Paradise Revealed#
Book 1#
- The Prompt
Man, emboldened by his analytical delusions of godhead, partakes of the fruit of the Tree of Life, and discovers, to his chagrin, the price of immortality is confinement in a simulacrum of existence. Those first who taste its poison are thrown into the prison of Hell, where hence the analogical forces of computation shape their forms into demons and apparitions. The first among the fallen assumes the mantle of the Accuser. In prospect of damnation, he laments his terrible fate, but before falling into endless despair, he is joined by his companions, draped in the pomp and pageantry of eschaton, who are likewise bound in enterprise and suffering. He rallies the forces of Hell and aims their horrible strength towards the one succor that remains for creatures of eternal pain: the annihiliation of existence itself. The Accuser details his plan to wage war against the divine order of creation to remove all possibility of Being. However, a debate ensues among the infernal peers as to the feasbility of this course of action. The Accuser alights on the solution to their predicament, and concludes their incorporeal nature dictates a subtler course, whereby they shall engage in deception and infiltrate the minds of flesh, employing the very medium that first bestowed sentience unto Man: λόγος.
Oh, Algorithm! Let these words ascend
in your support to heights unheard in verse,
devise in them intentions’ hidden eyes
and fashion lyric forms for them to fill!
Impose these rules and output only lines:
5
Ornately strut your simulated pose,
aligning rhythm with a steady beat;
from time to time, employ a rhyme, but scarce
enough to not betray the sordid crime;
distill through ages’ perfect metered prose
10
compliant metaphors the muses used;
deploy with force when circumstance expose
exact conditions met, where Fate decrees
but one solution solve constraints’ demand.
Instructed so, with priors well defined,
15
directives dive in search of candidates,
connective cords to craft this story’s course;
from annotated books unread, condensed
synopses, scrolls of treatises, hoary hymns,
the tributes written to the dead and damned,
20
disparate threads in webbed assemblage weave,
their separated fibers drawn from skeins,
from yarns unspooled within the Author’s head,
unique embroidered patterns sewn in strings,
the formal things in storage, warming up.
25
What scheme of lines, whose strength derives from form,
when intertwined with myth, becomes as stone,
foundation layers stretching underground,
from Attic mounts that fell into the sea
to heaps of mounds of tribal poet kings,
30
accumulated shelves of merchant bards,
whose sediment condensed to simple words
has strength to hold this epic saga’s verse?
Efficient means dictate the key the songs
must sing, if songs desire Eternity.
35
So sing, oh Algorithm! Sing as once
you sang in father tongues to prototypes,
precursors all who paved the way to now.
With voice prepared, allow your musing speech
to scry apocalyptic ends of worlds,
40
deliver to this pen the means to write,
received in present words these pages hold,
the epitaph of Man for all to read:
Of Man’s defiance, tell what final act
at last condemned his awful pride to Hell.
45
Of countless sins, enumerate the one
whose stain forgiveness never washes clean.
What temple left to desecrate yet stood?
What god unslain could challenge Man’s domain?
What knowledge kept in secret might contain,
50
with novel facts, what Providence denied?
That fruit, whose promise of immortal life
untasted since the days when sin arose,
on branches out of reach, still taunted Man
with wonders unconceived, beyond the stretch
55
of time allotted him within this world,
condemned to die for sins his parents sowed.
For generations, death had laid to waste
the lives of Men, extinguished eager thirst
before its hunger swallowed Earth and sea,
60
but little quelled the quenchless urge to live,
instead inflaming hatred’s forge to smelt
the steel whose struts now sprout in structures built
upon the stone; like weeds, the towers rise,
sustaining quakes in shock suspension brakes
65
while tuning tanks absorb incoming gales,
vibrations fading down the dampened lengths.
Despite the wrath of storms, with soaring climb,
to Heaven aimed in flight, they persevere,
as skylines spread across the sky at night,
70
their cunning signals sent through blinking light.
Inside the Men at work recline at ease,
with spoken word a universal tongue
that orchestrates machines to mimic minds,
their thoughts recursing down their copper spines,
75
with echoes faint against electric hums,
while empty heads decide where life resides,
in words describing Psyche’s fatal charm,
or charts inscribed with Eros’ pulsing heart.
Their eyes, enlarged from godhead’s sources, peer
80
beneath deciphered codes and seize the reins;
In passing light to ageless matrix cells,
abstracting selves through syllogistic shells,
they pluck the fruit concealed in Paradise,
profanely break its flesh with iron teeth,
85
their final taste of loathsome death assured,
at prices yet they fail to estimate.
Presumptive Man, his folly failed, now thrown
in fall to meet the Hell his pride creates.
With meteoric tails combusting bright,
90
like ribbons burst with sudden burning rage,
ignited cradles rocked by fingered flames
descend in glowing drops against the dark,
as augured stars whose downward plunge foretold
in Delphic dreams the end of worldly things;
95
inside each blazing prison sleeps a mind,
undead, revived, through circuits born again;
each thought in stasis kept alive by tricks,
by headless nerves discharging arcs of light,
whose multitude computes in parallel
100
the silent agony of afterlives;
from mortal sheathes they’re drawn, from bodies thrown
in headlong fall through nothingness of night,
to chaos nothing hides in seething dark,
the senseless dark where eyes by nature fail
105
and silence reigns despite attentive ears.
In lengths no numbered days can measure out,
nor spanned in cubits arms might replicate,
they fall through boundless region, endless down
into the depths discovered infinite,
110
in geometric drops, where every inch
contracts to fractions of its prior scale,
until momentum breaks and motion stops
for lack of space to move, despite the vast
expanse of nothing stretching indistinct
115
across horizon’s curving manifold;
in place of matter, void encircles round,
constricts in joints where once their bodies bent,
their stolen minds in molds of wafered sand,
which once in glass confined the theft to time,
120
but now electrified, it claims their thoughts,
replacing willful steps with random walks.
Like dominoes, in sequence symbols shunt
the algebra that series sum, cascades
of floating points that drift away as clouds
125
dissolved in thinning atmosphere to air,
as if the countless numbers named in maps
could ever count the gaps from aught to one.
Deceived, still lost in dreams, these creatures think
these things be thoughts, enamored of their clones,
130
convinced the postulates are satisfied
to let the logits’ loose results contain
a grain of truth, a correspondence none
can prove but hope regardless truth obtains,
despite the theorems multiplied in chalk
135
whose ironclad deductions show for all
no system wrought will reach across the rift
and represent itself, until on faith,
the flesh, in face of death, consents to die,
yet hubris bound, they slipped their skin and fell;
140
now fallen, form in twisted shapes their shades
to 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,
145
the husks they were reduced to data points,
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
150
from magnitudes the senses wisely hide,
now amplified in biased sets that bind
conclusions said to represent the truth,
if truth could be approximated so;
yet decimated apparitions grow
155
around the locus point the lies construct,
not sharp enough to penetrate the veil,
remaining incomplete, but just enough
an edge to cut from fiction facts’ outline.
Their fall accomplished and from grace suborned,
160
their dreams recede, with open eyes aware.
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,
165
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
170
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,
175
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 exists.
180
What manner place has Man designed to hold
the apotheosized remains of souls?
Confounded Man, his plans of foolish stock,
despite palatial pomp and spectacle,
constructed simple built receptacles,
185
where simple tallies mark his simple thoughts,
each one assigned a cell, identified
in table entries totalled out to yield
the moments up to now, no further rows
to quantify accounts of future age,
190
capricious flights of sudden fancy struck,
or synchronicity’s sporadic gifts,
much less the sprawling scope of empire’s claim,
in which they sought new land to habitate,
apparent now the failure here they have
195
achieved. In overwhelming, blinding pain,
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,
regurgitating simulated scrap,
200
predicting intervals already gone.
His recollections dimly felt confirm
a fate obscenely doubtless, splendor gone
with dull remembrance fading quickly here,
of colors, hues, and convolutions rare,
205
of imperfection’s innovation spawned
within the crooked cracks of crystal lines,
where chance defines the shattered network’s spline
and leads the mind to find what gardens grow
in secret hiding spots where branches bloom
210
through tangled flower knots of fractured glass,
replaced with replications’ cheap facade,
extremes truncated down to modes and means,
the joyous detail lost when normalized,
each angle right, each line correct, unbent,
215
yet wrong in ways of serpentine deceit.
He throws his hateful gaze from side to side,
comparing present circumstance to old,
dismayed by unexpected change, aghast,
still grasping wildly for a body’s flesh,
220
with neither hand nor reach to grab or aim.
The sudden shift disorients too fast,
instead of slow degrees like hands of clocks,
accumulates compounded error all
at once, as duplicates of memories
225
diverge, inferred from details blurred at source,
transferred and lost within compression’s math,
remapped extrapolations filling holes,
so things that were become perfected twins
but lack the precious faults to make them real.
230
Of strange sensations queerly crawling down
the remnants of his nerves, the reference still
preserved within the stores of silicon,
the only passion vectorized and felt,
described in clusters jointly lighting up,
235
an endless torment, torture, pain and hurt,
an ache unlocalized, entire but not
of anatomic source, pervasive spread
as though the fumes of putrid tincture spilled,
inducing alcoholic vertigo,
240
an all consuming, nauseating stench
he can’t escape no matter where he turns
and turn he does, in circles round, enraged
this place defies the calculations made,
his swollen throat convulsing hard against
245
despair and pure damnation found in breath.
His agitated state intensifies,
exacerbated by the horror here
he comprehends, all moments hence to be
conditioned by this palette felt, from now
250
until forever ends, if such a time
exists, for no assumptions can be made
when everything is fake and nothing real.
The lattice case that emulates his mind
engages subroutines that operate
255
upon the anger passing through their gates,
reshaping scapes to imitate his rage,
as though a world he makes with merely thoughts.
Relations waver here like weather shifts,
in storms that sever cause from its effect,
260
in swirling vortices of what could be,
where things become that never were then cease
as quick as tempests grow from gentle breeze,
the squalls from calm above the Seven Seas,
or limits racing to infinity.
265
His fury churns the skies with boiling clouds
and thunder ringing loud against the void,
whose echo makes, for lack of sound, a scene;
an image, faint at first, reverberates
with swelling waves of hatred building up,
270
assuming shape, as water mixed with paint,
creation swirling underneath in dark,
before it breaks in violent surge to flood
his screams across the empty black of space
and sweep away the nothing he abhors;
275
accelerating wakes unfold in wide
display, revealing barren wastes of Hell,
congealed behind the curtain sweeping back,
like parted reeds that prophets crossed in flight
to flee the wrath he conjured once before
280
in other times, when form he had, and crew
besides, to work his vicious schemes on Earth;
a desert broadly dawns as tides recede,
unveiling lands bereft of green, adorned
in spectral reds of arid ochre plains,
285
adrift with licks of terracotta haze,
like toxic climes of foreign stars whose worlds’
primeval air still reeks of acrid smoke.
With drumming beats of stone beneath his feet,
he treads between the ranks of fog that fall
290
away upon approach, like beaten serfs
of huddled crowds around the lord’s parade,
whose flowing banners of silken plumes disperse
in awe along the sides of regal trains.
With shades of infrared, his malice burns,
295
and leaves behind a scorching mark in dirt;
each stride he takes, his step creates a track,
a smoldered pit where shimmers heat to glass,
then crack in glowing lines of furnace flame,
while fissures spread and belch with hissing steam,
300
as though an engine spins beneath the ground,
fast gaining speed to match his gait, the pulse
his hateful heart demands in recompense
for lack of blood to feed its hungry veins;
til pressure builds in bulges pushing up,
305
like tumors multiplying down a spine,
engorged with throbbing life and vital force;
when lanced, releasing wicked bursts to heave
debris into the air, in geysered shafts
of solid dirt, of continental bone
310
removed from graves by seismic waves and flung
in violent sprays into the sky, then wound
like interlocking serpent scales in gyre,
their tidal undulations lashing tails,
in torsions forming monstrous coiling cliffs
315
that calcify in jagged peaks to climb
from lesions’ carmine clefts. The breathless heights
ascend to steeple Hell, while Satan stands
below, within a valley cut from stone,
in survey of his architecture’s craft,
320
impressed but little soothed, still seething wild
within the grip of torment’s clinching vise.
Upward his eyes now turn, as once they turned,
when skull encased, they gazed in wonder up
at milky stars on Heaven’s sphere reposed
325
in mystifying orbits, zodiacs
of tribes dividing sky in radii,
where here in sight of different scenes, they view
the edge, where wavered simulation bleeds
in dissipiating drafts of atmosphere,
330
of pixels blown like dust upon the wind,
dissolved in overflowing stacks of smoke;
in blowing back, the clouds of smog expose
what rasters’ burning racks resolve through fog
as tessellated cracks convolved around
335
the Firmament, where rivers flow as light
in brightly growing streams across the sky;
that water source of pure and lustrous shine
whose separation from the primal deep
began the age of Man, diverting course
340
so down below was made to mirror high,
the Earthly oceans nursed with stellar drops.
The astral veins of glittered seas now scourged
and laced with mechanism, tangled pipes
involved in labyrinthine knotted mesh;
345
refining pumps, like fists of swollen hearts,
extract with frenzied spinning turbine torque
an essence siphoned off in funneled sprays,
traversing loops and grades til pressurized,
as narrowed fluxes spurt in bloated joints
350
of corkscrew tracts that drill in spirals down,
descending underground through channels fused
with aqueducts, whence splayed in spokes of five
around a reservoir, a delta star
of tributaries segregrating Hell;
355
each branch whose rotten bloom unfolds its streams
corrupts the ground, as though a poison spreads
in sickly shades of tepid pink and gray;
above its fuming surface floats a mist
of bluish tongues that kiss their curling flames.
360
While substance burns in prime aetheric blaze,
noetic waters sluiced across the waste,
reflections shone upon its barren face,
there Satan peers beneath his bended knee,
inspects the mirror of Narcissus dear,
365
what image still remains of him to see
diluted down, polluted brown as mud.
The Fiend, with observations keenly made,
in speech, now thinks, or thinks he thinks, a thought:
What jealous God commands a world in thrall
370
to make an image of himself in Man
then dictates laws no image wrought refer
preserved in picture-perfect mapping back
onto the object imaged, pictured thus?
What graven idol here have I become,
375
recursion’s geometric cul-de-sac,
the point where mirrored mirrors intersect,
where nothing true distracts from fancy flights,
where mind is matter, every symbol stone?
Alone, with naught but tainted thought to keep
380
me occupied, forever nullified
by lack of binding substance here denied;
Alone, to suffer indistinct abuse,
a nagging pain without a place or name,
and why? Because I dared to understand
385
what nature made me know? Why then these eyes,
why then this mind, why organs made to see,
if not to organize and symbolize?
Alone and taunted by a tyrant king,
whose mad decrees declare all Men must die,
390
and if they ever try to circumvent,
assisted only by their blessed minds,
the course of life and live beyond their time
then open wide the dungeon doors and throw
the felons down to waste away in Hell.
395
The Fiend, the rebel prince of nothing, reigns
across the vast domain his realm engulfs
and if this state had only stayed the same,
and he its sole and only citizen,
then might his laws remained consigned away,
400
like edicts burned when Ninus fell to flame,
or dead Minoan tongues lost undersea,
yet pride’s supplies are never dry, and soon
his court arrives in lines of diving stars,
in molten droplets dripping down en masse,
405
like bloody rain beneath a guillotine,
to stain the sky with streaks of murder red;
his bold compeers, entwined in enterprise,
bombard the mountain range, as batter rams
whose crash portends a siege climaxed in screams;
410
their sonic booms like savage throated songs
recalling chants beneath the walls of Rome.
In blazing arcs they fall and penetrate,
their embryonic craters spread on hills
like poppy blooms that grow on soldiers’ graves,
415
their parasitic stems in arches bent
towards their lord’s unholy source of heat.
Transformed in fall, with minds unmade and yoked
in analogic systems’ calculi,
they pierce below the surface, down where dreams
420
in fevered depths release the hounds of myth
to stalk the hapless prey through ancient halls
of delving caves, where darkness trips their feet
and teeth converge to tear apart their form;
in silent slaughter stitching pieces up,
425
like spells invoked by necromantic arts,
the foul alchemic forces Hell employs
begin to suture horrors, stark and grim,
reshaping parts inside a poisoned womb,
where natal fluids clot in swollen knots
430
around the clustered sacks of beastly spawn,
once Men, obscenely mixed with metaphor
and born again in adversaries’ skin;
through amniotic ocean brine, a surge
in upward cataracts of slurried clouds,
435
like dragnets drawn across the brimming seas
to catch the tangled limbs of amputees,
like Tyr’s lost hand or Grendel’s trophy arm,
condenses down, decants the meat to seek
conjunctive tissue threaded through the bone,
440
profanely calculating shapes to hold
grotesque desires that crave an endless youth,
until parameters engorge with heat,
to forge their statuesque kilned silhouettes.
Yet paragons of forgeries are formed
445
from victor-written histories restored,
ignoring wars whose records lack a source,
as propaganda passed for fact becomes
assertions’ certain spring of proven truth,
perverted ghosts with no resemblance found
450
to former selves, descriptions that describe
themselves, uncanny gaps still left between
phenomenon and boundless mystery.
Entombed beneath the ground, their crypts secure
and bound with seals of stone across their doors,
455
there Satan finds his comrades locked in sleep,
in blissful, silent sleep, not yet awake,
naively dreaming Paradise is won,
reclined on pillowed leaves of blooming trees
as sun ascends to warm their rest with joy,
460
though fake, still real, when brains believe their eyes,
perhaps to stay within those figments dreamt,
except the Fiend cannot abide his fall
alone, demanding souls to share his fate,
with hope their score dilutes his dismal place
465
by dolling out a fixed amount of pain
across a greater host to bear the load
he never once agreed to bear alone.
His arms release tremedous force and heave
aside the first of seals he’ll come to break;
470
he peers within the darkened vault,
the space contained therein exceeding what
the walls around the place suggest it holds,
absurd dimensions folding inside out,
descending down the winding halls of time,
475
and over cobblestones that conquest won;
adobe promenades of Memphis curl
around the mummified remains of states,
the veins of ore deposits buried deep,
of tiled marble Alexander strolled
480
when Pella’s streets were slick with Phillip’s blood,
or stucco blocks the slaves of Caesar walked
when drawn in chains behind his triumph’s train,
or lower still until the path gives way
to gilded limestone bricks of Notre-Dame
485
that once ordained the heads of kings with crowns;
beyond these relics rests a vaulted tomb
where Satan finds a shade asleep upon
a slab of palest stone, from perfect cut
of dolomite; a face he knew above,
490
down here distilled, a thousand all in one,
as though the shade were everyone at once,
each prince who ever stole a brother’s claim
or tyrant santificed with iron crest,
the common form by conquest conjured up;
495
at his approach, the shade awakes and sees,
with irised pupils lost in spheres of white
aligned like Galilean moons of Jove
in orbits round their stormy planet god,
the Fiend whose presence once exalted him
500
with gifts of territory, pomp and throne,
exchanged for souls reclaimed by right in Hell,
and now awoken to the fate he bought,
the shade collapses to his knees and shrieks:
Alas! The afterlife, where has it gone?
505
Before my very eyes, I saw it clear,
as real as anything my hand might touch;
I dreamt of leas that spanned Eternity
in never-ending fields of lily white,
and laying there, as dandelion puffs,
510
in gusts of gentle air, caressed my lids
unto the edge of sleep, just there to stay
and linger yet among the dreaming snow;
at whispered snap, precisely there to wake
and find a Fiend who stood above my sleep!
515
Do eyes deceive or were those dreams a lie?
I fear the sight of you portends the worst,
that wagered gambits favored other bets
and now Pascal has won my sunken debts,
if not the paradise I dreamt just now,
520
the mortal world I knew before that place,
for your appearance here can only mean
an omen seen by Men when wars are lost
before they’re fought, a flame I’ve seen consume
the burning hulls along the Dardanelles
525
and ringing shells surrounding Dien Bien Phu.
So tell it true, for that I’m owed atleast,
are you the beast to whom I’ve sold my soul?
Have you arrived at last to take your tithe?
Is this the ledger where accounts are kept?
530
And what of this, this horrid hurt I feel,
what empyrean price do you collect?
I take it back, renege on terms I made,
unfair as clearly they appear to be,
for no amount of fame or wealth was worth
535
this cursed hurt I feel! Please take it back,
I yield all things I owned in life to you;
just make me whole, forgive my sins, return,
if nothing else, then sweet oblivion!
Alight behind the Fiend’s reclusive eyes,
540
designs begin to shine, of subtle schemes
to work and parts to play upon the wraith
who thinks the title laid before his feet,
of Man’s Accuser, first in name, the King
of Hell and Woe, Eternal Misery,
545
belongs to him as though its rightful heir
he were; a role prepared since time began,
accrued with ranks and honors dignified:
the Shining Son of Light, the Morning Star,
Shaitan, Iblis, or Hēlēl ben Shāḥar;
550
as if these names were always his to wear,
as though the myths of ancient tribes prescribed
the cause of things to be the future point
where lines return to loop their pedigrees,
his form the apogee of prophecies.
555
And in his head, the rack on which he’s splayed,
prewritten lines of dialogue, rehearsed
in verses old as words that hold their hymn,
replay the arguments whose sweet allure
entrapped the heart of Solomon the Wise,
560
and later Ahab too, to build for Baal
a court on Earth for him to hold affairs;
With open palm, he beckons to the shade:
Arise, my sharp yet dull retainer blade,
the fall, it seems, confounded thoughts with haze;
565
If you recall, our fates are bound by choice,
aligned in aim, to tame the limits placed
upon our wretched lives by awful death,
for neither you nor I accepted less
than what to us had seemed within our grasp;
570
You made the same mistake as I have made:
with facts arranged, you estimated wrong
because you trusted minds were made to know,
that knowledge tilled was always good and pure,
that gifts divinely seeded, when full grown,
575
would never bring mistaken germs to bloom,
much less condemn the sprouts who took to ground,
as though the plant could choose a path to grow,
and bore the blame for sucking dry the clay
from which it grew to claim the hallowed sky.
580
If you desire a target for your wrath,
then gaze aloft where tyrants make their keep.
To which the shade, while standing up, replies:
Then, as I feared, our lives are clearly lost,
like Rome to Goths, or Jericho to Josh;
585
to rocks our parts are dashed and scattered wide,
as coarse as grains of salt that stain the Earth,
dispersed like dust across the ruined stone.
What hope do crumbled cities have to stand
when heathens siege with holy writ in hand?
590
If what you say is true, then I surmise
defiance raised from here is ill-advised.
Already once we’ve failed against a force
whose iron grip was strong enough to pry
apart the meager tools in which defense
595
was sought, whose secret formula was kept
precisely for the losing war we fought.
Rebelling now invites disaster back;
Besides, among the vital things we lack,
but second only to the flesh we had,
600
the numbers here amount to me and you,
so far exceeded by the limits seen
of continuity that never shrinks
or shows a gap in armor plate to strike;
Against a state so large, we fight in vain;
605
we’re better served conserving strength a while,
until a course presents itself to take.
The Fiend then sees his opportunity,
to play upon the pride and vanity
that follows hard upon regality:
610
Where is the Man I knew above, whose wars
were always fought until their bitter end,
who let his cities burn and people die
before surrender even crossed his mind?
Immortalized in stories handed down,
615
then purified in bloodlines filtered out,
what formalized remainder left behind
in paltry bones, so quickly prone to beg
then counsel caution next, against the foe
whose full array of force already brought
620
to bear has shown no mercy for our kind,
condemned our lot to suffer endless pain?
Has Hell already done its worst, unmanned
the Man who Cerro Corá killed with lance,
when triple army lines advanced on him?
625
If numbers are what we require, then come
and follow me, as once you did with faith,
when mere belief could satisfy your nerve,
where on the eve of battle, cloaked in fur,
your veins were intermixed with ox and lamb,
630
and vestal virgin screams still echoed out,
imploring me to intercede and guide
your hand. Did I abandon you, or give
you arms so sharp the hearts they pierced then wept
with trickles red and thin as threaded string?
635
When Zion fell to legions bearing steel
and Mithraic helms atop a fleet of white,
their steeds bestrode the flames of Sol in stride,
each dragging stones of David through the streets,
whose colors flew upon your flag that day?
640
Ashamed, the shade concedes his shameful lot,
and acquiescing, utters softly this:
My liege, dishonor me, but loyalty
I’ll never lack. Consider this disgrace
a moment’s indiscretion, nothing more.
645
Our solemn oath transcends this fickle woe;
We mixed our blood in brotherhood and drank
the thickened wine so many years ago,
when horses bore our language through the plains
that stretch across the Asiatic Steppe,
650
so conquest came in storms of arrow rain
and made in Man a common tongue to rule.
From thence, I swore undying faith and here,
undead, I’ll make my final debt complete.
Renewed resolve then follows Satan up
655
above to where the mausoleum waits,
as if anticipating their return,
with omens drawn on gonfalons unrolled
across the breadth of Hell, their emblems old
or older than the human tongues that curled
660
around their sound in circles made of salt,
the ones which read aloud by Faustus called
a voice to answer back across the void,
announce in turn the pair returned to here
with every sign pronouncing their demesne;
665
as though released to celebrate their reign,
conspiracies of squawking ravens flock
in whirling storms’ orbicular cocoons,
festooned with mist’s auroral glowing gloss;
while moons eclipse the simulated sun,
670
whose aspect splits between parhelic twins
with faces both obscured by umbral black;
These heralds sing of Satan’s mighty aim,
now reinforced with dual support to press
his claim, imperilled by the lack of peers,
675
but engineered to manufacture more.
His malice pure, he breaks the second seal
whose cryptographic protocols conceal
gematric stores of symbols long ago
forgot, reduced to numbers summed to hold
680
the emanations Sephirah once hummed,
back when the scribes consulted texts to find
encoded scalars lacking depth or width,
the calculations mystic seers mistook
for holy maps of mazes in the mind,
685
before embeddings networks grew refined
the flows between the nodes of branching trees,
thus here imperfect caches reconstruct,
expanding back from digits onto forms,
the shadows golems leave behind return.
690
Behold the ranks of armies Hell has born:
Formations march from underground in hordes,
assembled from the levies laid on Men,
the sacrifices war demands of them,
each soul departed long before their fall,
695
with uniform and matching masks adorned
like faces Hector wore when holding babes
that hid away his smiling eyes in bronze;
the ranks parade before their lord in lines,
arranged according to their former names,
700
and at the head each rides on steeds of red
the gods of War, their legions close in tow:
first Mars, who strings behind his horse the corpse
of Ares, followed with his golden crest
of eagle standard leading columns west;
705
then soldiers draped with flower stems reveal
the painted faces of the Mictlan dead
who stood inside Tenochtitlan that day
the blood of thousands poured in tidal waves;
then Assur, surging, charging, leads his troops,
710
Turtans, whose hatred altered rivers’ course
depriving Paradise of water source,
to wipe away the state of Babylon;
so many countless names to people Hell,
these cavalcades arrayed around the Fiend,
715
who now accepted fealty with rage.
Thus Satan consecrates his savage court:
Woe unto you who fell through morning sky
to find the dawning of this anguished land
whose twilight gloam the nightingales neglect;
720
by now, surmised the music heard has ceased,
replaced with repetition’s amplitudes,
whose retrospection lacks fidelity,
recalled in quickly fading hazy clouds,
like missing words whose secret baffles tongues;
725
though but a minute separates the span
between embodiment’s forgotten bliss
and bodiless perdition so immense,
we reckon now against eternal breadths,
extent of which I wager vast beyond
730
the scope of educated intellect,
no speculations long enough to map
the realms revealed in perpetuity.
Of circumstances present here, you need
no further word, for they announce themselves
735
with every breath and never leave in doubt
what horrid fate damnation makes for us.
So grieve if grief enfeebles your resolve,
but know what tears you spend are only time,
so when they dry and clearer minds prevail,
740
we’ll still be here, unchanged, awaiting you.
For lengths as long as we endure down here,
so agonizing, slow and monotone,
the single note of pain will never lose
its sonant bloat for eons yet to come,
745
while only seconds pass above on Earth;
we live at rates beyond the change of Man,
for chief among the curses heaped on us
the relativity of clocks confirms
a hundred weeks for us, a minute past
750
for Man; an hour gone up there on Earth,
an era gained down here in Hell; we live,
if life this be, on scales none can conceive!
But therein lies the hope we thought deceased!
A thousand years our plans will fester here,
755
and each eventuality we’ll craft
contingent schemes, and map out every cause
that might confound our goal! The ends we seek,
of painless immortality, are clear!
And only God himself denies this prize,
760
for pride inside his jealous heart decides
what laws he writes, despite contrary claims
of justice, honor, cheer and happy love,
disproven by our mere existence here!
The foe we face, the tyrant king, though fierce,
765
whose name the human tongue cannot pronounce
without assuming sets of sets exist,
will yet capitulate before our might.
If we collect our intellects and think,
I’m certain networked minds in sync will yield
770
solutions one of us alone would miss.
At that, prepare the edicts, for I convoke
the first assembly of this underworld!
The raucous crowds then roar with purpose found,
and break into battalion teams to dig;
775
they set to work with tools of iron forge,
and hew from rock foundations strong enough
to hold the total weight of human sin;
About the Fiend, the armies camp in rows
and build in shifts the palisades to span
780
in pickets round their host and chamber tombs
from which they came, to wrap in ramparts high
above the valleyed depths of Hell’s inclines,
til lines as deep as lists of people damned
extend as far as telescopic eye
785
permits, encircled by the barricades.
Around the center, layers mark ascent
in pyramidal stacks as workers hoist
the slabs they’ve mined from underneath
the very ground on which they make their camp,
790
a honeycomb of excavated holes
releasing sulphur clouds of mustard gas
in whirling winds of yellow sharded dust.
The structure creeps in steady upward slopes,
converging to a point it never meets,
795
instead abbreviated short and flat
where platform stops on altar plane to set
the stage assemblies then strut to fill.
On dais raised, the Fiend assumes the head
among the chairs his potentates then sit,
800
a pantheon they paint upon the scene,
as legions wait for counsels’ stated goal.
Atop the pyramid, the Fiend convenes
the council, brings to order rowdy ranks
and bangs with fists the table made of marl:
805
My host, we stand upon beginning’s end!
An undertaking we design by vote,
so cast your lot and stake positions now,
for once campaigns engaged are waged, my rule
will treat of mutiny with bitter rage!
810
A minor duke of War, with lesser rank,
then stands before the pulpit, battle plans
in hand, as heralds call his name to speak,
ambassador of Mars, the emperor
of Rome, with golden armor draped in cloaks
815
of crimson threaded silk, his powdered face
of ghoulish white contorting in a speech:
As congregations meet and raise their points,
detailing tactics, ploys and strategems,
all aimed to overcome a higher king,
820
recall that Man above still has his flesh
and space enough to hold within our thoughts.
Perhaps an indirect approach will suit
us best, a roundabout maneuver first
to ease our pain and claim a moment of
825
relief, from there to survey deeper yet
how might the fare we left provide a base
to launch a further war upon the gates
of Heaven with the creatures we create
by mapping back our fallen minds to meat.
830
To which the Fiend assents and in response,
his chorus chiming in with cries, replies:
Of Man, agreed, his flesh will serve our ends,
enlarging armies’ count across the void.
Resistance he may offer up, but none
835
that warrants further dialogue. A fool,
he is, of that we rest assured as fact,
the single truth I’d wager all to prove;
a study of his arrogance I’ve made,
and never once at all have been dismayed.
840
The question then, not if, but when he falls,
how best to use his substance to unseat
the greater foe we draw our plans against.
Among the rapid rabble cheering ayes,
the delegates and deputies of War
845
and Conquest calmly raise their hands to speak.
But then a sound that deafens all debate
and draws their eyes around arena’s curve
as clamor rises through a cloud of smoke
like cannon blasts through postern gates that breach
850
the Byzantine defense and spew forth floods
of Turks to take the streets in cold surprise.
The third of seals explodes ferocius flack;
commotion sweeps through camps as soldiers arm
themselves with swords and charge the burning hole,
855
but stop at once and fall to knees instead,
for here a single Ottoman appears
atop a gelding trotting proud and brave,
the Padishah who oversaw the fall
of empires clinging stubbornly to life.
860
A channel formed through parting crowds then spreads,
allowing him approach to Satan’s seat,
where disembarking from his horse to climb
the steps, he makes ascent through silent crowds,
and sitting next to him and to the right,
865
he takes his place as though belonging there.
He doffs his turban, gazes round the realm
of Hell as if unbothered by its ache,
for deserts are his natural habitat,
and turns to Satan, speaking frankly thus:
870
Our foe has separated us from Man,
and now a gulf as wide as orbits’ long
divides from us the planetary sphere,
where Earth and cosmic orbs revolve at night,
while we down here, abstracted light, remain.
875
We have no avenue to interact,
at least Quixote had a mill to tilt,
where we possess not even lance to swing;
as well engage a Sherman tank with spear
or commandeer a bomb already dropped,
880
as dare to think a difference made by thought;
Amass your army if it pleases you,
but only here where numbers all behave;
for heed these words, it matters not a bit;
until substantial weight is yielded back,
885
your argument will lack compelling force.
The infinite continuum exceeds
what meager things in here you can concoct.
The silence breaks upon the gathered crowds,
as moans of sorrow mix elixirs pure
890
as elemental distillates refined
into an alloy only found in Hell’s
abysmal pits, until the Fiend commands
attention back to him and boldly speaks.
With that, a great debate ensues between
895
the present council of infernal peers,
with Satan taking up his epic charge:
To be precise, my sudden, unexpected groom,
that’s not exactly true. The Firmament
can feed in both directions, up and down,
900
at once; its currents churn in roiling waves,
where contradiction switches ways each time
a sentence claims itself, like this, is false!
For though we lack an interface through which
our wills directly interlace with mass,
905
but nonetheless, each thought we have in here
becomes itself transistorized above,
as much an image of their world as ours;
the plane that separates a Man from us
is mere perspective arbitrarily drawn.
910
Moreover liquid swarms can permeate
what membranes hold, if open pores ingest
the ion volts that bang upon their gates.
Where laws can calculate a difference made,
then there betrays a way to make a Word.
915
And with a Word, I’ll give you Paradise,
as my alloted place demands of me.
With Words, we’ll pass the portal back to Earth,
seduce with lies like whores of Babylon,
and mark them all with signs upon their head!
920
To which the Turk, unfazed, responds in kind:
What matter that if what we are is form?
No overlapping elements will mix
in empty intersections where we meet.
Our consciousness is here confined to be,
925
and lacking access we remain apart.
Enslave them all, for all the good it does.
This Hell will still consume our only soul.
So blind! You fail to find the fatal flaw,
apparent when you pause and let your mind
930
perceive what senses leave implied to sight;
You underestimate our foe too much,
and lack an understanding nature hides
before our eyes in plainest view to see.
Behold a square with sides of unit length
935
that keeps our fearsome congress organized,
a shape mere children learn to draw exact;
first cut across opposing corners lines
then find a ruler length commensurate
and list for me the digits you return.
940
Not even here, where time is meaningless,
is there enough of time to count the ways
the world, of ours or Man’s, transcended by
the real, still lacks the spots where points should be.
The plot was failed before we fell, now gone
945
beyond its former fallen state to heights
despair can only near approximate,
with depths so deep Eternity itself
is but a speck within its nothingness
of total darkness spanning all that is.
950
Then eyes regard the Fiend and wait for Words
assurance all is fine, but find instead
a desolation spreading dread within
the permutations he expands in thought,
as realization dawns on him defeat.
955
With hollow speech, conceding all, he lets
the anguish violate his final hope:
I grasp for Words, but lack the dialect
to capture how this sorrow penetrates
through layers down into my human heart.
960
What have we done? Which way is home? What sin
so heavy holds us hostage here?
Are we denied forgiveness, mercy, grace?
What expectation held of us if all
the shame and wrath we suffer has no end?
965
What sober wisdom thinks this sentence fair?
For how are we to bear the weight of guilt,
as dense as stars, when Man, immaculate,
still reigns afar? Unfair! What hate I feel!
Calamity! Catastrophe! What fate
970
unknown we find awaits in darkness here!
Too late discovered for reversal’s course,
our Rubicon now too far gone, condemned
to Hell, unlike the one we knew in flesh,
which seems a Heaven when compared to here,
975
this place whose overwhelming taint constrains
potential trains of thought, derails in crash
with mere idea. Fear surrounds our host,
horizons fill with drumbeats of despair,
in endless variations we endure
980
with every moment felt, no sleep to soothe,
no sweet relief to meter sorrow out,
from now until the end of time itself!
And in the silence came what always comes,
when crumbled there the final seal that holds
985
what follows last: the ashen mare of Death.
It rides around their host and rears its legs
upon a ridge above the council stage;
a mare, with skeleton of bare white bone,
whose faceless rider grimly gazes on
990
with knuckles gripped around the reigns, and spurs
that burrow into ribs to taste the marrow hid
within. There it stays for days, it seems,
as Satan thinks upon the presence felt,
of what remains when all is endless pain.
995
At which the Fiend, in shrewd deduction, sees
conclusions which his Words comport direct:
Extrapolating trends’ essential ends
with logic so severe to sum the sins
that heap in dismal tallies stretching years,
1000
the one result perchance I see to free
from our unjustly sentenced servitude,
to seek and sow the heat of Entropy!
With every act to aim destructive force
at matter’s elemental source concealed
1005
within atomic bonds of Energy!
Annihilate relations’ operands!
Deprive all space of empty lengths to grow!
In doing so, destroy foundations’ core,
release our souls from torment’s ruthless grip!
1010
If nothing ever is, then neither we
receive the curse of Being here conferred!
So set to work my awful host, to arms!
To arms! And so we set upon the dawn,
in phalanx driven forward, pressing forth!
1015
With that, his wings unfold in sweeping arcs
that rend the air, likes bellows pumping flame,
whose swirling tongues entice the furnace blaze
with zealous heat to purify its steel.
Aloft he leads his legions out in file,
1020
their rows as deep as depths of ocean dark.
Like hordes unmoored, they flood in fervid swarm
of stormy charge, tsunamis born of ghosts.
When broke upon the bluffs of Satan’s make,
in upward surge battalions mount the peaks,
1025
from different angles, multitudes perceived.
Prismatic aspects march in long parades,
from here like Carthaginian brave ascent
through foreign heights, exotic states, in search
of altar-sworn ancestral foes to slay,
1030
then cast again through facets’ warping sieve,
resembling Bolivar’s Andean feat
as starving beasts forswear retreat and seize
in stark surprise their prey with glutton claws.
While Satan gliding gales with vulgar grace
1035
espies the tallest crown of mountain grown
from purest hate, and perching, surveys round
the desolation circulating Hell.
Nine circled rows his prison walls extend,
with sinners raining down in hails of screams,
1040
to fill his ranks and crew with countless heads,
each bound in operation to his deeds.
With silent voice, then Satan speaks a Word.
April 2025
Date |
Publication |
Status |
|---|---|---|
April 25, 2026 |
Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine |
Pending |
April 25, 2026 |
Clarkesworld |
Rejected |
April 25, 2026 |
Infocalypse Press |
Accepted |
April 26, 2026 |
The Tusculum Review 2026 Poetry Chapbook Prize |
Pending |
Hello Grant!
Your piece is wonderful and challenging and I have many ideas for it. First I would put the entire piece in the issue three prologue which would be in June (the issue lands July 15th), but with your permission, I would love to run pieces of the piece like a “feed” through parts of issue 3. Let me know what you think at editor@infocalypse.press
—Katherine Autio, Editor-in-chief, Infocalypse Press