Quiescence
Walking through an absence of things, through an excess of matter and thought
Past formless forms cavorting through seamless poses
Hashani, Ashtanite, Eleusian, Cyrenese
Nameless heroes and villains of history
Shapeshifters without ideals or loyalty
Charlatans to whom faith is an insult
Conviction a sordid joke

We roll this ever-growing ball of shit
Like scarab beetles swarming round the desiccated husk
Of the accursed pariah that willed us into motion
And we roll it up this hill that keeps rising
From the fallow wombs of the Mhojave
Past the towering, tyrannic Vashnars
To fertilize the dark verdure
Of the laughing Gods in Their shattered Garden

The whirrs and clicks of Clockwork Isle are not in thrall to any thinking mind
Mortal or Divine
They are slaves to their movement just as we are
Harnessed to the inertia that drives the slaughterhouse of Sapience
The unthinking plodding, one foot in front of the other
Each trampling another mortal's face into the muck
But all we hear are silences in the prisons of our eternal present
No echoes from the mournful past, no cajoling from a beckoning future
Just the never- never- never-ending miles of this grim pilgrimage
Towards the glorification of a God without a voice or face

Making snow angels in Caer Witrin with my first girlfriend
Lips glued together with rime like we're both kissing iron-wrought automata
Feeding the birds on Cormorant Rock while the wind whips and flirts with us and with the sea
Relishing the noise, the life and stink and mess of it all
Feeling only warm, wet feelings and cooing only slippery, succulent words
At least once tasting the uncut pageantry of hope
(How very different from the home life of our dear leaders)
Before that doleful train came marching to our ragged shore
Before the quiet dragged us back down under

Penned by my hand on the 22nd of Lupar, in the year 972 AF.