The stairs are not so long
But what I cradle in my arms
is an unbearable weight.


Locked up
with thick and bolted leather
chained together
is a window to a new world
thicker than seven doors
with only the faintest glimmering
of bone-white within
the giant's razor thin
parchment ribs jut out
from the titan's backbone



haunting my dreams

(fearsome deadly
nightmare empty
every terror is
abrogation

G O S P E L)





At the end of my journey
At a precipice
glass city tower(s)
They used to be human
those souls within
the crawling beetles
metallic things
and walking sticks


The key is on the string
of my puppet's neck
I pull it out
And one by one
undo the locks
on the monstrous book


I split the seals of wax
and their warning glyphs
Raising the leather cover,
so deeply etched and burnt
cut by unknown instruments
almost shred to patchwork pieces


The first page
is the colour of dust
I blow softly
and it is free


and free from life as well
for it is blank and empty

In disappointment
I drop it to the ground
looking for better secrets
than nothing at all




when suddenly
I am not myself
and the wind comes
howling wild
for the blood of trees
and the moon freezes shut

everything is about to change

All the pages
are all unseamed
torn from the backbone
of the giant bat
whose wings
beat faster
than any heart

Into the wind
A spiralling funnel of white
a cone of rustling leaves
bleached blank in terror
a rising storm
that cuts away the air
I'm trying to breathe

And the crows have already left
and the doves try to follow
in uncertain droves



they are enveloped
by the emptiness
and delicately wrapped
becoming
statues
who fall from the sky
that has no air
intermixed with seagulls



Over the cityscape
whose points
once exceeded me
the fantasy world
unfurls

I would not stop
the future
My arms are chained
by origami arts
and must hold the book
aloft


the steady spiral brings
its own wind
like a machine shooting
two dimensions
almost faster than
time can catch up

The wind is emptying
the dreadful hollow secrets
of nothing
to the world
like leaflets

People
Traffic
Stop
to watch...

      This is an uncertain
      circumstance
      when libraries in the sky
      hurl pigeons to die
      wrapped in white funeral shrouds

    A billowing hurricane of white
    grows above
    feed
    by a slender stalked mushroom
    growing from my hands

It gives birth
to a sudden foliage
that goes to fall
in the space of moments
they are each a scissor
everyone that falls
becomes a screaming cant
for every drop of prayer
are abound and mix
with slender cuts
that appear on the skin
suddenly down below



The writ of blood
with the passage of time
the growing ferocity
of the sublime
pandemonium

The first one
down below
signs from his gashes
his own death certificate


    The sky is bleeding
    through the parchment
      And fall
    has begun in the earnest
    with these brilliant reds
    cast within the sheets above
    A pane of glass shatters
      the stillness breaks
   and the living world
    becomes a wave
    rippling outward
    rapidly

      Like the whiteness of the moon
      we used to know
      those who ran
      they are caught up
      by the swooping streams
      of two dimensional reality
      and midstride transform
      to howling lycanthropes
      burning white flickering flames



    The horizon is a thin ring
    that slowly drops out of sight
    Slipping off the eye's hand.


the maelstrom
has brewed a violent sea


I hear the crumbling
And know that somewhere deep
the foundations
of the mundane world
are being whittled away

They stream
like angry bats
into subway caves
beneath street
and seal them
in a heartbeat

soon

The fragments
of humanity
are falling
with unseemly grace
to the hueless weeping torrent
drawing elaborate patterns
on crumbling
civilization


I close my eyes
to the death
and await the end.



















the old world is over
it is very quiet
now that the world
of man
has past
the air is soft

there are fluttering
pages in the air still
but without menace
they do not haul death
they are gentle sentinels
floating in the sky
trailing each other
in swooping circles
about a landscape
that yesterday
ceased to exist


They are as free
as birds.


Soon I must go
This last vestige
I stand upon
has little time left
before it will join
yesterday's ruins


I think I am crying
though I realize
I no longer have a heart
to be able to tell
I'm waiting
for the strength to stand
when the stairs
to the last fortress of man
groan
and crash to the earth



I can feel my fate coming
already
but I pull myself
to the edge
and look down
at the desolate world



I could smile
I think I see children
like inkblots, below

they are drawing
upon what used to be
their mothers' faces














Our scripted lives are little more
                  than memories     
         Catch them wholly up      
                  in your fatal tale
             rewrite the intangible
                    and capture your




self.