An endless panorama
Of crumbling stone

Wonders and shanties alike
Creep inexorably to earth

Discordant shapes
Scar the skyline
In contortion they beg the sky
And plead mercy
But none listen

None hear the creaks and groans
As the wood warps and splinters
None see the iron rust and buckle
In the damp scathing winds

Sprawling trunks of spruce
Ravage the jungles of glass
No courtesy or contempt is extended
Where indifference is king

There will be no graves
To mark our passing
No monument to this folly

No tears shall lament this scene
A ballad of silence
For the moss upon our ruins

Upon your knees
The unseen shackles apparent
A millstone around the neck
Iron chains upon your shoulders
Bind you to insidious simulacrum
To doctrines unfounded

I reach down to you

There are no chains
No shackles
But our pained voices resonate
Never to be heard

My strength not enough
To wrench pious knees from the wooden floor

In unreality
The prison is real
The bars are as iron
And the walls as concrete

For the architect lives
And he is you

The dictator lives
And his statue bears your chisel marks
Self-appointed guardian
Within the crumbling cerebral prison
The skies within reach
But they burn at the touch

Light pirouettes across the stone floors
Of your damp sanctuary
But the eyes of the votary too weak
And unwilling to see

The crimes are real
And the sin churns within

This cell is where you belong
All seeing eyes burn your flesh
Deep into the night
There is no relief

But this is needed
I am impure

Yet in the oppression of iron and stone
Solace is found trickling down the cold walls
The skies beyond are so empty
The trees and mountains so hollow and thoughtless
The distances between so vast and remote
The path beyond these screaming walls
Is winding and overgrown
Without guidance I shall lose my way

Here I stay
Here I want to stay
Here I must stay

Enter the translucent spire
And inhale the fragrance of oak and satin
Sever the wretched rags of turmoil
From mind and body alike
And cover your ears for words beyond the threshold

Take refuge beneath my wing of tattered skin
Bestowed upon me by leaders up high
And I shall shelter you from the scalding rain

Hear my augury
Of endless torment and sorrow
And choose your path with baited breath

Use my eyes to see
And watch allies and friends become as serpents
See the thick vines of treachery
Upon which you have never laid sight
Weaving grotesquely from roots ubiquitous

Pour yourself into me
And I shall channel your passions
I shall fulfill your longings and heal the scars of old and new

My prophecies are the blade
And my proclamations the buckler

Take arms and heed
For knowledge is the foe
Speak not of mortal triumph
So paltry and arrogant
Dust and blood at outset and end
Nothing more

From my tower of ivory
I watch

In madness they flail
And with lunatic's words they howl
The final dusk comes
And no thought for the morrow is taken

A swarm descends
Their numbers swell
The stench of decayed sunlight fills my nostrils
Inhaled into lungs of steel and concrete
From subterranean halls of stone

Gripped by unseemly fetishes for ancient detritus
I gorge upon the future
I swallow 'til choking
No regrets are expressed

Come with me to the pool
Bury deep your face
In the skies of antiquity
Devour our elixir
Become like me

Viscous black fluid
Hangs at our mouths
Our muscles swell in its influence
Vast prostheses
Of steel and glass
Burst forth from our flesh

The nostrum of the colossus
The nostrum of us

I watch
Hordes of my offspring
Grotesque abstractions of form
Crawling on their bellies to the dying spring
Mists of frenzy descend upon the dwindling pools
I have done this

Colossi decay
Extremities rust in dereliction
A tumultuous hysteria of anguish echoes upon these stone walls
As they are alone and mortal
Bloodshed and death is all they shall know

As we awaken
And the thoughts of spirits and daemons
Fade from our retinas
And the gods up high fall from function
We arise alone
Our eyelids burn in the darkness
Not yet ready to open
And reap what was once sown

On that day in the endless blackness
When gods are remodeled into paradigms
With adze I must carve
And disfigure the deity into the zeitgeist

Mutilated and disowned
The fallen gods of old lose favour
Paradigms are hewn from the ashes of gods

Unquestioned and omnipresent
With calloused hands I heap axiom upon axiom

My feet sink deep into the mire
But unrelenting I am
As the edifice surges skyward

Stand back and gaze at our wonder
A contorted tapestry of taboo
A monolith of unquestionable questions

As lichen consumes the crumbling miscreation
Its beginnings fade from memory
And it towers as the wind and the stars

Bow before our orthodoxy
Merchants of snake oil
Within temples of aeons past
Now preachers of the bazaar
Peddling their filth
To the starving congregation
Stagnant ideologies
Deities of nouveau
Pungent and lurid dogmas
Blind my infantile eyes from the sinewy manacles
Which constrict my hands

Upon hands and knees I fall
Becoming one with the sea of rats that surrounds me
I see writhing heretics
Swept away in the formless swarm

Engulfed in the mass and the frenzy
I gaze as the crooked monolith
As it descends into the morass

Pyramids of steel
Piercing the heavens above
Great structures challenging the ground itself
Stone does our bidding
Not that of the Earth

Unlike those before us
The land is our subjugate
I speak the chorus in tongues
And drift between worlds

Buried deep in the noise
Heretical voices grip me
With emaciated fingers
I tear at my birthmask

Screams fill the corridors
As the cold air strikes my face
The first breath in a lifetime
Halls thick with smoke and sulphur
I choke as my eyes learn to see

The insipid multitudes
Chasing the horizons
They ignore my pleas
And march onward to nothing

As gold turns to dust and ash in trembling hands
And rotting silver fills our lungs
The house of cards tumbles

And seas of paper engulf vagrant and king alike
As the sky turns to maggots
And the land cracks and withers

I watch and crumble

Stale waters rise around the babbling hordes
False dreams do not keep them afloat
And beneath perpetual oceans they drown

The vindicating clamour
Of clerics and devotees
Soar high toward the welkin

But no words of comfort are returned
Are no quarter offered

As the vast web unravels 'neath our feet
And we fall into the ages of darkness
A deafening hum of vapidity
Is the only soundtrack to be heard