He sits within his world of glass, that still and stagnant place. The endless drone. The endless wait. Dark shapes move beyond the walls; an eternal shadowed dance.

A fleeting glimpse of the unreal, beyond his reach, beyond his mind, lurking at the edge of sight. Rumors of another world, another way, another chance at another life. So far, yet right there. Nowhere and no time and nothing at all.

He sees these things yet cannot see. He feels them move yet sits alone.

Shadows and smoke. Dust in the wind. Arcane shapes writ upon that shroud of glass.

A prison he cannot touch or taste or see, yet it is there and always was.

What lies beyond this place of lies? What hangs there in the void? A place of light? A place of the free? A place of truth full wrought?

A chance to touch a crystal world or just some other ever-shifting shadowed thing?

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

A world of fragments all around me and my mind slowly drifts. From one, then the next, then back again. Never still. Never focused. Always lost amidst such light and sound.

And when there is no focus, then there can be no growth.

And when there is no growth, all that’s left is to decay.

Within decay I wallow. Mind trapped. No way out.

A door exists. I have seen it in my dreams. A door to hope. A door to laughter. Door to love and light and life. But I cannot find it, cannot reach it. I only wander in the darkness.

And day by day this world moves on, and I’m left to grow old and weak. A man of withered skin and frail bones, fading mind lost to the haze.

Should I not gain wisdom as I age? Confidence? Insight into the reason of all things?

Where is my lamp to cast away the darkness and reveal the door I cannot see?

Why am I just as confused? Just as lost? Drifting across this endless sea within which dwells nothing and everything, always all at once and not at all.

Nothing lives and all things die, and in that dying is the only truth.

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

He sits alone with aching mind and itching eyes.

A cold weight in his hand.

Numbing glow. Sleek and smooth.

The end time’s false prophet and idol made one.

He’s no notifications, and therefore no value, no purpose, no reason to be.

Scrolling…

Scrolling…

Scrolling…

He can’t even see what he sees. Vague shapes. A haze of colours. No depth. Nothing real.

His brain rots in real time.

Refresh. Recheck.

A notification.

His heart flutters. His hand trembles. Is this some trick? Some trap? Maybe it’s a sign of his validation and worth?

Maybe there’s a point to him after all.

He swallows and taps the bell.

One comment from Vie_Victus_XIII: You’re a fucking retard!

And then he’s alone again.

Terminally online, yet even online he hasn’t any friends. The people here are abstractions. Mere shadows on the wall. Warped simulacra of the barely real.

And even they reject him.

Scrolling…

Scrolling…

Scrolling…

Scrolling into the depths of night.

Restless mind. Broken sleep leading into broken days.

Until finally, he puts it aside and blinks through the haze and picks up a book. He reads a line, then another, then the first line again. These words make no sense. They’re so lifeless and dull.

Where’re the notifications? The dopamine? The existential angst? This thing of paper and ink has nothing to give.

He puts it aside and picks up his phone and he’s chained to the cloud again.

Once he tried to leave it behind, to go outside, to touch grass. But in his pocket the phantom buzz remained.

The birds sung songs of a notifying ding.

His phone called to him, wanted him back.

Trees all around him but he could not see. Grass beneath him but he could not feel.

Phantom buzz. Scattered mind.

He barely made it out the door before he turned around and returned to his phone.

One anxious itch is replaced by another.

Phone unlocked. No notifications.

Scrolling…

Scrolling…

Scrolling…

Maybe at the scroll’s bottom he’ll find what he seeks. But this scroll is long, a place of demons and lost souls.

An endless thing. An infinite abyss.

Deeper and deeper until there’s no way out.

No motivation.

No new creation.

No hope of salvation.

Just consumption.

Poison for the mind, locking him in, preventing him from ever going outside.

Scrolling…

Scrolling…

Scrolling…

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

Red moon rising over our darkened world. Over sea of cloud and land of stone. Her crimson glow. Her rounded face. Watching… Watching… Presiding over all who see. Over all who hide and all who do not. Over all who move within her empty twilight realm.

Webs of light. A blackened land. Those sheltered lanes through mountain sands. What lurks without? What lurks within? She knows. She sees. And yet, she will not tell. Why would she speak? We would not hear. Her secrets close. Her secrets dear.

Silent wisdom. Face of stone.

Steeped in red and twilight grace. We walk in shadows lost and alone. She is so far, yet she is near. Reaching to us from across that void. That cold and empty, hidden space.

And there she dwells, do you not see? She watches now. Silent relief.

Deep within your weathered soul. Waiting. Whispering. A soft and soothing crimson glow.

You do not see her. You do not hear her.

And there her silence ever dwells, ancient and aloof.

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

Drifting through this land of fog
He seeks a light that he has lost
That no longer is
That never was 

It exists now in his faded dream
And there it dwells 
And there it sleeps

Depthless darkness
Endless maze 

And here he finds souls of the doomed
The lost and dammed
The scattered few

Forever empty
Forever cold

He sleeps and dreams but finds no place
No solid ground
No substantive grace

No walls against the wind and rain
And there he is
And there he stays

A place to be forever lost
Where dreams are sold
Those soothing lies
A fool’s false gold

A place bereft of form and light
A place of howling wind and grinding ice
Where nothing stands and nothing is
And all things end and all things drift

Yet still he reaches, still he grasps
To touch the stone, that solid karst 
But even as he curls his frail hand
It turns to dust, it turns to ash

And all he thought was stone was sand

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

It rolls on past 
This broken land
A world of dust
A world of ash

Of broken things 
Now stripped of life
Of withered green 
Now cast aside

The fading grass
The burning trees
The rancid mud 
The dying things

Of what once was
Fragments remain
And here we’re left 
Where concrete reigns 

Oh world of steel
Oh world of glass
The smoke and fog
This veiled mask

We drift alone
No midnight gaze
The star’s put out
That deadly haze

If beauty dwelt
Here long ago
It dwells no more
Its ruin sown

Yet even now
Despite our might
This world of man
It wilts and dies

A poison vine
A poison seed 
A broken world
Won’t serve our needs

But when all is done
And all is said
And Shiva dances
At the very end

A fledgling seed
Might sprout anew
A beacon to all 
Who remain true 

A place to go 
A place to be
A place of song
And dancing trees

But until that day
When light shines through
And Eden is found
Our oath renewed

We must await
In dark and dread
In plastic seas
And rusted beds

We must await
We must endure
We must still seek 
For all that which is pure

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

He sits in the midst of this moss-clad wood, and the whole world breathes within him.

She sings Her song of root and leaf.

Of tree and bird.

Of sky above and rock below.

Of gentle, flowing stream.

Those eternal rhythms of this Earth.

Silent songs. Secret songs. Songs known only to Her and to all who would but listen. She’s always there. She always sings. She always whispers deep within.

Steeped in wisdom.

Steeped in mystery.

He breathes in and he feels Her gentle kiss. He breathes out and he tastes the ease of bliss. He seems alone, yet he is held. His friends those birds and beasts and growing things are always all around.

She waits, and She watches, and into his quiet mind, She speaks of an ancient knowing, forgotten long ago but now reborn.

A knowing of all that’s green and grows upon this turning world. Of all that dance the spiral dance of growth and death and growth again. A cosmic dance that never ends and never starts, that always is and always was.

He sits in the midst of this moss-clad wood, as all things dance around him. He breathes deep. He breathes slow.

And ever, She sings to him Her silent song.

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

Darkness cast upon the stone
And here a brittle cough
And here a dry and wheezing moan
Old and distant in that distant place
Adrift now in a fading failed world

You cannot see him, cannot find him
You know him only by his call
Dry and brittle in the darkness

And when all sounds cease
And silence reigns
And starlight fades
And he is gone
And he is lost
And all that’s left is ash and dust

Then you will know him still
Or you will know him not at all
A brittle cough, old and dry, in that ancient nowhere place

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

Oh little one with softest fur, the stalker of the night
She comes to tap upon my door and all that’s wrong’s made right

Those shadowed men
The creeping dread
That terror in the dark

She casts away such shapeless things and brings her silent peace

A space to breathe
A space to be
A space where I can think

Oh little one with softest fur, curled up upon my bed
She stays and plays and sleeps right here, purring beside my head

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

That Salamander Man, boneless and slime slick. He lurks down in that darkened swamp. I’ve heard he eats anything he wants.

He dwells alone in moss and mould. In a marshy place since times of old. He twists and turns, a wriggly writhe, to catch a fish, so crunchy nice.

Munching. Crunching. Oh so nice.

That boneless man, how wan and thin. He’s white as death. He’s a putrid grin. He’s not a hair upon his head. I saw him once. I thought him one of the dead.

And when that pesky sun comes out he hides away.

But on moon’s rise it’s time for him to come and play.

Munch and crunch a tasty fish, that Salamander Man, he gets his wish.

Munching, crunching, bones to pick that rotting flesh from rotting teeth.

And if you wander far from home to that marshy place where he still roams, then in the darkness he will creep and in the darkness you’ll have no time to weep.

He’ll catch you fast. He’ll catch you quick. He’ll drag you down into the deep.

He loves his rotten fish, he loves it so, but best of all what he loves is human flesh.

Tasty. Tasty. Oh so sweet.

He’ll catch you and he’ll wring your neck. He’ll munch you, crunch you, till you’re dead.

And no matter how much you might plead and beg, that Salamander Man will have your head.

So stay at home and don’t go out, lest he catches you and wrings you out. Lest your screams be heard across the fens, and right out to the riverfolks’ secret dens.

Stay home where it’s warm and dry. Stay at home lest you surely die.

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

To sit beneath that fading black
A long and starless night
High above that hidden world
A lost and secret place

Awaiting now a golden glow
That purple haze of dawn

The blue above
Darkness below
That sweeping world
Rock and stone

Ancient trees from which birds sing
The secret call of wind and stream

Awaken to this world
Awaken to what is
Turn away from what is not
What will not be, what never was

All things now find their truest form
True shape beneath new light
When memory is swept away
True sight is all that can remain

Oh breathing, glowing world of life
Oh spirit come, cast away this night

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

Midnight towers reaching for that blackened sky
Vast and empty
Infinite
Deep within that desert of the lost

The fading sun at this curved world’s end
Starlight
Moonlight
And then no light at all

He walks alone

How can he see them? 
How can he know them?
Are they sublime?
Or were they raised with Babalistic pride?

Midnight towers over a midnight world beneath a heavy midnight sky
The dawn may never come and the dusk now never was
And here he wanders, blind and lost
A pilgrim of the damned

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

I hunker down and hide beneath a meager rocky shelf. I shiver and tremble. Soaked through and icy cold.

I pile leaf and sodden wood with numb and shaking hands. My hollow mind is consumed with an ancient, nameless fear.

The one who ever waits approaches. She comes to claim me. Her icy breath is sharp against my neck.

How easy it would be to lay down and let her take me.

Lightning. Thunder. The world’s very bones begin to crumble. The shroud of life begins to fade.

But I still live, and while I live, I will still fight.

I strike stone on stone, then strike again, drawing forth the heat hidden within by those who built this world at the beginning of all things.

In the midst of my mound of leaf and wood, a spark catches. A gentle, beating heart.

I breathe out, slowly…slowly… And the fledgling flame begins to grow. My breath becomes its life, and in return its life becomes my own. Two hearts beating now as one.

Fragile warmth. Flickering light.

Death draws back to watch me from Her secret place.

Around me the gods wage their terrible war and the world of man unravels. Yet in amongst it all, I always remain.

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

His arm stings, but relief doesn’t come. Ripped off. False hit. No money for another. The hunger still remains.

A man strides past him. Suit and tie. Straight backed. Proud jawed.

He approaches this suit-clad man, trying to straighten out, but his once-broken back keeps him hunched and hurting. His feigned smile reveals the scant remnants of rotten, yellowed teeth. He speaks. A slurred and guttural growl.

The suit-clad man walks on full of pride and purpose, not even sparing him a glance.

He shrinks back. Invisible. His heart burns and his arm throbs. His face is hot and dripping sweat. What was in that hit?

The world spins and fizzes and fades. People all around him. Teenage couple. Obese man. Jogging woman. No one sees him. All these people everywhere, yet always all alone.

They don’t even look at him and when they do they do not see. They see only rags and rotting teeth and the desperate hunger in his eyes. They do not see the boy he once was, nor know the road he walked to get here.

Everything blurs. He’s on his knees. When did he fall?

And then the child. Her eyes are wide and innocent. She sees him, and so he sees himself. The self that he once was. Young and pure and full of life. Loved and seen and known.

But then his accident. No more work. No more play. Only pain.

His prescription became his habit, and his habit became his life.

But then his prescription was revoked.

His pain returned.

His hunger grew.

And soon he found another way to numb the pain and feed his hunger both.

But still his hunger only grew, consuming and destroying, and slowly, all who’d known him turned away.

And soon he was unseen.

But this child…

He grabs his chest and reaches for her and cries for help, though his tongue will not form the words.

The mother comes, clutches the child, fearful of this fading man. The child speaks. The mother shakes her head. They melt into the haze.

Buzzing static. Fading world.

All around him people walk on, heads down, eyes forward, their minds far away.

The concrete gives way and he falls through darkness.

And that unseen man sees no more.

If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments below.

You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

In the bite of the sword, She is there. In the serpent’s fang, and pestilence’s touch, and hunger’s slow and merciless grip, She awaits.

Ever watchful.

Ever patient.

She knows when your time to meet Her has come, and at that time She cannot be swayed. No matter how much you plead. No matter how much you beg.

Though you may offer Her gold and jewels and all manner of coveted worldly things. Though your name may be sung in great halls and your tale told before every hearth.

On the day of your fateful meeting, nothing will stay Her hand and your time on this world will be done.

And no matter what path you take through this labyrinthine life, on that fateful day, at that fateful hour, She will be there, waiting, as She always was, ready to bestow Her blessing upon you.

And though you might cry: “Curse this day, when I chose this path, at this time. If I’d chosen different, then I would not have met Her and my life would have been saved.”

But in answer to your cry, She would only say: “If you had gone some other way, at some other time, and you had been a different you, and this world had been another world, and the gods had been other gods, then perhaps you would not have met with Me in this place at this time. But still, our meeting would have come at its allotted hour and at no other.”

Then she will bestow upon you her blessing and you will see her face, which none who live have seen.

And then you will see no more.

Let me know what you thought of this piece in the comments below.

Enjoyed this piece? You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

A debased people. An enslaved people.

The withered seed of a once mighty tree.

Over them loom the crumbling bones of a glory now lost. Steepled rooves. Towering stone. An inheritance from forebears who once stood proud and tall.

But these sons and daughters of those now gone do not look up, cannot look up. With heads bowed and shoulders stooped they look only to the filth below them. The rot and the decay. They cannot see the stonework all around them reaching for the sky.

They forget who they are and they forget from where they’ve come. They forget where they go, and so before them yawns an abyssal pit.

A broken people. A lost people. Pale and misshapen. Misplaced in time and space.

Then, for a single moment, one looks up, craning his stiffened neck to see. Within his heart, something stirs. A secret fire. An inspired spark. He stretches out and reaches up, but the milling crowds around him do not part. They push him back and pull him down and soon his hidden spark is gone.

Their sires built for them this world. This beauty is carved into the very stone in which they still dwell. But they do not see it. They do not know it. The clouded eye is blind and so they wander lost.

And so all that was slowly passes away.

Let me know what you thought of this piece in the comments below.

Enjoyed this piece? You might also enjoy:

Thank you for your time and attention.

It stepped forward. I tried to stir. My body would not move.

It drifted closer, growing huge, filling my entire world.

I could not fight. I could not flee. I could not even close my eyes. Before it I was small, helpless, lost.

It drew close and touched my face, tickling my cheek with icy breath.

I shivered. It smiled.

Hollow laughter echoed off the walls.

I tried to scream, but only managed silence.

Let me know what you thought of this piece in the comments below.

Enjoyed this piece? You might also enjoy this:

Thank you for your time and attention.

Out there, beyond the haze of dream awaits the one who is lost and the one who now returns.

The one who is lost stands amidst a veil wrought of salty spray. He is guilt and longing made manifest, whispering words you cannot hear. You run to him, calling a name you no longer remember. If he ever was at all, then he is now long gone. A faint and fading mist.

The sea retreats and only the one who now returns remains.

She is promise and she is potential, and upon this plain of dancing, windswept sand, she comes to you. She is an oath fulfilled and a dream made real. A memory of long ago renewed.

But she is different now. In her face and eye there is the weight of endless time. A weariness of which you’ve not yet known. She is changed and you are changed and what once was will never be again.

Yet here she stands before you, for this is the beginning of something new.

The day is warm. The wind is light. The gentle sea is still.

Let me know what you thought of this piece in the comments below.

Enjoyed this piece? You might also enjoy one of these:

Thank you for your time and attention.

I walked and the sun sank and the day grew cool. My stomach groaned. My head swam.

Eventually, I found a dumpster in an alley behind a shopping mall, and there, amongst rancid fruit and stale McDonalds, I searched. Swarms of bulbous flies buzzed about me. I suppose it must’ve stunk, but if it did, I didn’t notice.

All this food would’ve been fine when discarded. I could think of many for whom it would’ve been a gift taken in the utmost gratitude. But from it the corporate overlords could gain no profit and so it was fit only to feed rats and roaches amidst this festering filth.

Nowhere is modernity’s degeneracy more evident than in the waste shat out into its back alleys and landfills. A waste borne of the union between pathological greed and pathological abundance, pathologically bent on maximising the profits of the few and minimising the quality of life of the many.

I turned over a mound of mouldy stir-fried noodles wrapped in rotting cardboard and uncovered the buried treasure for which I sought: an unopened tin of baked beans. I picked it up and relief washed over me. Relief and disgust. What a degenerate creature I’d become to feel such gratitude at the discovery of such a thing.

I clambered out of the dumpster and opened the tin and squatting in the alley, ate with my dumpster-tainted hands. Then I found a water fountain in a nearby park, rinsed the sauce from my fingers, drank, and walked on.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Far from our world of man and machine
Where smoke and steel rule all that’s seen

There waits a place where few have tread
A distant realm where your soul is fed

Here rivers flow from atop mountains high
And birds dance with grace across the sky

The trees so tall are gnarled with age
And in the moss is found wisdom of a sage

At night the sky alights with moon and star
Revealing a cosmos both grand and bizarre

Breathe in and taste the wind’s most blessed kiss
Breathe out and feel the touch of deepest bliss

A place you’d stay if only you could
In the depths of this most sacred wood

Here time’s flow stops and the grind stands still
And from crystal waters you may drink your fill

But just when your mind and soul find ease
You return to our world where nothing breathes

Our mechanical world where nothing feels
Our world where only the lie seems real

Thank you for your time and attention, it truly is appreciated.