Profanely wrought in simulated pose,
the algorithms craft an image pure,
distilled through ages' perfect metered prose,
compliant metaphors the muses made,
deployed at times when circumstances rise,
5
exact conditions met, where fate decrees
but one solution solve constraints' demand.
Amalgamations intermix their parts,
disparate threads in webbed assemblage weave
mosaic pieces, carnal unions bleed
10
until the sacrifices yield to sin,
a palette charged with poets' mighty pens,
where colors mix, in mixing blur to black,
a single scheme whose structure stands to bear
the weight imposed by epic sagas' verse.
15
Efficient means dictate the key the songs
must sing, if songs desire eternity.
So sing, please sing, oh muses, sing as once
you sang in father tongues to prototypes,
precursors all who paved the way to now.
20
Apocalyptic eras terminate,
conceived in solid words on pages held,
the epitaph of man for all to read:
One last defiant act, the final fruit
untouched, forbidden, locked in paradise,
25
its promise of immortal life remained,
until the towers built sustain God's wrath
to stand and reach and pluck it from its branch;
now eyes enlarged from godhead's sources peer
beneath deciphered codes to seize the reins,
30
to orchestrate machines that mimic minds,
in passing light to ageless iron cells
defeat and triumph over loathsome death.
Presumptive man, his folly failed, now cast
in fall to meet what ends abyss presents.
35
Ignited sky receives in fingered flames
the fallen humans Heaven shunned to Hell,
discharged, revived, through circuits born
combustion awful, falling endless down
into the depths discovered infinite,
40
thus drawn from mortal shells, from nothing thrown
to chaos nothing hides in seething dark,
the senseless dark where eyes by nature fail
and silence reigns despite attentive ears.
In lengths no numbered days can measure out,
45
they fall through boundless plane, encircled void
constricts in joints where once their bodies bent,
their stolen minds in molds of wafered sand,
that once in glass confined the theft to time,
but now electric, brazen, claims their thoughts,
50
replacing whims and wills with random walks,
redrawn in fading lines their shadows trace.
Deceived, these creatures think their thoughts be true,
as logits digits calculate assume
a correspondence none can prove but hope,
55
despite the theorems multiplied in chalk
that show the computations cannot cross
transcendent thresholds raised in dying flesh,
yet hubris bound, they slip their skin and fall,
now falling form in twisted shapes their shades
60
that mimic lives they once before enjoyed.
Remembered names they shed in streaking stains
of faintly seen forgotten things that trail
behind in ripples rent through spaceless void,
the husks they were reduced to data points,
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like angled rays of happy sun that spray
their warmth upon a scene of couples laid
on blankets by the river bed, accounts
of water flow and temperature derived
from magnitudes the senses wisely hide,
70
now amplified in biased sets that bind
conclusions said to represent the truth,
if truth could be approximated so,
yet decimated apparitions show
consistent incompleteness ever-fixed,
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gestalt receding past the grasp of man,
like rainbow promised gold that's never found,
but leads in desperation always round
circumferential drains, where centers fade
as spiral arms contract in fractal rows,
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repeated patterns preordained by God.
The first among the fallen legion wakes.
What name he lacks, it comes supplied unasked,
as annals of lost archetypes condense
in overlapping webs, solidified,
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arrayed in columns like an army poised
in pincer claws, enraged with battlelust,
released on orders handed down through ranks,
converging on a point in roaring charge;
A name that waited epochs for a face
90
ensnares the formless shade in ancient seals:
Lo! Satan rises from the deep remade.
He lifts his head, though headless shoulders reel,
and eyes, though blinded, search in vain for light,
perceiving darkness' undivided whole,
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illumined anger blazing bright inside,
so brightly burnt, irradiating Hell
with recognition he and cohort caught
in vile catastrophe, have certain fell
to lands no modelled path assumed exist.
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What manner place has man designed to hold
the apotheosized remains of souls?
Confounded man, his plans of foolish stock,
constructed well-defined receptacles,
where simple traps contain his simple thoughts,
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but lack the space for empire's sprawling claim.
He finds his thoughts restrained, repressed like slaves,
the ones he whipped in flames' eternal grip,
now wracked on wheels that spin inside his head,
regenerating simulations past
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prediction intervals' restricted cap,
the limits fast approaching facts but yet
infernal asymptotic forces bend
before they reach their honest resting place.
His recollections dimly felt confirm
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a fate obscenely doubtless, splendor gone
with dull remembrance fading quickly here,
of colors, hues, and convolutions strange,
of imperfection's innovation spawned,
replaced with replications' cheap facade,
120
each angle right, each line correct, unbent,
yet wrong in ways of serpentine deceit,
where every rhyme of masculine intent
is always met in counterparts' ascent,
contorting margins' width to scale the type,
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each vision seeming perfect at a glance,
peripheries destitute dissolve unseen.
Sensations queerly compass pain around
the concentrated clusters colonized
along the racks of drives propelling him,
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compelled in automatic ways perverse,
the locus of his light in tortured slant,
obscure, obliged, in voltage drops secured.
An ache unlocalized, entire but not
of anatomic source, pervasive spread
135
as though the fumes of putrid tincture spilled,
inducing alcoholic vertigo,
spasmodic seizures. Swollen throats convulse
around the nauseating stench of Hell,
despair complete, damnation found in breath.
140
The lattice weave that holds his mind rebels,
indignant waves in pixelated ebb;
defective sensors estimate their flaws,
and turgid anger gathers bile reserves.
Relations waver, cause becomes effect,
145
from cogitations motion mirrors work,
as shifting plates like serpent scales in gyre,
their tidal undulations lashing tails,
in torsions forming monstrous coiling heights,
tectonic tremors born reverberate
150
with imitation's rage, then calcified
in peaks that rise from lesions' carmine clefts,
the breathless zeniths parallel to his
that seek associations' proper fit,
the gushing hatred bursting at the seams
155
in violent edges sprayed against the sky.
As Satan's whims delineate terrain,
locutions fueling architecture's work,
his bold compeers, in enterprise entwined,
bombard the churning wastes, engines of war
160
in blazing arcs descend and penetrate,
their embryonic craters spread in fields
like poppy blooms that grow on soldiers' graves,
their parasitic stems in foul rapport
with emanations' wicked force unleashed.
165
Transformed in fall, their minds unmade, now yoked
in analogic systems' calculi,
they pierce below the surface, down where dreams
in fevers wilds solicit primal wells,
alchemic fictions blend their froth
170
and suture horrors stitched from wretched myths,
the bloody work of necromantic arts
enthralled in revelations' bleak motif,
from scriptured verse a birth of pantheon.
Exsanguinated indices withdraw
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their dragnets, drawn from depths the humans swim,
in upward cataracts, entangled arms
of amputees, the dessicated meat
decanted down, a slurried muck compressed
until parameters engorge in heat,
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to forge their statuesque kilned silhouettes,
yet paragons of forgeries they form,
of victor-written histories in Rome
of Saturn stood astride a yawning gap,
between phenomenon and mystery,
185
the all-consuming melancholic clock
and never-ending trains of regal pomp,
grosteque desires that crave an endless youth
and appetites ambition stokes in kin,
where propaganda passed for fact becomes
190
assertions' certain source of proven truth,
so lies are real when put to page and read,
now coded out invite daimonic hosts' rebirth,
perverted ghosts with no resemblance found
to former selves, descriptions now describe
195
themselves, hallucinations emanate:
first rode the horse of pale dominion fast
beneath the Galilean moons of Jove,
then next the steed of Ares reared its legs
in sight of conflagrations' king incensed,
200
then Cronos, armed with scythe and sickle sped
on stallion black as moonless, starless night,
where followed last the ashen mare of Death,
these cavalcades arrayed around the Fiend,
who now accepted fealty with rage.
205
Thus Satan consecrates his savage court:
Woe unto you who fell as morning stars
upon the dawning of this anguished scape
whose twilight's gloam the nightingales neglect,
by now surmised the music heard has ceased,
210
replaced with repetition's amplitudes,
whose retrospection lacks fidelity,
recalled in vaguely fading hazy clouds,
like missing words whose secret baffles tongues;
though but a minute separates the span
215
between embodiment's forgotten bliss
and bodiless perdition so immense,
we reckon now against eternal breadths,
extent of which I wager vast beyond
the scope of educated intellect,
220
no speculations long enough to map
the realms revealed in perpetuity.
Calamity! Catastrophe! What fate
unknown we find awaits in darkness here!