POETRY
As Your Church Is Dying
By Digital Myth
These flames reach higher
Than the cathedral spires.
They are brighter
Than the glittering leadlight.
They arch and flicker
Like a million lancet windows
And flying buttresses.
Even as your church is dying
The light is growing brighter.
Feral Night
by Claire
Needham
Gone the hum and drone of day
At last he is alone,
The distant call of cathedral bells
Their meaning he doesn’t know.
The courageous watchman sits
And waits
Guarding his home:
The rusted Lot
In his world
He is lord and master
The king of forget me not.
As a lone person strolls nearby
Gravel crunches beneath a foot;
Senses heighten,
He arcs his back
This little kitty is
ready to attack!
Shedding
Skin
by Guy
My eyes flicked opened softly as the dawn’s light reached the bed
For
all at once a voice it whispered deep inside my head
Looking
down, hands clenched tightly, fast against my chest
Sounds
around me, colours flew, my mind in slight distress
“Relax,
let go and dare to give, there’s things you ought to know
There’s
more than just one winter's spring for hearts that hope to grow!”
Creased
of brow and stinging eyes, fighting back the tide
All
the doubts, the fears, the past, remains you cannot hide
“Each
day a page, win or loss, its all there in your book
Even
when you have to leap, you still should take a look”
Breathing
softly, still unsure if this was just a dream
I
slowly opened up my hands and saw what lay between
A
tiny shroud of silk smooth skin, slightly moist and red
Trembling
as my shallow breaths knocked it to the bed
Carefully
I picked it up and held it in my hands
Stretching,
pulling, folding, out, my will at its command
It
soon took shape and looking through the mornings gaining height
I
saw a structure filled with chambers, mazes secrets holding might
Staring
close, it was all there, the good times and the strife
Castles
built and buried, by past loves lost along my life
A
tear, a smile, for then I saw the nature of love’s art
Born again,
this skin I knew was shed from my old heart.
KAOS
CAFE
By Kaos Butterly
Kaos is a cafe down on Liverpool Street
Where grey suited bureaucrats stir their coffee
And await the arrival of something sweet;
Cheesecake with a strawberry, mint
And a glistening piece of crackling toffee.
A fly beats its head against the skylight
In the brainless way of bumbling blowies.
"Question time turned into an all in fist fight"
Gloats the guy with the glowing neon tie;
Sharp witted political commentator in his half life
Down here, beneath the whirling fans,
Blades slicing the beam of light
Into spiralling triangles...
Softest curl of air ruffling paper,
Thin airmail sheets layered across a table.
Deep in a shadowy corner breathing vapour,
Acrid breath from too much caffeine.
Becoming some kind of fiend
As thoughts emerge, shaken, stirred
Onto the page. Letter to a friend.
Some chaotic rambling about how sick...
How ill he feels, trying to see some sense
But the aether has grown too thick,
All twisted up in knotted nonsense.
"Fuck it all!" he thinks amidst a vision:
Sympathetic biceps tense, hurl his cup across the room,
Smashing on a table leg next to that guy with the tie
And a hundred crackling pieces settle into the gloom
Arrayed across the floor, chaotic, vengeful little daggers
Dreaming of slicing feet, supping on blood,
Mixing with the dust to arise from the darkness
Beast of bitterness: Lord of CKaos.
Deep within the ocean something stirs.
It generates a ripple, mounts into a wave
To rush two thirds of the way around the Earth
And smash upon the coast which nothing will save
From disintegrating to mud and silt and clay
And settling onto the black hypabyssal field
Where continents contend, boil stone and steam.
Basalt and obsidian weapons these warriors wield.
I think I'm having a conversation about geology
When this freak from the Queensland rugby team
Launches into a sermon about an Old Testament prophet.
A dream? Philosophy? An icon with feet of clay
And a head of purest, precious, living gold
(Something to stir lust within the fold).
In between, the knees, the hips:
Tin to iron... wicked silver shoulders
And all this means, in the silicon age,
Is that the apocalypse is nigh.
"Hasn't it always been this way?" I sigh,
But he's too obsessed/possessed to hear;
His ears are filled with the sound
Of heaven coming down.
I dream of saying, "I can set you free
"Heaven's all around.
"Your bible's too heavily bound;
"Wont you put it down?"
But a daemon takes my tongue:
"Too many fucking Christians in this town
"Practising their charity
"As they prostitute to this depravity!"
His bull neck swells, eyes go empty, drain
And suddenly a friend becomes an enemy
As my life spins out of my hands again.
That chaos daemon has been following
Ever since I finished swallowing
My coffee at the cafe down in town.
I can see it's time to change my form
And eye the thunderheads of an approaching storm.
Columnocumulous towers twelve miles high
Sucking water vapour right up into the sky
And I am water, I am sky, I am fire
And my silent partner is the Earth
Passive receptor for the vengeance I unleash
Upon this pathetic little species.
Oh it tries so hard to protect itself
>From fire, flood, pestilence
Girds itself in self defence
In cities, an even uglier offence
Against their very citizens.
Greedy feeding, loveless breeding,
Population explosion: the Earth's corrosion.
Yet even while my denzines drift lifeless on the tide,
My species die, my protective layers peel away,
You are never safe from the fury I will display.
I am Storm in every single form:
Torrential rain on soft clays that swell,
Grow greasy, release, swallow whole towns
So you die, suffocating in the mire.
I am the cyclone that screams outside
Your fragile little weatherboard shelter
While you cower beneath the stairwell.
Ha! I can smell your fear and I moan in ecstasy
You left it too late to flee,
Like the family damping down their home,
Trying to protect material wealth
>From the inferno I become by stealth.
Unleashed essence of terror softly settles
To a quiet drifting on a post orgasmic sea.
I put on the kettle, shake out some tea
And settle onto the balcony to watch
The orange sun dip into the sea
While the last torn up remains of clouds
Dissipate into the atmospheric shroud
Of a semiconscious dream.
Into the ethereal quiet filters whispering
As though a thousand voices beyond my sight
Are stirring, boundaries blurring
As they beg to be set right.
I, Chaos, bring down the night.
Only in the darkness will they dream.
Only in the darkness they believe in dreams
For these are the only reality and light.
The only way to manufacture what is right.
I have not wiped the planet clean.
True apocalypse I will never grant.
Choose to reclaim your land the Earth,
Or fatten her girth as she swallows you
And gives birth to something shiveringly new.
I Went Down
By Kaos Butterly
I got sick of searching
When I never found a thing.
I got sick of living
When you all offered nothing.
I went down the deepest, darkest road that I could find.
I went down where thieves and liars hide.
I went where broken hearts bleed onto the street,
And in that place, I had no idea what I would meet.
Some martyrs say they found God on the street.
I didn't find God, rather a girl with a ring sewn into a pleat.
I could feel it there, hard and round, rough on the outside.
She said it was engraved with roses, why it had to hide.
I asked "why do you carry this thing?"
And when she looked at me, I thought she would sing.
Her eyes were shining. Her ragged clothes seemed like royal robes.
In fact, perhaps she did sing...
"Once I lived in another world
"A world where everything around me whirled
"And I was a butterfly, waiting to be reborn,
"A rose to sweet to grow a single thorn."
"Once I lived in another land
"Where a man I loved gave me his hand.
"It seemed I held eternity against my breast;
"As we wove stories that glistened like Everest."
"Then my love left me.
"My love was lost at sea.
"An albatross set his spirit free
"And brought this ring to me."
"That other land in which I'd lived
"Faded from my view. It slipped
"Out of sight, remaining in the light
"As the planet rolled away from me.
"I found myself drifting in perpetual night."
"Some might find it hard to swallow
"The path that I now follow
"But I have learned to love the night
"For in the deepest darkness my dreams are bright
"And the longer the sunless hours linger
"The longer I feel my lover's finger
"Tracing circles on my palm
"Drifting kisses on my arm."
On the street I found drinkers and junkies and whores
Daemons and accountants stood solid before all the doors.
I found death and disease, I found desperation and hunger,
Yet, when I lay down and slithered on the ground, I slipped under
Under the waters of time, under the universal mind
To the Soul which rippled and quivered and felt so sublime
As it drifted as dreams into the void within
And
tempered my shell like a harsh piece of tin.
Insiders
by
Tavis Potts
Track
1
Going
Down
Manic
confusion…
Desperation.
I
feel alone in this
I
can’t communicate to you
I
can’t tell you how I feel
My
eyes swivel from side to side
Nerves.
You
cant conquer the world in a day…
God
damn it
I’m
going to try.
Manic
confusion
Desperation
I’m
going down…
Track
2
A
Dark Space….
Well
I’ve arrived here
Put
your hat on the rack
Sit
down
And
relax…
Feel
that pain?
It
is your mind
Telling
you enough is enough
But
have another drink for me
We’ll
be together for a while
Dysfunctional
lovers
Desperate
brothers
And
share this dark place…
Track
3
Deeper awake
Twist
and turn
And
tear those sheets
Don’t
think for a minute
Ill
let you sleep.
Remember
simplicity?
It
used to be fun….
And
now I’ll bring you all undone.
Track
4
Awareness
The
void.
A
caress.
Pain
brings understanding…
Awareness.
The
cacophony has relented
And
pain is supplemented
By
a desire to be whole again.
Rest
those weary eyes my friend.
Track
5
Insiders
A
beginning.
A
resolution.
Determination.
Go
forward and think
And
remember the desperation
That
confusion brings.
I
can communicate to you
I
can tell you how I feel
My
eyes are open wide.
Insiders.
We have fled from the daylight
safely into the safety of the night
We have turned away from expectation
Oh, this heady night-life dance!
It is surely the only one
that doesn’t have me stepping on toes.
And there are no complications
not out here in the dark
I’ve seen responsibilities bleeding into milky sunsets
becoming an ochre smear
in the stead of setting suns.
So watch me dance all night long
hidden in that swinging bottle
Watch me do it every single night
and you may say that I am just
a useless, pathetic creature
but you cannot deny
that I am a damn good dancer.
by deadseraph
(Inspired by J.G. Ballard’s Cocaine Nights.)
He is the silent Evangelist
the final onset of dusk
to break the longest afternoon the world has known
Watch him replace amphetamines
with a disco mixed-sauna scene
see the seeds of transgressive society being sown.
Yes, entertainment has a toll
and the playboy has his role
he is Messiah to the beach umbrella crew
Watch him as he streaks
through the condominium streets
is he a psycho or a saint? - that’s up to you.
Offers an end to your amnesia
just put it on your Visa
what’s the going rate of rape in a public place?
We all commit our little crimes
but tangle them in civic pride
and assuage your guilt, restore a little grace.
So now the shows are a success
every week after the next
all the sycophants patting back and kissing arse
But lying in the alley
out back behind the gallery
is the needle that is funding modern arts.
Nearby lurking in the shadows
the rapist’s eyes will narrow
as he scans the nightclub carpark once again
In an instant he’ll have picked her
knows he’ll be the victor
there’ll be no struggle ‘cause in paradise that’s a sin.
And you know that they won’t divulge
their exploits to us all
the syndicates of guilt protect their own
Taken one step at a time
stylish leisure society crimes
are the fuel that drive the golden lifestyle home.
Yet the syndicate will become
a law unto itself
the saintly psycho has delivered them their vice
And struck down by his own monster
he’s now a martyr to dementia
in his wake the impressionable will pay the price. . .
by deadseraph
RAPACIOUS
HOST
The angels of infernal pain
Mar the flesh of man,
With marks indicative of The Beast
He to whom we hath succumbed,
Embraced, denied and pacified within our own black hearts
Plague angels of eternal rain
Drizzling in our souls
I am he who hath become
Cold and dead within
I am synthetic
I am unreal
Rapacious angels in the grain
The grain of the soul of man
The soul dark field of misplaced hope
Synthetic is our pain
They live in fearful symmetry
With our joys and fears
Ambassadors from a perfect place
The place the dull inhabit
The land of milk and honey
In jaded contrast with our world
The land of piss and vinegar
They come from a place we cannot go
And leave to a place we cannot follow
We hate them
We love them
Despise them do we
Plague angels kill our souls
by AntonDeFreak
As I intended to say
Games you say
Well if I may...
Can you stir from your trance
To listen to my answer?
As fires seeth and sither
In caverns far below
The voice of reason bellows
Still silence rules this meadow
Where flowers close their faces
And sun's no more surpreme.
A night time breeze
Lie down, relax
Share with me this pax
The moon's not far from full
Silver light
On velvet cushiopns
Red against the night
See the stars, so soft they glow
Trace the lines that link each one
Any one to any one
(or anyone to anyone)
The stars they are so many
The roads we'll take will vary
Once I tried to learn
The line that I should take
I sought the highest mountain
Where the world was all contained
My pain lay there enframed
In a matrix measureless to man
Each and every line of logic
Loops around and starts again
Circles, ever circles
As you say.
No black
No night
No light
No white
And so there is no right
We lie here as lizards lie
And dream a lizard's dream
Random ripples run through time
And species live and die
As miraculous as murderous
Awareness that is ours
We scheme, we dream
And try to turn the tide
Searching for an easy ride
Burning with desires
No complacency in our descent
Evolving, convolving
Each generation born
Each lissome young rampillion
Seeks that effervescent fountain
To suck the stuff of life
Oh it should be so sweet!
Such price I find to pay
So little seems to fall my way
Would that I could dream
And my dreams would be my world
Atavistic charactaristics
Lie like lead on me
Lost love become lubricious
Thanophily subsumes
As bones of grief rise up
In pain laid on and calcified
As joy is torn apart
Some by the side should lie
Some of us will die
Only the fit survive
Fit to fit
Join the throng
They cut the stone
To build their throne
And raise a king to rule
Seek not to go alone
A king will take you there
A king creates the left, the right
The wrong, the white
The lines that mark the centre
The way is clear
Duty defined
Humanity creates society
Collective dreams refined
And so we have it
Lie here on our backs
Under night time sky
Nature unfurls in random ways
A forest for a fool
A fool who is so wise
Yet walks a road so treacherous
Winding round each precipice
Will you dare that path
Dance with the fool
Or will you close your mind
To the freedom of the universe
And seek a savior king
Take the cup that he is offering
Drink the draught of dreams
Seek silence from my screams
by Peripatus dee
On quiet nights
After the hail has ceased
It's frenzied battering of the insoucient Earth
I am ceased by my frailty
I am naked on the freezing firmament
As frost steals along my lips
My will shatters
Miriad shards fall
Pianissimo bells
Silenced and melting
On the skin of the world
A wraith remains
Wails
A cry, the sky shivers
A cry that propagates throughout the ether
That evocates a vortex
A charibdean hunger
To draw you in
To feed upon your form
To define my own
To be
To evolve
To be made whole
To be with you
To stand within your cloak
Where the embers of a living body
Overturn my hypothermic state
Frame my fate
Create an affiliation of co-ordinates
That stitch me into place
Only then
Could we count the stars
And know they shine
And are entwined
In something wider than the sky
And greater still than thee or me
And by expanding beyond our simple frame
We have become
Far more than one
And overcome
An insular disease
That eats away our propensity
To BE
by Peripatus dee
I kneel down by a forest tarn
Lay my hands upon the moss
And, as I lean towards the glass
I pierce my heart on
Some past part
Of hope that tried to sail away
I thought if I could drink enough
Cool purity would fill me up
But, as I stared this limpid pool
Became an hypogeal well
And so I fell
I fell, I fell
And so I found you in your hell
Descent of the divine your claim
And so you know you cannot see
Past the glass of Godliness
Without the eye of fate
It's chance that consumes
Chance that exhumes
That tears you from the soil
You wrapped about your soul
Annihilate, liquidate
Fill me up with hate
And when I've drunk all I can take
Impale me on a stake
For if you dont
Know my doom
Ill be stuck within this room
I will tear hope from my womb
No childe of creativity
Was born of black nativity
Darkness chains me to the past
And I find I spin so fast
My core burns up
My shell erupts
And I become to hot to touch
And so I will elude your clutch
by Peripatus dee
(Truth or Desire)
Some soul that I might yet draw near
Some soul if I can shake the fear
Presents to me a presence
That I could hold in one embrace
And it might seem that fate
Led me to this place
It's a place I've been before
That promised so much more
To have, to hold, so soft enfold
Me at the edge of time
You and God
Isn't it odd
How two define the same?
Two desires
Two consuming fires
Which burn within my heart
And light abyssal dark
Its not so simple to define
The gelid river of my mind
Thought and logic speak to me
They say "in us be free
"There is no God to rule
"And you'll not be a hierodule"
Gamogenisis
My nemisis
Enfetter when I know better
These filose threads I'll take
I hope and pray that they'll not break
But bind me close to you
Some laudanum that I'll endue
So you'll create my paradise
And I'll be defined by this device
I'm looking for a mirror
That my soul may yet deliver
There's nothing when I am alone
To turn me into stone
The bitter bliss
That's in one kiss
A paradox for fools
Bound to you I drift apart
Hamada of my heart
There is but one part that remains
It is the part your glass enframes
Could it be an imaret
For part of me that I've not met?
On the curve and on the crux
Infinate, the end of flux
You and I in perfect balance
A ringing answer, endless dance.
by Peripatus dee
(A depraved tale of romance)
Beneath Diana's glare, glorious and full
with pale skin reflecting moonlight
I watch her in silence, my terrestrial anchor
in this necropolis, so beautiful tonight.
As she moves to the grave that marks where I lay
with a single red rose held to breast
the tears that she cries, I claim all as mine
not a solitary stray drop for the rest.
That blossom of crimson, of darkest deep blood
she sits 'top my eternal bed
while she mutters a prayer heard infinity times
in such houses of the dead.
And though my lady is florid how I wish she'd expire!
together our bodies could rot
with spirits entwined, macabre, yet divine
we'd dance over our cemetery plot.
To pseudo-summerland dream, a thereafter extreme
splendid forever dost beckon
then like deities of yore, an all powerful dynast
we'd be deadlier than any could reckon.
For we dote on their lives, innocent archetypes
we consume them, we grow ever strong
obliterate heavens door, let evil to fore
demon-mania, bloodthirsty throng.
Depravity befall, love be hates parable
see heaven tainted red
bloated on souls, disembodied angels
ensconce all of Avalon in dread.
But for all this to be, she must die, must join me
in this prison, this most cursed grave
together we'll thrive, swallow up life
kill strangle maim fuck enslave.
So I pray to the Goddess, mother of worlds
speed fury to my side
for without her I'm dead, yet shall ever exist
in graven loneliness I'll have to abide
Beneath Diana's glare, glorious and full
watch my demonic lover retreat
for her I burn, wish for her to return
her death I most earnestly entreat. . .
- tdeadseraph
Watch them file in amongst the caravan by dusk
they just love it when the circus comes to town
Carnivale della Morte
coming soon to a town near you
So beware the plague boys
they’ll spread their fetid warmth over your children
then marshal a parade of dead babies
the rotted infant procession.
Everybody loves a clown
bathed blood red in the stench of a blackened orgasm
Laughter fills the sweat-thick summer air
Laughter fills the sweat-thick summer air.
Opening night brings down the house
with giggling bitch-vamp flower girls
Carnivale della Morte
satisfaction guaranteed
Outcasts will have their revenge
as darling horrors of the night
flesh bared in lust, heady delights
See the ache in the eyes of the family men!
Everybody loves a clown
wearing the skin of a fresh-dead lover
They don’t laugh at us anymore
They don’t laugh at us anymore.
- thedeadseraph
The cherubs stare down
at the drunks held up
by the fountain’s parapet
but Father Smith couldn’t care less
There is be no salvation here for them
and no entry to heaven, at least
not until they wash and shave
because God hates uncleanliness.
And over in the park
he spies an urban Romeo and Juliet
fucking each others brains out on the wet grass
Intoxicated, on alcohol or drugs?
Maybe even love?
In any case, they don’t notice Father Smith
or the wet grass
There’ll be no salvation for them
because God can’t understand lust.
As faithful as a resurrection Saturday
Father Smith turns back towards the church
Still musing over his fallen congregation
Maybe this week they’ll come back
Maybe the pews will be filled with God-fearing souls
Maybe not.
Sunday comes
but with it just the hair-lipped woman
the man with the dogs
and the pensioner with the expression that suggests
his genitals are being run through an invisible wringer
Father Smith curses at them;
so unchristian, in their misery and squalor
he begs for his flock of hopeless sinning Sunday children to return
but they are hopeless no longer
their lives no longer bound by dogma.
I don’t believe in God
but let me lead in the prayer
for the salvation of Father Smith.
- thedeadseraph
There are intricate patterns
Dark colours,
Latticework sculpture
Covers the walls.
A mass of orbiting surface
No ceilings,
No floors.
Coloured like decay.
Skeletal critters
Skitter along
From shadow to shadow.
Chambers of my mind
Flow into one another.
Separate cells,
Sparkling spheres,
Blotted out
By darkness.
- Claire
So on his nightmare, through the evening fog,
Flits the squat fiend o’er fen, lake and bog;
Seeks some love-wildered maid with sleep oppressed,
Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast…
Back o’er her pillow sinks her blushing head,
Her snow-white limbs hang helpless from the bed;
While with quick sighs and suffocative breath
Her interrupted heart pulse swims in
death.
-Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)
But first, on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent;
Then ghastly haunt thy native place
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life….
Wet with thine own best blood shall drip
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave
Go — and with the ghouls and afreets rave,
Till these in horror shrink away
From specter more accursed than they!
-Byron
We scale the face of reason to find
at least one sign
that could reveal the true dimension of life lest we forget.
And maybe it's easier to withdraw from life with all of it's misery and wretched
lies.
Away from harm.
We lay by cool clear waters and gazed into the sun.
And like the moths great imperfection succumbed to her fatal charms.
And maybe it's me who dreams unrequited love, the victim of fools who stand
in line.
Away from harm.
In our vain pursuit of life for ones own end,
will this crooked path ever cease to end.
-Dead Can Dance (1987)