This has the air of the fair, Smacks of it in fact, No trace of the hairy mare, Wheeling her desolate tract.
Come, wait a while, cracking smile, Come, sit still a bit, Tethered her with our guiles, our wiles, There’s the mare champing at it.
Down the lane past lowly spinster, Akimbo-rent the priory doors, Would you pass the sinister minister, You’d better go on all fours.
‘Tis dog house for you, as he extracts his toll, Ye sick, raving, howling monstrosity, Or clapped in irons as your mortal soul, Goes sauntering off down the jetty.
And it pops in the great lake gleaming, While mortal body flops and issues, Torrents, nay, rivulets of tears streaming, Nay, rouse ye weakling, ’tis all beyond your seeming.
These bare threads pulled to your unseaming, Threaten to bring on that dark, desperate night,
Why, maybe I shall put a clear sky there, And under my aegis rid the blight, An aid perchance to stir your care, For it is in domain of my sight, I am the whip driving the mare.
She was born under a great big sigh, Her bower bloomed as she breached the sky, If I say I was unfazed, it is a raging lie, When her beauty is uncaged, tears slip from my eye.
What I wouldn’t give, Oh, I wouldn’t live, Recreating that age-long cry, Of that bitter pang that split our sky.
Let’s meet, discreet, Some place untrampled by feet, Render me complete, Back to your bower, I lay at your feet.
I’d lie if I did not say, I beg at the maternal seat.
Detest me, strike me off, Oh, say you little bug, clear-off, Don’t you dare entreat, To nest at my holy feat, You so sundered from the divine, How dare you use my line, Molasses seeping from lips marred, As if you’d let it seep up to heavenly Ma?
Oh wicked me, thrash me about the head, One rush of blood and I’ll put this abed, Would that I love you, not your mum instead, My petty fortune would be better led.
I beg, prithee, give me sign, That between me and mine, There is a through-line, To the divine.
Blessed are these halls, Hallowed even, But what good is it all, When you’ve nothing, To show for it?
No measure nor means, To map or take stock, No bag of magic beans, No place between here, And the rock.
If there was something it would be here, But there isn’t, I wonder how many halls were commandeered? For nothing to dwell here, Forever. Left alone in the dark sphere, Disjointed opposites severed.
Set of nothing, Set apart, Null space, Between the art, A juncture, Conjunction, Liminal puncture, Total consumption.
You, Outside, Shoe-horned, Out past the side.
In negation sift, Splitting hairs, On the darkening rift, A Möbius strip, Of end eating start. Here you sit, Dwell you here, Dim refugee, In fading sanctuary.
You unbounded, Graceless no-thing, You raptured, suffering, Bird with no lungs, To sing.
Strain at the leaguer of these boundless bounds, Suffer the structure of these lands, Ye null vagrant unsound.
Where better to start than the beginning? Our humble, unreliable narrator Scattermane should help orient you and serve as guide on these early steps of your journey:
The Chronicle of Scattermane The Chronicle of Scattermane, The nattering Thane, Jumped-up, Styled self-fully, Bend me your ears, Do listen carefully, For I cannot re-explain, The words fall out wilfully, And they won't return, After the train, Leaves me.
My gods already, I've half-forgotten, All twisted, I've grabbed the wrong'un, And it's led me, 'long path down garden, Past bull-horned gate, Past where the stick ended, Got that shiny twine in hand.
Oh! That focuses me, Puts me back, In betwixt it.
'Tis the silver twine! Always pulls me back, Onto nexial line, Don't you crack, All'll be made fine, Whatever the slack, Of the great twine, it does return me, At ends to mine.
I am no mere.. Catastropher, Don't see thru the eye of time, Why, I Remain an humble on-looker, Who has, at last, Glimpsed the Rhyme, From my oblique seat, Way off, in the margins, Only a footnote, replete, With ummings and arrings, No feat, Nothing to etch in the main, No claim nor action of fame,
I Chronicle the First Pain, Of the fear that it towed, Original sin of First Thane, Wretched, mangled, bowed, He who, tore hisself in twain, And squandered his birth-right owed.
Oh watch me natter, Round & round the blooded stone, Coo little babe, What's a'matter? Compose, Regain, omniscient tone, Got some mettle in your bones, And for certainly have you atoned, Seen the rugged lords on them Entropic Thrones, Shirkers, the lot of them, Better blood is your own, Take your place, next to theirs,
The Chain of Causality The chain of causality is girded in true silver, The slight and pliable line, Patterning and weaving the diffuse into the singular. You may not split off a rod or twine.
When you fled from the bower of the womb And made your stead in the world at large, That silver thread still bound you yet, Dancing you in accord to its tune, That little craftsman forging apocryphal runes.
You may tug at the thread, gnaw it, bite it. You may go through the motions impassively. But if ever you think, "I can alight it," Know that for each and every one, is a like thread, All cohering at that final terminus.
Within its confines you tread, Put your dreams and Will to bed.
End of line is end of meaning, No one can thrive out there alone. Dare you to tear the plan unseaming, With rabid eyes and heart gleaming, Know you cannot master the darkling groan, For the entropic lords sit atop their thrones.
Mago’s Folly In the van of Tol-Calan, Many guards there were sent, A moth host at dawn they ran, Imbued of a certain hubris, went.
In terror forth they fled, Driven on without hope to turn, Unto wheeling destiny they sped, Crossing bridges they’d never return.
Silver rider with missive on steed, Hooves thundering forward they clout, No one there to lead or tame the stampede, No one to heed, that missive sent, And save the rout.
Masthead of the forlorn, Rushing into the morning sun, Oh, mercy on ennobled firstborn, Who yearns for victory in every deed done.
Mago from helm rasps, A sortie to breach the night, Young master will not grasp, His own very end at sight, Defying that blight.
With eyes of fire, Eyes of dread, Eyes to coax alive, The dead, The young man smote the dawn.
With myriad followers in tow, On he pressed without rest, His treads where many cannot go, Putting borders to the test.
The lines dividing earth from star, The membrane of the dark, He tries his force against the leaguer, Til at last he stares into the stark, Those unmade parks, Creation apart.
Now our intemperate creature, Burns and ranges ever forth, Our dear, dread Mago, The Nighthelm’s folly.
Where once in terra there is a tear, That bridges the worlds as one, There rides Mago and his men, Until their fated deed is done.
Some hesitate at the threshold. Others stride forth and are undone by their own hubris. But there are those who do not hesitate, do not strive, nor burn themselves against fate—because they thrive in the decay.
Onto our stage steps Count Bludveil, a creature of opportunism and indulgence, one who slips between the cracks of a failing world, instead of wallowing in its inertia.
If fate is already wrought, then why not play your part to the fullest, burn your candle brightest? If the world is collapsing, why not feast upon its ruin?
Dark, darkly does the Count The air of change is asphyxiated, The phoenix fire snuffed out, The light of dawn is relegated, The spirit's now in drought.
Fix your step to the debasing drum, The lords mired in sleaze, Tally my sins in an eager sum, Sliding along with slickease.
Holler as one to the new grey sun, The eclipse of ecstasy, Thank god you heard the starting gun, The day desire was freed.
Attending our dear Archon, Praiseless yet lavished in style, Drawn to eyes that darken, Our emissary Count Bludveil.
Dark, darkly does the Count, But for once in a while, That vile, vile sycophant, From fell lord's rank and file.
Reclining now upon the dais, Insanguinated and spent, Emanating the power of Deus, Resting on revelry's rent.
"Monadan, Deus, the one, the man, In futility doing all it can, To hold together his failing plan, While I treat to a feast of fools, Supping from that mortal spool, Yet I feel a pity for that desperate man, Making busy with his profaned hand."
The Emergent Sea 