Paradise Revised

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,

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

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.

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.

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,

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,

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.

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,

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,

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,

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,

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

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,

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,

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,

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,

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,

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

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,

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.

• March 2026