For the hungry
I (one)
Anathema, loosed upon the wind
by a raven bird of many tongues - -
Secret language of despair,
a call to extinction
in the language of the damned:
Like the hush of death, an inverse breath
Brittle gristle-pop of broken bone
Rendering of sinew and thew
An extravagance of spoiled flesh,
the decadent cadence of decay
Heralded by hungry things in rags
on his flute of obsidian bone.
There is a corpse in a cathedral of woods
where roses have long since withered
and petrified trees stand frozen sentinel
as sheets of ice cascade like scattered ash.
Hidden here among so many
that death has undone lie two:
Like Lazarus he is first to arise
and stand a time, as if he might regather
sense long lost, waiting maybe,
the return of his own Lady Ligeia,
or the simple ebb and pull
of want and need that animates the living
to resume it’s tidal pulse and flow
through hollowed veins.
But these channels and course-ways
have run dry and stand still, his mind
no longer pounded by sentient currents
or swept by waves of emotion.
He is a dry seabed
There will be no more rain.
Only raging hunger which compels
his first lurching step
away from the woman, unnoticed,
head bowed low to the ground
like so much wreckage
on a dark and distant shore.
She lifts her chin
throws back her head
as if to laugh
at this development,
but makes no sound
as her eyes fill with snow.
Behind her the Earth
continues to erupt,
spitting the dead…
once more undone…like spent teeth
from a gaping maw.
The exodus is begun
II (two)
Courtesans and sycophants bedecked in cerecloth
And a benighted array of jewel-like contusions
A crush of revenants, the blasted host:
Lost names in a ceaseless surge of perpetual motion
In thralldom to the three faces of the King
Driven by the ravening hunger of that wolf,
whom by feeding hunger grows,
She who cannot be glutted.
Following where led by friar’s lamp, ignis fatuous,
ghostly will-o-the-wisp by inky night
and that star, lidless burning eye
which rules by blighted day.
Scabrous hieroglyphs scored upon legions
of human parchment stretched this as tattered hide
cannot be read - for the dead are secular,
and carry no word save Contagion.
Yet like a song to un-tune the sky
there is music as the horde encroaches:
the downbeat of plodded feet
Siren strains of wind through the fluted bone,
the castanet-clicking of teeth in snatching jaws.
They are coming
As a cloud of carnivorous insects
might blacken the sky
and fall upon dressed Earth,
so will the end
descend upon the cities.
Within a swarming flux of mutation
will swell a riot of writhing flesh
like a labyrinth seven-times sealed.
Little will distinguish the living
from the dead,
the will to survive scarcely discernible
from the compulsion to consume.
Tangled in the maddening crowd
as life gives way to death
there is no escape and no where to hide.
The empty eye will pierce you.
Soon, remnants once forbidden fruit
will drip from your own tireless jaw,
scraps cast aside like browning apple cores
in bits and bites to litter unholy ground.
Now we are come to the end of days.
Abandon all hope for all hope is lost
as we dwell forever in hunger bottomless
as the black and greedy pit of Abaddon
Anathema, loosed upon the wind
by a raven bird of many tongues - -
Secret language of despair,
a call to extinction
in the language of the damned:
Like the hush of death, an inverse breath
Brittle gristle-pop of broken bone
Rendering of sinew and thew
An extravagance of spoiled flesh,
the decadent cadence of decay
Heralded by hungry things in rags
on his flute of obsidian bone.
There is a corpse in a cathedral of woods
where roses have long since withered
and petrified trees stand frozen sentinel
as sheets of ice cascade like scattered ash.
Hidden here among so many
that death has undone lie two:
Like Lazarus he is first to arise
and stand a time, as if he might regather
sense long lost, waiting maybe,
the return of his own Lady Ligeia,
or the simple ebb and pull
of want and need that animates the living
to resume it’s tidal pulse and flow
through hollowed veins.
But these channels and course-ways
have run dry and stand still, his mind
no longer pounded by sentient currents
or swept by waves of emotion.
He is a dry seabed
There will be no more rain.
Only raging hunger which compels
his first lurching step
away from the woman, unnoticed,
head bowed low to the ground
like so much wreckage
on a dark and distant shore.
She lifts her chin
throws back her head
as if to laugh
at this development,
but makes no sound
as her eyes fill with snow.
Behind her the Earth
continues to erupt,
spitting the dead…
once more undone…like spent teeth
from a gaping maw.
The exodus is begun
II (two)
Courtesans and sycophants bedecked in cerecloth
And a benighted array of jewel-like contusions
A crush of revenants, the blasted host:
Lost names in a ceaseless surge of perpetual motion
In thralldom to the three faces of the King
Driven by the ravening hunger of that wolf,
whom by feeding hunger grows,
She who cannot be glutted.
Following where led by friar’s lamp, ignis fatuous,
ghostly will-o-the-wisp by inky night
and that star, lidless burning eye
which rules by blighted day.
Scabrous hieroglyphs scored upon legions
of human parchment stretched this as tattered hide
cannot be read - for the dead are secular,
and carry no word save Contagion.
Yet like a song to un-tune the sky
there is music as the horde encroaches:
the downbeat of plodded feet
Siren strains of wind through the fluted bone,
the castanet-clicking of teeth in snatching jaws.
They are coming
As a cloud of carnivorous insects
might blacken the sky
and fall upon dressed Earth,
so will the end
descend upon the cities.
Within a swarming flux of mutation
will swell a riot of writhing flesh
like a labyrinth seven-times sealed.
Little will distinguish the living
from the dead,
the will to survive scarcely discernible
from the compulsion to consume.
Tangled in the maddening crowd
as life gives way to death
there is no escape and no where to hide.
The empty eye will pierce you.
Soon, remnants once forbidden fruit
will drip from your own tireless jaw,
scraps cast aside like browning apple cores
in bits and bites to litter unholy ground.
Now we are come to the end of days.
Abandon all hope for all hope is lost
as we dwell forever in hunger bottomless
as the black and greedy pit of Abaddon
