can even call it that anymore;
Her smile is a deep crimson, the blood of the many
Line her barren wasteland. Sometimes I face the winds
Instead of hiding; but they bring those hollow, pale spirits
Ever closer. They only stop
To torment; their whispers perfectly pierce
And destroy the hope I once had.

III:
They tell me sweet nothings and extend their hands of absence;
I cower in the darkness to stop their screams.
The scimitar of radiant light cuts through the night
As I prepare to face the wasteland again.

Swallows, sloes and willows; gone are the days where
They lined the earth and made it smell whole again.
Now we lay motionless in dreams long lost
Lonesome as I was, the ghosts haunt where I once were.

IIII:
The path in front of me winds endlessly;
Shattered and incomplete, it beckons me
To wherever it decides to take me.
For I am naught in the wasteland;
I will wait for her to come back
But the sands of time are not on my side.

Here in the wasteland
Swarming
Cold
Gazed with locked doors
The shadows of your frail body
Scared me
Imminent contagion
The land opened its mouth
To swallow the town
I would've felt bad for the mayor
If he had treated us with an ounce of respect
Our dry throats singing broken tones
Like a detuned string
Air comes out foul and distorted
The hymns were sang and
The souls ripe with hope
Danced
Instinctive motion
Of the universe
Laughed
My gaze was extinguished

Beyond the shanty town of Midtendrift, where the moneylenders ply their trade among the aimless and avaristic, lie the ice prairies of Ensomfelt. The region is a barren wasteland whose boundaries are flanked to the west by the bottomless crevasse of Issorg and to the east by Lake Hjertestorm.

Those who come to wander this no-man’s-land may find that they disappear from the earth for a time - from themselves, and from the memory of others. Relying only on intuition to guide them, they pass this way unseen, their weary feet making shallow graves in the freshly fallen snow.

The rocky outcrop at Engeldrøm marks the gateway to the in-countries. Nestled beneath the foothills of Mount Håp, this is the place to which souls lost to the world of ego and ambition return to take up their torch and remember.

During the long northern winter, the sky above Håp is an expanse of indigo ocean punctuated with an infinity of lamplights. Among these lanterns which float free of the earth, the North Star shines the brightest. It is here that you will find your journey’s end and a treasure trove of truth, forged in fire and sealed in ice.

as she spiralled down the rabbit hole
expecting wonderland
yet frightened she was
in the world of the aces

as the daisies began to wither
and the cakes now tasted bitter
doomed, her mind became
the list of impossible things was nothing but a card game

‘’off with her head!’’
she heard, faintly in the distance

mad had she become
and numb she went
in her wonder-turned-waste land

The road turned to the side,
Then on the field three turns.
Go forward, throwing his head,
Go and blow on the clouds...

The barn is crooked, her knees shaking.
Why I climbed in such Tyumen?
Such untrodden wasteland,
Such far Anadyrs?

On Monday the devils sing,
I feel sick again.
Sleep and pray, eat or sleep,
But there will be no evil.

No more screaming, no more voices
In the empty land of wasted stories.
A place of madness and lost faith
But look at it the right way
And it’s astonishingly great.

A null tricky game, planned, well played,
You’d better keep watching before it vanishes anyway.
But perhaps it’s too late, in this blurry night
Maybe too early to see the bright light.

Just a second of hope, a last broken prayer
To remind you in this game, you were a good player.
Cause there are no winners
No losers, no glory
In the not too far land of wasted stories.

Languid prickly pear.
Ashen, voracious sky lay waste.
bruise Earth.

Prickly languid pear.
Hold fast against the wilted branch.

Thank the tree for its regard;
the limb that decayed the least.
                              O' how my will hangs
                              as I do above the death
                              who brought us this rot
Pear, languid and prickly.
Tenacious pride claws and bites
at morbid despair and lonesome longing;
                                                        ­           neither victorious.

Ashen sky dust and burn the peel

Languid pear.
Pain felt from
the dying of the limb that had more than
you in the end

Resentment tucked between the anguish.
Who brought us this rot?
                              O' how this will fades
                              unable to deliver
                              the cut that will end
The branch snaps.

Languid.
World devoid;
the will of which persists.

there is a wasteland
the abdomen of a swollen sea watching precariously as i bite into bits of dark chocolate and don't stop until the entire package is on the floor like a drunken dancer or a torn best friend
a candor that i sold auspiciously for a pair of high heels that i never wear, they just sit in my closet waiting for dirt to be pushed into the canvas of it's sole
i'll only wear them indoors when it's raining and i can hear the synchronizing of the drops on the roof top with each step i take onto the hard-wood floor -tap tap tap tap
i'll do this until the sincerity is gone from the momentum
eventually next summer they'll be forgotten in a cardboard box that has "free" written with a red sharpie and perhaps it's next owner will be forgiving, will take the loneliness of the esoteric feeling of wanting to be worn and introduce them to the vinyl floors of a cheap club or the cold linoleum floors of an expensive resort hotel
i'd like for things that I've known to have a continued story even after it's out of mine, and they do

there is a wasteland
a woman that constantly licks her lips because they're dry but they're only dry because of the constant moisture forced upon them
the reduction of catch-22 as if the joke doesn't fall smack into your clothes
trying to find something underneath the bra strap, past the skin
but you can never get through, can you?
she pulls your hand away and you're left feeling rudimentary
lacking, like the lackadaisical manner in which the lights never hit you the way you wish it did

The flower in the
wasteland exudes
life itself:
The physical
entity of
determination and
will to live.
Yes she may be
damaged from all
the toxic
surroundings.
And yes there
were times she
accepted her
weakness.
But she still
prevails.
Sprouting joy
despite all that.
She's special.
She's the flower
that survived.

-HIY