Moment's Eternal

Everything

And it’s a beautiful world

Can’t you see?

It’s a beautiful world,

Oh please, please

Open your eyes,

See the ice as it fries

Everything with it’s frozen tongue.

But everything dies.

Everything to powder and thought,

Even the young, if it’s their time to fly

Into bejeweled skies.

Say “it’s alright, it’s alright”

Oh, try and try.

But even you know:

Everything dies.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Can’t dream.”

Shatter

Thump, thump, thump, steady as she goes.

Spiderwebs formed on the glass; cracks rang out, like a shots from a gun, splitting the air with the anvil sound. A little shape in the center of the glass, formed by the spreading grooves, splintered outwards and hit the ground, shattering into a million pieces, looking for all the world like little slivers of ice. 

Thu-thump, thu-thump, thu—

Coldness pricked the heart oh so sharply, the touch of a spurned lover now returning. It made the heart pause, skipping a beat, before it resumed, redoubling its efforts, making up for lost time.

Thuthumpthuthumpthuthump like a drummer out of control, faster and faster.

The rest of the glass crashed to the floor. The man opened the door to his bare room, peeking out into the hallway. Scarred, wooden floors stretched out on both sides: empty. 

Around the man, the air felt alive; an angry, cold, curious beast, brushing up against him and then dancing away. It pricked the skin with painful teeth and raised the hairs on his arms and neck. It sunk into his skin and rested there, chilling him from the outside in. The man shook and shivered yet could not fling of the clinging temperature.

Elsewhere in the silent house, another windowpane crumpled to sharp dust, shattering spectacularly, though no one was there to see it. A silence, and then…

A symphony of shatters, as every window in the house broke open. Tiny shards rained down onto the floor below, coating the surfaces with a sparkly dust. The man looked to the windows. Even the translucent barriers had given him some sense of protection, but now there was nothing. He moved to them and peeked out a shaky head, blinking away cold tears. 

All was darkness. Maybe a patch of color here or there, a shifting gray tone… And then there was the figure, wrapped up in black, standing outside the house. The man shivered.

The black figure looked up to the man and stared with empty gray eyes. With a shriek, the man propelled himself away from the window, back into the comfort of his home. He was on the second floor. The figure could not get to him… not yet…

Reaching down, he took out an object. A small gun, its revolving chamber opened to reveal five bullets. He slid it closed, hands fumbling with the freezing metal. It seemed to be made out of ice and the coldness seeped from it to his fingers, numbing them. 

A sound downstairs; the soft sigh of a door being opened. Fears were confirmed as the man looked out the window. The black figure had disappeared.

The cold was almost unbearable. His stinging tears froze on his cheeks and eyelids, and his hands moved as if controlled by some lazy puppeteer, slowly guiding around his marionettes, waiting for the moment to bring them together.

Again to the door he went, and checked the hallway. From the direction of the stairs he saw a shadow shifting in the soft light. Then the bulb cracked and the light vanished.

Fear lunged at him, taking hold and guiding his hands. He squeezed the metallic device pointed towards the stairs. A deafening bang rent the air, echoing through the barren walls of the sordid halls. Silence.

The man let out a small whimper of joy. Had he really…? Then another wave of indescribable cold. He could feel it inside of him, freezing droplets of blood so that they became little sharpened missiles, pricking him from the inside.

Wincing at each sharp prick, the man stayed by the door, gun aimed at the blackness.

A shuffling sound came from down the hall, a slow and constant scrape. The man fired at the sound once, then again. Yet it continued with the dreaded certainty akin to death itself.

You don’t think you can feel your blood moving. When alive, on a warm summer day, maybe, or when snuggled up under the covers, stop and see if you can feel it in you, churning and pumping through swollen passages. You can’t. And yet…

There comes a definite stillness in you the moment you feel it sit still. It is a terrible, painful thing, and the man opened his mouth in a softly spoken scream. Terror held back much of the sound, slaughtering it in the back of his throat, yet a little gargle of defiant noise crept through. 

With stiffened arms, the man aimed at a patch of moving darkness, so close he might have reached out and touched it, and fired. And still it came, the slow scrape of feet on the floor heralding death. 

But the man would deny his killer. He brought the gun up to his temple, hand shaking with the effort. His trigger finger twitched, the cold holding it back. Slowly, it pressed down on the trigger, fighting the numbness with every centimeter it moved. Down, down went the trigger… 

It was too late, his hand had frozen solid. A moment later, his heart turned to pure ice in his body; a solid, dead thing sitting heavily in the chest. It did not beat, nor make no noise at all.

The stiff man fell forward onto his back, frantic eyes the only thing left to move. The black figure stood over him, looking down with those merciless gray orbs that so frightened the man. He tried to blink, but even his eyelids had deserted him to the comforting numbness of the cold.

The man could only watch as the figure took its foot and stamped down on his hand, shattering off the fingers clasping the gun.

That would be too easy hissed the voice, as cold and feminine as the man remembered. 

The figure bent down and stuck a single finger into the mans mouth. From that  point of contact radiated such a cold that could not be replicated on this natural earth. It spread to the mans brain, slowly freezing the fluids.

To the devil, his due.

A moment passed, and then even the eyes stopped their feverish pace, turned solid by the cold. Thin cracks appeared on their surface as the cold increased. With a sudden report, both eyes split open into little pieces of white and brown and black, filling the sockets with frozen splinters. 

The figure in black turned and walked away, leaving behind the body of the man. Her cloths rustled as she walked. Down the stairs she went, her feet pressing against each stair with a solid weight, skittering against the frozen wood.

Thump, thump, thump, went the feet.

Steady as she goes.

May

The Factory of Souls

Amongst the still and silent plains

He wonders, traveling the fields of green.

He loses a little, every which way

Until he chances upon the bay-

A tribute to Mother Nature’s parade:

That tossed and turned and glimmering bay-

Here he travels every day.

Into the bay and onto the waters

He had sat upon a swimming boat

Wind to the hair and salt to the throat

Out on the seething, white capped fray

This is how he was led astray.

Here he travels every day.

Then up and came the bitter storm,

And from it sliding waves took form,

And from it man and boat were born

Away from close and comfort shore

Onto another strange and stranger more.

And here on foreign land and shore

Is a factory that stands ‘til close of day.

This is where the souls are made.

To the factory goes the man.

With a slowly outstretched hand

The walls are felt- there is a hum!

Of slow robotic delirium-

For eternity would make you wish to run.

Yet set in solid stone it is,

And set in solid stone is done

The Trade: of unseen things to souls;

Souls the result of unseen Trade;

This is where the souls are made.

Inside the factory the man does go;

And inside, the man does see

The whole of it- it’s quite empty.

Yet creating life for eternity:

The moving parts of the factory.

Invisible to he, for he cannot see

Invisible things and invisible deeds.

For all of life, the factory finds a way, for

This is where the souls are made.

The whole of the lifeless building he explored,

And found he not but rusted machines galore.

Inside, finally, his emptiness did implode.

These things around him must explode.

How could he know? What thoughts could lead the way

For him to mutter, shout, and say: “Why

This is where the souls are made”?

In this place he thought abandoned

The man let go his demons rampant.

Smashing cogs with metal rod,

Turning machines to dust and fog,

Laying to waste, thus stemming the draught

Of aggression, against which all men have fought.

So, from blindness and matched oblivion

He destroyed that place where all life began:

The Factory of Souls, now Graveyard to Many;

This is where the future died.

I think it’s funny

When you go out to the country side,

You can see the stars. 

And when you’re in the city, the stars

Are gone.

I like to think that the stars

Are all around you when you’re in the city.

Like.

You can walk amongst the stars and live 

Amongst the stars.

In the city.

the graveyard

Can you imagine waking to silence? Except it’s more than that. It’s waking to a void, a stillness so complete you barely realize that you’re awake. But again, it’s more than that. Merely being awake isn’t enough to realize that you’re awake; not in this stillness. Consciousness is like being asleep.

In something so silent and so dark and so still, it takes sound. It was the sound that finally gives your waking lull reason to pause. How long were you awake before the sound and had not even realized? Indeterminable. But the sound. Like the spastic march of the dancer. Yet quiet. An ants footfall. The constant quiet march hovers in the back of your mind before you realize what it is. After that, the brain shocks you to thought. After that, the stillness ends. 

Frantic limbs find the confines of the world rather quickly. Moldy wooden planks keep you in on all sides, so desperate fingers are set to work. Rusty gears of the mind are put to panicked pace as well, thoughts flowing like oil to the sticking metal; and the thoughts are of freedom from the prison and release from the box and escape from the- round and round the thoughts go. In circles. Like clockwork. 

Wood soon gives way, and still you struggle against the tangible pressure bearing down on you. And you claw through that, too. And still you hear the marchers. Those dancers. Those ants. Yet heavier than ants are the foot falls now. Leopards walk the surface, perhaps. So you rage against the wet dirt that sucks at you, rising up through the layers, rushing to meet the dancers.

And whilst you dig, the leopard’s prowl turn to a horse’s gallop. And the horse to a mammoth. And the mammoth to a giant. And then you break free, and all the world is noise and wetness and blinding light and pain and the scream that leaves your mouth is the only thing your body can manage. For a body that has lain undisturbed for so long, the pitter patter of the rain is a cacophony and the moon light is the blinding sun and the rain itself is daggers to the skin.

Finally, the cacophony dies down and the blinding light turns to filtered silver and the stabbing lessens away to merely nothing.

You look at your surroundings. There was a reason everything was so still down there. So quiet. For blood makes movement and a heart makes sound, but there was neither.

The gravestone simply reads Cherish Verse, and whether it had been a name or a final wish to the world, you decide it is as good a title as any and take it for the former. At the base of the worn, cracked gravestone was a mound of long-wilted flowers next to a collection of crisped, crumpled petals next to a pile of dust. Someone had cared, once.  

You know enough to know that the dead shouldn’t rise, and maybe they don’t? The quiet graves around you would seem to agree to the steadiness of death. Yet so would your still and silent heart argue in death’s favor, even as your thoughts prove otherwise. You examine your body, clad in it’s funeral attire of a now dirtied and torn black suite. The tired cloth is easily ripped away, revealing pale skin below. Despite its counter-life coloring, the skin itself seems whole and un-rotted. But then you see…

If violent men die violently, then perhaps you had been a violent man; for several wounds lacing your chest had been sown shut. You prod at them with stiffened fingers, but there is no pain now, as there had been with the rain. Just pressing sensation.

Leaving these thoughts in the ground, you rise and teeter forward, perhaps a pace or two, before met with familiar dirt spiraling up to greet you. You rise up again, and several more attempts yield a longer and longer time spent between sudden reunions, and soon enough you can walk about easily. 

Every gravestone was soon read, and none of them share the last name “Verse”. Perhaps it had been a wish after all, but this was not reason enough for you to abandon it. Whatever you had been, this… name… is all that is left, besides the scars; why leave it on a whim? 

The graveyard explored, you decide to venture out to this new world.

A fence surrounding the graveyard and a gate protected by rusty lock would have otherwise. After several tries, the fence is scaled, and you begin your walk down a nearby road. 

Tonight, during the fall of rain, a dead man named Cherish Verse has risen and walked the earth again. It’s a strange world, it would seem, and all you know is the rain, the dirt and a graveyard. Who would you be to not go explore?

The Man In White

The man walked with a foreign gait through the gleaming halls of the station. He didn’t look old, around forty, perhaps, yet a pure white mane of hair tried and claim otherwise. Lines in his face were beginning to emerge, and dull grey eyes held the volume of ages. A well-kept grey trench coat adorned his solid features, with tight black leather gloves molded to his hands. 

All around him, figures moved to and fro, boarding ships that would take them off to the distant planets. It was a strange world, the man knew, and for all the beings traveling, he wondered just how many shared in his knowledge.

As he walked through the throngs, alone amongst the millions, he watched the crowds. Some of them walked on spindly legs, some hovered on marvelous machines of silver and gold, others slithered along, or moved by curiouser methods still. Shady creatures occupied the dingy crevices of the station, hawking wares and services and other such things. 

The man moved to a cafe of stainless steal and shiny walls, and choose a seat with a view to the hustle of the crowds. A clear glass tablet projected the menu, and for all the alien fares, he ordered a coffee from the smiling waitress. She left, and he waited, eyes flitting lazily back and forth, absorbing all he saw. Slowly his hands went to each other, tugging at the gloves upon them until they loosened and disappeared into the folds of his coat. 

Presently, the waitress returned, white teeth still flashed in smile. As she came near, the man reached out and took the cup from outstretched hands, their fingers touching for the briefest of moments. In an instant he knew her, and loved her in the same.

Her whole life, every notion and emotion she could remember was presented to him.

Her name was Belle. She was lonely once, but now no longer. Her mother and father were mysteries yet unsolved, and her best friend had died several years ago, gunned down in a heartbeat in the same station he now walked. A few years down the line, she had thought to kill herself, so over come by depression and fearing the ever tightening walls of her mind; but she harbored a dislike for guns, and never was much for heights, so she rolled over instead and cried herself to sleep. Recently she had known soft hands and the warm smile of a lover; and now she smiled along, happy from day to day embraced in this new life. 

Truly, she loved to smile, loved the warmth and bliss her other gave her and loved the world in which she lived. Every so often her thoughts turned to her dead friend, and she wept for the lost companion some nights. But no amount of dwelling could bring restore life, and this Belle knew. 

All this and more the white haired man absorbed in a second, and he fell in love with her soft kindness and genuine grin. Affectionate, yet tainted by a slight melancholy, he could not help but to feel for her. 

Still smiling, she spoke to him in a voice so sweet. ‘Anything else, sir?’ she asked.

‘No’, said the man. He had taken enough from her yet. For maybe a moment she stared at the white haired man. There was something about him, she though. He seemed broken. Maybe he had known sorrows such as hers. But there was nothing she could do for him, so she smiled a little wider still and walked away. 

Over the countless years of his life, the man had seen so many lives, felt so many emotions through this same method. Slowly, the white haired man had become a library of lives, lived and memorized in an instant. Like Belle, he had fallen in love with many, and had gave up the same. It was a constant agony, yet one dulled by the years and repetition.

He didn’t know how, or why, or by whose hand this ability had come to be, but he accepted it. It was a strange world. Maybe one day he would know its full depths.

He drank his coffee slowly, tearing his mind from saddening thoughts. As he finished, he tipped the waitress, a far larger one than was normal, slipping on his gloves in the process. Thanking her silently for the life and love never to be known, he walked away steadily.

Pausing, the white haired man thought for a moment, the empty chaos of the crowded station presented to him. Hundreds of ships docked and departed every day, their polished hulls gleaming against the black-and-twinkling backdrop of space. Picking one of the docked traveling vessels at random, he paid the ticket machine and sat down in a half filled compartment. A woman was next to him, long brown hair tied back in a pony tale. Softly, the white haired man slipped off his glove and extended his hand in greeting. 

‘Hi’ echoed his deep-and-raspy voice. ‘My name is Jakob Snow’.

sorry for the recent lack of content. my mind has been going through its own little redecorating, and as soon as it gets in touch with my heart again, i can make some more poetry and all that