
Frenetic wasteland blues
Sing me a cosmic song
Light the midnight with passion
This is where we belong
Breathe the smoky fire in the cold air
Laid my teeth on a yellow blade
Fell into the warps of time
Frenetic wasteland blues
Sing me a cosmic song
Light the midnight with passion
This is where we belong
Breathe the smoky fire in the cold air
Laid my teeth on a yellow blade
Fell into the warps of time
A cold ground and thunder rumbling outside. All darkness at first and no memory of how I’d gotten here. Chilly air and damp.
I called out into the darkness but got no response. I saw what looked to be an old Zippo lighter by my side. I used it to faintly illuminate the room.
I am in prison, but the cell door is wide open.
They say sometimes we have dreams like this, though they could be better called nightmares. Perhaps they are nightmares embedded within nightmares in the subconscious, sleeping world. I have no memory of my life; everything is a blank slate, pale and grayish. The only images playing in my mind are of shadowy figures like ghosts. Though I see no one in this prison, I hear echoes of voices. They’re whispers, so I follow them. They say, “You deserve this,” and “The time is now for your punishment.”
The prison is expansive, set up like a labyrinth. I walk through the corridors and rows of cells, lost. It feels as though I’m wandering in circles. I follow the echoes of the voices. “Come closer,” they whisper. The thunder continues to rumble outside, and brief flashes of lightning that illuminate the prison’s interior. The whispers turn to deeper voices like growling. Then, the barking of dogs, loud, deep barks from vicious chained-up dogs. I can tell they’re chained up because I hear the chains rattle in the nighttime air.
No moon in the sky outside through the windows. My eyes adjust to the darkness so I can see better, but there’s not much to see. Despite the sounds, there still appears to be no one here.
My stomach twists with anxiety. Goosebumps on my arms. The clanging of steel now sounds in the distance. Memories are coming back, not like a flood of them, but little pieces here and there. Memories of a physical struggle, of looking down into the ashen face of a pale man on the concrete. His eyes are the purest light blue, and his smile is devious. He says, “Kill me, you bastard.” Memories of me holding a handgun and the steel’s coldness in my hands.
But it’s all mixed up. The man is on the ground, and his face has changed. The skin is green now, and the tongue is reptilian. The eyes are a deep yellow, and the teeth are sharp like fangs. There’s a crowd encircled around us, watching, cheering. There’s my mother crying, my dead father sleeping and levitating.
I am still walking the prison corridors, listening to noises. When I hit a dead end, the walls start closing in. Just when it appears as if there’s nowhere to go, a heavy door opens and hits me with a blinding red light.
Standing there behind the door is GOD.
But it is now how I imagined GOD would look.
He is a black, nebulous creature with wings. He has no face to speak of, and his body is not humanoid. It is more like a reptilian bird. I know this is GOD, though, for some reason. Something tells me it is.
I wait for the thing to speak while it flaps its wings. Then, the creature, GOD, opens its terrible, cavernous mouth and lets out the most horrible sound I could ever imagine. It blows me backward and pierces my bleeding eardrums until it makes me deaf and mute. The sound continues unabated, and the pressure in my brain keeps getting worse until it suddenly stops.
Everything is in complete darkness again. A garden has formed in this small room, filled with radiant blue flowers. A garden of the night within the prison walls. I fall asleep, I think, but I awake in the garden again.
There is no escaping this place. This is my home now, for eternity. Whatever punishment must come, it doesn’t matter. Whether I am cursed or blessed, I do not know. I know nothing anymore. Nothing but pain.
The End
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(more…)Once a dream did weave a shade
O’er my angel-guarded bed,
That an emmet lost its way
Where on grass methought I lay.
Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,
Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangle spray,
All heart-broke, I heard her say:
“Oh my children! do they cry,
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me.”
Pitying, I dropped a tear:
But I saw a glow-worm near,
Who replied, “What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night?
“I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetle’s hum;
Little wanderer, hie thee home!”
Note: This poem is in the public domain and can be found here. William Blake (1757-1827) was an English poet, painter, mystic, and printmaker. He was largely unrecognized during his life, but Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of poetry and art in the Romantic era.
The sky was a deep, dark red, and the clouds were thick and black. Lightning flashed across the sky, and thunder roared like a demon. The wind was strong and fierce, the rain was heavy and unrelenting. The ground shook and trembled, and the darkness was intense as night had fallen. The air was filled with howling and the smell of sulfur and ash.
I am reminded of my sins and the wrath of my deadness. The burning of dreams and the infernal existence of going astray. My counterparts here have crooked smiles and welcome me. “What is it you’re looking for in this place?” the fiendishly ugly man yells. “I don’t know.” Remove your face and listen to the storm winds of Hell. Remove your innocence and relent.
Ah me! I shall not waken soon
From dreams of such divinity!
A spirit singing ‘neath the moon
To me.
Wild sea-spray driven of the storm
Is not so wildly white as she,
Who beckoned with a foam-white arm
To me.
With eyes dark green, and golden-green
Long locks that rippled drippingly,
Out of the green wave she did lean
To me.
And sang; till Earth and Heaven seemed
A far, forgotten memory,
And more than Heaven in her who gleamed
On me.
Sleep, sweeter than love’s face or home;
And death’s immutability;
And music of the plangent foam,
For me!
Sweep over her! with all thy ships,
With all thy stormy tides, O sea! –
The memory of immortal lips
For me!
Note: This poem is in the public domain and can be found here. Madison Julius Cawein (1865-1914) was a poet from Louisville, Kentucky. A year before his death, Cawein published a poem called “Waste Land” that scholars say may have been the inspiration for T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land.
Angels sing, the heavens cry
Cosmic tears fall from skies
Colors burst, the world’s release
Sharing the taste of their impulses
Choir madness and moans
I see a galaxy hidden in the land
Galaxies grasped, then forgotten
Angels sing heavens cry
Cosmic tears fall swiftly
A melancholy, blue-tinted sky
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