1. GALLOWS

Sick and filthy from digging my own grave.
Eight feet under there is no trust, there is no blame.
All is silent.
This circle is a noose, drawing tighter now.
The knife is in my hand, at my throat until I drown in my loathing.
Liar, liar, destroyer, defier.
Liar, liar, betrayer, denier.
So drag me to the hill, and tie that pretty noose tighter round my neck till I’ve outlived my use.
All is dread.
You may have them fooled, but when you smile I can see your fangs.
I can see them and I want to rip them out of your head.
Liar, liar, destroyer, defier.
Liar, I am liar, betrayer, denier.


2. BLEAK HARVEST

A line of blood drawn across the horizon is a blaze that flickers through the wood.
We shoulder our tools and we scrape the meager soil.
These furrows are plowed in our hearts and in our hands.
The dust will descend on our parched and broken fields; so many mouths soon to go unfed.
I lie awake and desperate in the small hours.
This burden lays its weight upon my chest.
I bend and break, I wrack my limbs, I scratch my seed in barren earth, I lower the bucket into the well and raise it empty again and again.
Rumbling vastness, a pillar of holy judgement.
Hand of the almighty cast us low.
A blanket of dust to smother and devour us, sent from the silence into which we cast our prayers.
Low—cold—sun descending.
Vast, empty, bleeding sky.
Sigh, whisper in supplication, ears ringing with the gnawing of the hunger.
Cough, shaking, spent and useless. Faithless, fallen, I turn my back.
Three holes, three pine boxes, three wooden crosses : one for our sons, one for our daughters, one for our hopes buried in the dust.


3. BLACK LUNGS

My ribcage is a womb, a nest of larvae alive within me.
A knot of pain, infinite abscess, incubator of agoraphobic affliction.
I am the corpse of a dog crawling thick with flies, churning in the sun.
I am a house gutted by inferno, kneeling grotesquely in the earth.
Deathlike rattle like a swarm of curses, fingers closing round my wrist.
Worming through me, a seam of corruption, ripe and riddled with its rot.
Black lungs gasping, dripping slow.
Black lungs erupting in crimson gouts.
A crescendo, nucleus of torment, crucible of waking trance.
I crumble, groaning and collapsing.
Drag me, screaming, to the light.
Black Lungs bursting, bleeding out.
Black lungs ablaze, and I am a husk of ash.
In the light we crumble.
In the wind we blow away.


4. THE FORKING PATH

This is a tomb.
Walk this spiral of infinite pathways, forking forever in ageless pursuit.
What are we to all permitted futures but a shadow of failure that stalks this tomb ?
Walk the labyrinth and unwind the thread, a dread convergence of purpose entwined.
I am the lurker waiting at the doorway, reaching out to grab you and pull you through.
Gateway through all possible dimensions; hallway of mirrors, recursive, repulsive; spiral fracture, innumerable fragments unraveling this truth : this garden has many paths, but only one exit.
I will die with your entrails between my teeth, snagging, ripping in the rapture of agony.
I am the word, I am the blade.
This is the end of all things.
Leave you strangling, red and naked, dying in this tomb.
This is a tomb.
This is your tomb.


5. SKINWALKER

Dawn creeping, embers glowing, stars ending.
Awaken the hunger.
Blind to the summer sun, empty memories bind me to this form.
Wind, carry me the scent of sun and soil, carrion and scorn.
Snows melting.
Skies breaking, heaving.
Prey grazing, consuming, breeding.
How I loathe this human form—O how I long to vomit forth my being.
Hate buried in my guts, a burning ember; light my ritual to transform.
I will transcend this flesh that I abhor.
I am jaws, horns, and wings.
I am hooves, claws, and teeth, and my eyes can see you in the dark.
Skinwalker, my eyes can find you in the dark.