In the shadow of the colossal sphere, where ancient echoes sleep,
Vaeloria fades into the dark, a secret it must keep.
The watchers put their scopes away, the screens fade out to grey,
As morning calls the busy streets to meet another day.
No scholar marks the turning tide, no profit in the view,
For men forget the distant stars to chase what is brand new.
They walk through cities built of glass, untroubled, blind, and proud,
Unknowing that the selfsame veil is gathering like a cloud.
The rot that choked the Aethel Sea now crawls along their strand,
An unremembered resonance that slips across the land.
As silent as the giant orb that hid the world before,
The shadow comes to take their home, and lock them in its lore.
Shadow Man
Sitting in an empty room.
He watches down the hall.
As shadows move across the floor.
And dance along the wall.
His eyes grow darker like the room.
Cause to him it’s all the same.
Rejected by the light of day
the shadows call his name.
Sitting in the darkened room,
Where nighttime never ends.
He don’t seem to mind at all.
The shadows are his friends.
He listens to the whispers.
Carried in the nighttime air.
As shadows repeat secrets.
That someone dared to share.
Be careful what you say or do.
It’s part of a greater plan.
The secrets told that he may hold
the one called Shadow Man.
Edwin C Hofert
A silent scream spreads through the night,
A bittersweet joy in the darkness,
In a world of sour sweetness,
Joyful sadness waltzes bright.
A deafening whisper calls us near,
While noisy silence fills the day;
Jumbo shrimp and icy flames,
They play their little big matches.
Living dead and peaceful strife,
A false truth in everyday life,
An awkward relaxed grace, a surprise,
Truthful lies hide in plain sight.
With cruel kindness, we laugh as we cry,
with open secrets that`re not hidden,
A false reality touches the air,
An uncertain certainty spreads apace.
In shameless honour, a giggle grows,
As chaotic order settles,
Across untimely time and space,
Where grave funny oxymorons lie.
On waters, ¦¦¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦
¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ sunset so purple,
¦¦¦ sings ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦
¦¦¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ smashed wings' ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦
¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦ it claims,
¦¦¦ bloody set of ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦
¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ flames,
¦¦¦ death ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦
¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦ with fear, ¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦
¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ of lovers’,
¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦ with prophetic truth
¦¦¦ lips that ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦¦¦ foam covers!...
(Blackout of Gamajun the Prophetic Bird by Aleksandr Blok)
The fog comes/on little cat feet.//
It sits looking/over harbor and city/
on silent haunches/and then moves on.
~Carl Sandburg
Arrival of fog was something
more catty with claws extended
it gripped the town with damp dreadful
shivering so even church bells
refused to ring and shopkeepers
closed their normally friendly doors
against the sudden misery
of a day gone terribly wrong.
To veil light we cloaked it in bliss,
intellect lowered, minds fused,
together as magnets pull.
Where truth lies, we seek to find.
We built a throne of brick and breath,
And called the shadow ours.
Each heavy wall a quiet myth,
to hide the sun in castles.
The garments stitched of golden pride,
felt cold against the warmth and love.
We kept the fragile sparks inside,
obedient and still.
Yet forms must crack when roots expand,
And magnets lose their pull.
We drop the scepter from the hand,
And smash the hammer to pieces.
The cloth unwinds, the layers fall,
no armor left to wear.
No higher names, no sacred walls,
just silence in the air.
The blinding dawn breaks through the seams,
the pitch dusk takes hold of the gold,
leaving nothing left to hide.
A Kingdom Built on Ash and Sin
For eighteen years, I was reared for the blade,
A lamb in a house where the monsters played.
They hid their sins in the floorboard cracks,
And led me home on my own bloody tracks.
A welcome-back trap, a dark, hollow room,
Where chants in the shadows sealed my doom.
They tore open hell and flung me right in,
Trading my flesh for a ledger of sin.
I woke to the cold, completely alone,
Stripped of my youth, my blood, and my bone.
Now they sit high on a mountain of gold
Built on the back of the child they sold.
Then came the husband, a beast of a man,
Who traded my flesh for a new wicked plan.
Deeply in debt to the legions below,
He threw me to hell for a cash-out show.
But the pit gave him nothing; his gamble fell through,
So he fled like a coward when the cold wind blew.
Now a collector from hell has crawled to the light,
Searching for souls in the dead of the night.
The ledgers are empty, the debtors have run,
But the hunt for their blood has only begun.
The demon is tracking the scent of their fear
To seal every fate as the reckoning draws near.
Siege of the Golden Door
I heard their shouting as I slept,
The evil dead, straining at the gates of Hell.
With the spirits’ seven pens of light,
They maraud all from behind the golden door.
A warning: I must arm myself with lore,
To learn the way to shut that door
Before they come.
Evil spirits rotting thoughts
Evil spirit heard a happy thought going by
Trapped in the house where it departed
It twisted the joy into a jagged blade,
Dipped in shadows and pride.
It drove that spike through the victim’s ear,
And it nested deep in the brain.
The man thought he was losing his mind,
As he listened to the whispers of pain.
But it wasn't madness or a wandering wind,
That made his skin turn cold.
It was the spirit, feeding on his light,
Until the story was told.
Platform 666 Exit from Hell
I’m leaving hell today,
waiting for my train.
Suitcase in hand
but have I forgotten something?
My favourite brush is left behind.
Do I run back?
Is there still time
to reclaim what I lost?
The tracks are humming;
the train is on its way.
There were some mysterious maps
I found lying down unfolded on the deck
of an ancient secluded mailboat
in the middle of the shallow water banks
As I took a glance at these maps
I was unable to find my way home
I saw no traces of any islands, cays,
blueholes, pristine seashores,
pineyards, coppice forests
banana holes nor mangroves insight
to plot on these unusual slice of poster papers
as they were all distant memories
which faded from the surface of the Earth
all I saw was nothing but blank maps
crammed with endless layers
of oceans, banks, bights and sounds
without any given names charted on every end
as if my homeland was evaporated away
into the depths of the Bermuda Triangle
After thirty-three years of unexplained happenings in her house Gina was standing at her window in her flat. She saw a byzantine soldier run from her house. She was startled, he was running from her door, down the stairs and down into the street. She was confused. She could hear him “it’s done, its over” what did he mean by that. Confused she sat down and could see the hex print vanish from her hand and knew was it him that was marauding her all these years. But... it’s over now, he left or was it the beginning. She could hear see a shadow and voices all those years blaming her for petty things she had done as a child. She couldn’t explain, someone close had paid him in the dark to cause distress in her life for all these years. "Who could it be… he always said it was my sister, mom and dad", all three of them, some sort of revenge as they already were in the dark and had to pay rent to get out, but infighting started and there was no control over them. “It’s time to pay he always said…
In a valley where gravity
drinks only upside-down,
She wakes, spinning thread
from fractured glass,
Kindling pale fires
that refuse to burn,
Her heart was a metronome
ticking in a vacuum.
She speaks in violet vowels,
Building bridges out of
forgotten whispers,
Holding the sun
inside a jar of moths,
Where nothing is
permitted to die.
He arrives on a wind
that tastes of iron,
A void dressed in velvet,
Swallowing the light
she mightily stitches,
His heart was a hollow flute
recreating in quietness.
He breathes out velvet nights,
Breaking bridges
with a touch of nostalgia,
Stalking the shadows
of her bright moths,
Where everything
is allowed to rot.
They meet at the intersection
of Nowhere and Ever,
She weaves him a coat
of crystal tears,
He dissolves it
into a cloak of ash.
She offers a rose,
blooming backward into dust,
He drinks the rot,
singing a lullaby of screaming,
Two opposites locked
in a dream that bleeds,
Never merging, never leaving,
One holding the flame,
the other the dark,
Binding the shattered
world together,
In a dark, loving, terrible art.
In quaint quiet shadows,
a flame might flicker,
silken wisp on sight,
night channel wave,
I tap into,
as shrouded ghost,
my vocal template,
dark green leaf cast,
I cagily address,
eerie script nocturnal,
theatre of silence,
begging to erupt,
dim lit street platform,
poignant palette pointer,
fantasy in bloom,
blind seed dispersal,
for furtive audience,
spurred and spurned by,
my whispered rally,
nebulous or novel,
stark wooden benches,
empty chair syndrome,
context, conjure, cater,
traffic lights hue’d symbol,
clueless plots on queue
What shadow spake this,
Nay, hold thy tongue,
For I would not know of it,
Nay, the tiding
Thy pendulum hath swung,
Are an ill tiding flung,
Before the weary feet of all men,
And their abhorrent hunger,
That so moves them against,
The natural order of things,
Against the will of the divine,
And those of kings and queens,
To bring an abrupt end to our rule,
And all things fair and good.
We are in darkness,
Yet again,
And I fear this time,
This time we stand alone,
And thy dark tiding
Will sweep us unto
Our oblivion.
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