3. [3]
Preface.
Part One of the Palace is a series of interviews that were recorded in the year 4808 by Alexandrovich, as a
mixture of prose and poetry. It is not exactly clear whether each interview is written by the subject, or if they are the
product of the author’s interpretation. Not much is known of Alexandrovich, other than that he is either well-connected in
the community, or he is a very sleuthy investigative journalist.
The Palace seems to be an almost cartoonishly tall tower, surrounded by four walls. The whole estate is encircled
by “The Chasm.” We can imagine that this chasm is an immensely, even hellishly, deep canyon. There are references to
what lies beyond the chasm, as well as to traversing the chasm that suggest there might be a vast forest on the other side.
However, most accounts are rather vague, and suggest that the chasm is a very mystical and tyrannical prison of sorts,
much more so than the average canyon. No reference is made to a bridge of any kind going over the chasm.
The interviewees seem to be rather high-profile, the likes of which include that of the reclusive queen, who calls
herself Bastet after an ancient Egyptian cat goddess; the heroine Cajsa, who eventually saves the Palace; the ancient
doctor Daan Qureshi; and the hidden prisoner, Maxwell the Innocent. The content is usually informative, tells about the
subject, their occupation, personal narratives, customs, tales, songs, etc. Overall, the survey does not seem particularly
focused on any one theme. At the close, the Author notes that the day is December eighth, at the commencement of a
semi-annual celebration.
Part Two of the Palace is a collection of poems recorded in 1992 in the journal of Francis Stetterly. Mr. Stetterly
is a dreamer and a romantic. He is reported to have bled out in the desert after a car accident near Tucson, Arizona at age
fifty-two in June, 2003. In his journal, Stetterly documents several dreams about a world very similar to the Palace
described in part one. The collection ends with a very odd account from the author of writing down three prophecies in his
sleep and then waking up to be surprised to find them written in the journal.
Ultimately, most of them die. The queen Bastet relinquishes her god-like responsibility of keeping some type of
evil force or plague at bay. Maddened from the years of battling, she wreaks havoc on the Palace and all hell breaks loose.
Then Cjasa, the concrete worker, slays Bastet and takes the throne for many years. All the while, the evil sickness infects
the people of the palace as Cjasa battles the Chasm. As the Chasm is defeated, its magic fades and the old swaying tower
begins to crumble. Eventually, the people make their exodus to a new promised land.
So, that’s the story. The Palace and its prophet; the dream and its dreamer.
4. [4]
Contents
PART 1 PART 2
Bastet, tortured goddess. 6 The Encounter. 34
Muhammed, painter. 7 The Leviathan. 35
Merrick, historian. 8 The Sorceress. 36
Howard Law, committee member. 9 The Question. 37
Zhou Le, mathematician. 10 The Tower. 38
Giselle, the chef. 11 The Ballet. 39
Maxwell, innocent prisoner. 12 The Confessions. 40
Wendy, twenty-three (and the glass corner). 13 The Lessons. 41
Jameson, architect. 14 The Bees. 42
Hobbes Darkly, patrolman. 15 The Mind’s Sonnet Dream. 43
Zienab, gypsy. 16 The City. 44
Cajsa, Concrete Woman. 17 The Yellow. 45
Mestaphus, philosopher (gypsy elder). 18 The Necromancer. 46
Anthony Seamus, chemist. 19 The Bridge. 47
Father Raphael, cleric. 20 The Blue. 48
Mute, monk. 21 The Red. 49
Svetlana, zoo keeper. 22 The Game. 50
Venus, musician (at the market). 23 The Green. 51
Antonio, metalsmith. 24 The Depictions. 52
Yun, mechanic. 25 The Stillettos. 53
Carus, printmaker. 26 The Insides 54
Word Chanter, instrument maker. 27 The Corridors. 55
Nery, field boy. 28 The Foretellings, 1-1. 56
Elain, horticulturalist (elder field-hand). 29 The Foretellings, 1-2. 57
Athena, linguist. 30 The Foretellings, 1-3. 58
Daan Qureshi, doctor. 31 The Foretellings, 2. 59
Alexandrovich, signature. 32 The Three. 60
6. [6]
Bastet, tortured goddess.
I.
The
One
perched
above all
reason. The one
perched above all rule.
Beyond the deceptive flicker of
Man’s many tongues, I purge, I pray
I become silence, for this is the great
Language of the Chasm, the source of
All question. My enemy, the one perch
even beyond elevation. This, my
prison, this tower. Beyond
the Chasm, there
is a Never-ending
forest. And I. The
one most aware
of this – To me,
It is meaningless
The day the darkness summons my descension
The day I am rendered weakest, I who is their planet
I long for the day, to be freed of the madness
To release evil from its shackles; I, who is the zodiac, empty as I am
I long to be torn asunder, to be trampled
I long to bring chaos to perpetual order
To bring sickness to perpetual health
The hunger inside me, I tear this tower to its knees
This tower that genuflects before me
I wait for death with a rose between my teeth
And enough poison to subdue him
I seduce time, I kill death
I, Bastet, who bears the sickness, who is a prison for its masses
The hunger, the petulance, the one who is perched above all meaninglessness.
7. [7]
Muhammed, painter.
We are the aristocrats.
In the vast shadow of Her tower we study poetry,
art, science, and history. It is all very useless to us
For in every intricacy of Human Anatomy, there is
Only one unanswered mystery: What lies beyond
The Chasm of infinity? These songs, they have their
Beginnings and their Ends. Here we are concerned
with bodies. My people, they have been residing
here for centuries, they’ve never known suffering
Nor have they ever known death. Nor have they
Ever known Life. Obedient to wealth and duty. For
every Citizen has a purpose, so it is written, the 1st
Decree. Our job is to put art on the lower walls. To fill
theatres with laughter. To dissipate the lore that
Speaks ill of clouds. It is said that when the Chasm
Opened up, a great darkness spilled out and they
began to weep ashes that smothered the land. The
Palace needs no ruler, it already has its rules: It is
Only fear who reigns. It is we who foretell the rains.
Their royalty, their celebrity, their identity: it is we.
I still see a squirrel and look upon it as a student his master’s work
Still clutching the sap pustules bulging like candlewax on pine bark
I still call out to it, lock eyes, smiling where no one is listening to me
Still hesitating, it climbs its tower, its tower of a million minarets
I still paint it, hanging it needlessly, erroneously, dripping with lines
Still it transcends even the ones subtlest to me, time, and cognition
I still draw diagrams of scotomas, blindspots, and here I’m inside one
Still wavering between time and space it flickers, bending, heaving
I still draw near hoping our connection will not be forgot, am I wrong
Still intertwined like the leaves of fate, doubling back on its tracks
I still am bound by indecisiveness, like the branches of a pine tree
Still looking back at me chattering my hands now sticky and dying
I still long to disappear to be reborn as a tree that is trustworthy
Still longing for an embrace, making a child of my crackling resin
8. [8]
Merrick, historian.
You’re gonna come to love the world once you’re on it
You’re gonna wanna write a hundred sonnets
You might be contained now, and your language might be limited
But words are still words and bones are just you less skinless
Time is always gonna find a way to fuck itself away
Fine. No matter how you look at it, or the size of the cage
You’re gonna come to love the way you always find a place to stay
You’re always gonna find a place to waste away
We need to give words more consideration
You built one earth and a plethora of nations
You’re gonna come to love taking that old tongue on a vacation
You’re gonna come to love the same enclosed fucking spaces
When Death and the exodus meet:
You’re gonna find the same dirt beneath your feet.
We didn’t always know what year it was: we learned that from careful observation
of the texts. We didn’t always know exactly what years were, but that’s what we
eventually learned the Dictionaries were for. In fact, we didn’t know much about
anything. The Originals – about two-hundred Aristocrats – reside in the Tower,
another seventy or so are buried in the prisons, no more than a hundred and fifty in
the camps of the field hands and the Gypsies. They say, anyways, that they were
children from every corner of space and time, barely able to communicate, until they
were visited by a man who spoke to them in English and Arabic, read the laws and
schematics of the Palace, taught them to write in English. Only then did we begin to
understand our language. It was 3706, the fortieth year, we had determined what year
it was. And we began piecing together a narrative of the old-world.
The root of all evil: many have called it the devil, but that is not the explicit language
of the texts. The root of all evil took seat in the highest office of the one government
ruling above all earth. It infected the people with evil, and even in their lustful hatred,
they cried up to the heavens, begging god to protect them. The human race burning
down to the dirt, eating itself alive like the snake’s tail tied to its throat, and so god
snared the devil, and the Chasm was born. The year was 3666, the year that the moon
was torn.
There are no texts from after this time, and we figure that is because there is no one
left to write them. The texts from before then tell tales of a world beyond
comprehension, a palace beyond borders.
But the magic will be gone. There is a lot of the old-world that is lost, like
currencies, pornography, wars and bombs. There is some that still exists, like
languages and laws. Like old veins innervating our definitions, and terms, and
names, old names still pumping the same blood of our ancestors, still bearing
the same names as our forefathers.
9. [9]
Howard Law, committee member.
Son, there are twenty-three Pillars in our law
Decree of the Palace – call it the tower law –
The first two: every Citizen has a purpose,
All purpose is equal, the holy founders’ law
Three: every Citizen has the right to follow
The Chasm’s beckonings, that is, the cowards’ law
Four: anyone found guilty of mortal sin shall
Be judged by the Chasm, the moral scour law
Five defines mortal sin as the violation
Of any person’s human rights, the outer law
Six through eleven define the Human Rights, and
The terms of Self-Defense, the mortal browser laws
Twelve: ‘tis the duty of every Citizen to
Attempt to defend these Rights, “all encounters” law
Thirteen: every Citizen shall have assignments
By Decree, the old “who will grind the flour?” law
Fourteen: All persons must fulfill their duties to
The best of their ability, ‘til sour law
Fifteen: there exists one true creator of the
Cosmos. One god of all gods. The one Yahweh Law.
Two concern the celebrations at the statue
Of Bastet, the goddess, the Cat’s Meow: her Laws
Two more concern the rationing of land beyond
The walls, the Commons, and resources, South-dirt laws
Twenty to twenty-two concern the Offerings,
The duties it entails, the final hour Laws
Twenty-three: No Decree may contradict these Laws,
Or tax unfairly: here explains the how of Law
– I am a Committee Member and we mostly
Read and re-read, revise and rewrite down the law
We weigh Decree on the passing of assignments
And rationing, the biannual dour law
And I, the interpreter, transcribes the Decree
In common-tongue, my given name is Howard Law
10. [10]
Zhou Le, mathematician.
She’s just reminding me not to get too high
But no, I know it ain’t never do or die
And Lord I know what it means to you and I
Oh Lord I know what it means just between you and I
She never looks up until the second drink
She never dances unless the settings stink
I know what it means to be headed out to the brink
But Lord I just need to take my head out to think
Sometimes I think she loves the world a lot more than she writes
But then I see how she looks at the younger girls on the floor tonight
She said she just doesn’t wanna pick up on any negative vibes
But Lord I know there’s more than just three-hundred years in the air tonight
How am I supposed to ever bring any of these numbers to light?
Lord I can’t even add up what I want, she’s the one and only love of my life
I teach in the University on Floor 110. Algebra and calculus, that is, linear and multivariable; also great words for
consciousness. I’ve had a lot of students, a few who have stayed behind to learn more, one who saw it as his purpose,
became a professor like me. Now we study together, he has some amazing work on the dynamics of chaos, the mathematics
of unpredictable systems, that is, calculating the future. He still believes the explanation for the Chasm is residing in the
numbers, his false palace of mathematics. Time continuously added and subtracted.
Three hundred years with this woman and I feel the same way sometimes, son, you don’t need to fall in love; it falls on you
like rain sometimes does.
11. [11]
Giselle, the chef.
Twenty thousand families in the Palace. Never more than three-hundred chefs in practice. We are the scarcest of artists, and
for that we are proud, our art is unique and more pleasurable than paint and words. Our recipes are reviewed and acclaimed
throughout the palace. We work in the cafeterias by day.
Chefs are honored once a year in the Court of Moons, the full December moon, the harvest feast, the residents eat and drink
and commune. They pray, they praise the magnificent food, but they prey too. The innocent residents, they prey on each
other’s moods, the chemists and the gangsters exchange plans with the doctors, the Aristocrats, they put on plays and present
gifts to the kids from the gypsy camps: dresses and trousers, blankets, frankincense, flutes and paintings. They dance too;
their bodies fold over each other like waves. The clerics bless the fieldworkers’ hands and they burn lavender and sage. The
drugs and the sex, the bronze cat, children that are born like that, conceived beneath the statue, it is said they are chosen,
that god wants them to traverse the Chasm.
There are two Citizen Congregations at the Statue of Bastet each year, but in the winter, under the blue June Moon, every
family in the Palace brings their own food.
You don’t have to wrap your hands around the bars
That cage you
But they made you who you are
So thank you.
I don’t always sing the same song
But I know where my bars are
And where they come from
It’s not hard, for two people to be so far apart
And still touching each other’s face
You start down a path
You get stuck in one place
Part of you is lost, the other half is trapped
You don’t have to plunge your fingers into the chest and innervate the bones
To make this old home pump marrow through your poems
Have had meatloaf on the mind for days now. Easy, really, normally wouldn’t think twice about it but now, a thousand times
I’ve thought it. You need to cube the cheddar, cubed, not shredded, that’s difference it’s subtle but not in the end: the cubed
cheddar comes together as it bakes, the shreds, they dissipate, they lose themselves. Proportions are written in my
fingerprints, they are a silent language to me. Memory? No, it’s proportions, that’s how I memorize so many recipes.
Ground beef and turkey, rolled oats and eggs, tomato paste, black pepper and salt, brown sugar, honey and nutmeg, chili
flakes, jalapeño relish, mustard, and a splash of milk. Cubed cheddar. Mix and form, but don’t let the loaf touch the side of
the pan, let them bake porously. Parmesan and cracked pepper crust on top. Bake at 180 for forty minutes, covered, then
for ten to fifteen uncovered at 210 degrees Celsius. Serve with mashed potatoes and ketchup if you have it.
I closed the door today and kissed Anthony and we collapsed into the bed, he shuddered for a moment but, it had nothing
to do with me. Jumped to his feet, asked if I was ready to eat. Tomorrow we begin preparations for the feast.
12. [12]
Maxwell, innocent prisoner.
His name is Maxwell the Innocent, you can never kill him. Prisoners are the little known secret, even the guards have
restricted access to the basement and its bilges. They sign a non-disclosure agreement. They understand that even the
prisoners have a purpose, even if it is to remain a secret. The prison walls sweat, they drip from the bowels of the tower.
The mountain belches the prison’s gasses; lightning flashes, ashes rain down, the prisoners, we never see the sky. We were
here before She came up. The guards are intermittently rotated, as dictated by the ancient Decree, there is only One who is
not beyond our secret. We rap and chant, hum and reverberate in the dank caverns carved out by god’s fingerprint, the shit
and guts that make up the rock upon which this house was built! We know what She does for them, but we’ve given up
trying to explain it to them.
The Palace has its malice. Go ask Alice.
They always enjoy my presence in the present
Cast me in the past pass it off as black magic
But they’re gonna come to love me in my essence
They’re gonna come to love me in my essence
The Palace has its atlases and schematics
But of the prisons not a single reference
All of this is just a body without an appendix
Like a book without references
But who replenishes the ravaged probiotics?
Who protects the diarrhetic stomach from infections?
They’re gonna come to love me when She’s abandoning her promise
We are the body’s reservoir of gut flora
They the body’s blood, She the liver and kidneys
That is, every citizen has a purpose.
13. [13]
Wendy, twenty-three (and the glass corner).
The Lower Walls of
The Palace arise from the
Crest of a mountain
It is written: The
Walls were built for hanging art
Never to protect
There are only four
Wings, known respectively as
North, South, East, and West
By wing it is meant:
Outer wall, Residences
And the public courts
Outer wall thirty
Meters high no windows no
Homes, commercial zone
3 walls 85
Meters thick 2 public courts
60m wide each
Always open, the
South wall 300m hall-
The Colosseum
The res. has four wings.
Homes per wing, 100 by
Thirty: three-thousand
Average housing
Unit: 15 by 10 by
Seventy – spacious!
One or two children
Per home never any more
Never any less
Twelve-thousand houses
Four corners, twenty percent
Vacancy, most years
Walls and buildings, square
The middle, the mountain slopes
Through, no inner wall
The inner slope the
Community gardening
The sculptures, the Jest
Seeing beyond death
Breathing beyond flesh and bone
Here they burn their dead
“Hate means to perish
But know art is to flourish”
-Inscribed in front arch
The first six levels
Of the Tower, Central Care
And Facilities
Above the clinics
And shops are the committees
Above, offices
Above the office
Floors, the University
Of Higher Learning
Above the U, the
Residences of the rich:
The Aristocrats
There they create art
Eat the farmer’s crop burn the
Generator’s oil
There is a prison
In the basement, they say no
Prisoners exist
From the Committee,
There comes the Decree, issued
twice annually
4 nineteen-hundred
Meter walls. South-west Corner
All composed of glass
You can live beyond
walls or you can live beyond
You’ll always be loved
My name is Wendy, I plan community events for the North wing. I organize pot-luck dinners and bingo-nights. I work
with the North-Wing Taverns, the nurseries and day-cares. I coordinate galleries with the curators and the featured artists.
I plan movie screenings and work with gym managers to offer community-oriented work-outs that are fun and inviting. I
work with Aristocrats to plan lessons and lectures on new findings and new translations. I help make sure people are
satisfied with serving their purposes.
We don’t have the same holidays, and we certainly don’t have any highways, but we sure as hell know how to celebrate!
14. [14]
Jameson, architect.
The North,
East, and West Walls are
All surrounded by rising mountain-sides
And rocky forests.
Outside the South Wall,
bald-faced cliffs plunge 90m
to the Court of Moons
Most Citizens Steep narrow steps are
Choose to Carved into the cliff’s
traverse Vertical limestone Surface.
The Courtwall The cliff is known as the
Through a Courtwall, the stairs are
Series of called the Courtwall Pass
Temperature An old paved path winds it’s
Controlled Way up the western summit
Corridors It is known as the West Trail
Equipped with stairs and elevators, time hurdles through them
Fleshed out of the same earth, there is over 27 kilometers of corridors connecting
the Tower, the Residences, the Court of Moons, and the Pillars, dust hurdles through them.
The Court of Moons is bordered by twenty-three concrete obelisks, known as the Pillars, arranged in a crescent-shaped
semi-circle. The Pillars range in height from 103 meters to 333 meters each one increasing by ten from right to left, that is,
from east to west. The points of each obelisk align with the path of the sun, the location where one would stand to observe
this phenomena can reveal the time and date. The Pillars are a symbol for the 23 Laws of the Palace: in place permanently
like the foundation of a 333 meter megalith. Between the base of the Courtwall and the arc of obelisks there is the deep and
pure Crater Lake, a reservoir supplied by glacial streams and watershed. Several lines of demarcation connect the base of
every Pillar and cast a grid over the countryside, toward the Chasm. Even in the mountains, the lines sometimes ropes on
the side of a cliff, bend back and forth over each other like spider-webs the domain of the Palace, circumscribed by the
infinite Chasm.
It is said that there are people residing in every Pillar, monitoring, communicating with the Tower. It is said the pillars
generate energy for the Palace, but these things are never published, of course, the Generator never seems to stop humming
either.
I am the architectural engineer, I oversee structural maintenance, reconstruction, and repair efforts. You are a Concreteman,
I should say, Concrete Woman, have been for years, talented too.
The difference between me and you is that I’ve read the Foretellings. Our futures were foretold in the year nineteen-ninety-
two.
15. [15]
Hobbes Darkly, patrolman.
We take the first Line at the shift break and continue our rounds westward. Several cabins ring around the base of the first
Pillar, connected by a covered porch: We use these for equipment storage and stay in them during long shifts and more
difficult seasons. Our primary responsibility is taking readings out at the border, readings that scientists in the Tower use to
predict the cullings. We monitor the weather beyond the Chasm, and whether or not wildlife has been traversing and where.
I usually try to prevent Citizens from sacrificing themselves to the Chasm, but it’s not technically one of the responsibilities
of a patrolman. Not technically diplomats either, but we know the Gypsies, we know the gangs, the huntsmen, the factory-
workers, the field-workers, the doctors, scientists, and occasional Aristocrats. We carry weapons for our hunting. Not
technically messengers, but we seem to wander around with many secrets. Patrolmen know the Chasm, we know its calls.
We aren’t strangers to its solitude, we see many mystical things on our tours of the border.
Shift begins and it’s goodnight, I depart at moon’s peak
Travelling the One, me and the moon speak
I feel the cool blade, thirsty for the hunt
The Chasm beckons, swallows the sun
Feet carry me west, mountains slide east
The Chasm has its music, its mood-swings
Animals traverses, but storms is vomited
I mostly records, listens and watches it
Song on my lips I heard from the fields
Scars in this light almost look healed
My heart asleep she’s in the northern wing
The child prob’ly begging her to sing
Freedom, I craves you, my prison
Chasm my captor, time my religion.
07DEC4808
Very strange encounter at 0835 on border patrol.
Location: sector 21 appx. 700m from the 19th
Line.
Young man – brown hair, thick brow, pale, gaunt, well balanced and alert – pops his head up over the lip of the Chasm.
He looked up and saw me we instantly locked eyes. I was hunting, gun at my side, goddamn it! He was terrified.
We froze, I nodded, he nodded back, lowered his head beneath the grass.
I paused, for a moment, stunned. Then I ran towards him, right up to the edge, but he was gone.
Right up to the edge of the Chasm, closer than I’ve ever gone.
I looked deep into its blackness and it was magic, that is, it was fantastic.
Note: The man appeared to be naked, like the others we’ve encountered throughout the years.
It is strange though, I wonder, what force of the Chasm brings him here only to leave so soon?
As a final note, I was stricken for a moment by how his right hand was stretched around something almost
cartoonish, something like green sheets of paper. Didn’t believe my eyes at first, but on second thought, I am sure
of it. Green blocky leaves.
…
Can’t stop thinking about my encounter and the magic of the Chasm.
Could it be a mirage? The Chasm’s sly, sinister call? I thought I knew.
But the stranger was legitimately shocked, and so I ask: What world did he come from? What was he expecting to find?
It was the curiosity and the frenzy in his eyes.
Southerly winds, warm spots along East Ridge, no signs of inclement weather.
Border Readings Log Complete, Attached.
PM H. DARKLY
16. [16]
Zienab, gypsy.
We live in the camps between the third and fifth: “refugee camps”, gypsies, travelers, many who have traversed the Chasm,
a few from the residences who have found a home for themselves here, for one reason or another. We operate the orchards.
No small task, but it suits us: the quiet work, it is problem-free. Every civilization has its scalpels that slit open the abdomen
and flesh out the pariahs that it needs, that it leans on, more than anybody realizes; or, so it is written of the Gypsies. Many
of us are well known at the markets of the twelfth Pillar, trusted, and appreciated and at night? We are feared and blamed.
For though the Chasm is giving, the Chasm also takes, it takes, it takes away. We sell jars of honey, jam and crafts. My
people, producing incredible works of art, passionate, gifted musicians. Our camps are filled with children, shrill playful
cries, chatter, alcohol, drugs from the Gangs, spiritual drugs, silent drugs, the sweet smell of beeswax and jams boiling. We
fill the night air with belts of fire and laughter, with songs and dances to keep the darkness at bay. The music of guitars,
violins, flutes, drums, tambourines, chanting, clapping, singing, vocals and poetry. There are songs we all know, many are
played but never wrote, many more that will manifest themselves like a spirit and then like the winds be gone, forgotten,
impossible to reproduce. It is said that the Aristocrats exile their most talented and beautiful youth. These children, it is by
decree that they are sent to the camps of the fourth Pillar – to be raised by us, the Gypsies and the miscreants.
Some Citizens choose to live on the edge, some choose to go further.
There are of course hunters and lumbermen. Survivalists, that are solitary and self-sufficient. They get from the Palace what
they take. They give to the Palace what they have. A few traverse the Chasm, fewer still come back. Many are consumed
and never seen again. You can live beyond the walls, or you can live beyond.
The Chasm contains me Here.
My people raised me here
Edinburough, he travels to market with the cart
Tomorrow he buys my first guitar
They say art is for Aristocrats
They say beauty is for the Gypsies
We learn to play away our sorrows
Paint away our sympathies
What can we know beyond what is possible?
How shall we hurdle our bodies toward obstacles?
What do you have beyond what you have here?
We all sing praise and rejoice for our fortunes
Trees, they never run away, they never bear secrets
Sugar, it is a poison to the masses, sweet as it is facetious
These trees have been a home to me. My greatest fear is that someday I might have to leave. For the Chasm gives and takes.
Many families have been fractured by its beckonings, scattered by its cullings. We are the keepers of its children, the
harbingers of its sacrifice. This, my people’s burden, this buried chanting court-room. Trees know no chains, they beckon
only the sun and the rain.
17. [17]
Cajsa, Concrete Woman.
I was a little girl in Spain born twelve years too late.
You were thirty years old and you gave me her name.
She was already laid to rest in her grave.
I was a photograph in a window of 1808.
I woke up naked and you were calling my name.
You were a metal smith you came to blanket my frame.
She was three thousand years frozen in space.
I was your child and you recognized my face.
I am a woman blossoming on the shore of our lake.
You are a face dead in the cliff and you love me the same.
She is our queen above all questions she reigns.
I am four concrete walls crumbling at the same rate.
I know what is the ground and what I’m bound to.
I know what to close a door on and what to kick through!
(The Architect).
Today is the nineteenth day of the October moon, year 4808.
You were born when, 1808?
Three-thousand years. You think that’s a coincidence, Cajsa?
What was the first thing your father told you by the lake?
He said he was here for me. That he recognized my face.
And then?
He said the Chasm is a void that transcends time and space.
He said we were brought here for a reason.
He said the only way he could protect me was if I lied about where I came from.
What did he tell you to say?
That he was my father. That we were nomads.
That we came from beyond the mountains, beyond the forest.
That our family was scattered by a culling from the West.
That I spent three years wandering alone before I saw the minaret.
That the land out there was lavish and wet.
He told me to say that I traversed the Chasm, so that’s what I said to them, I’m serious!
I know.
...
When your father arrived here, he was passed out and naked in the North Mountains.
He was found by the Patrolman Hobbes Darkly, who took him to the Gypsy Elders.
The patrolman, he’s kept that secret to this day, as is the custom.
The elders, they contacted me in confidence, gave me these instructions.
For the elders, they communicate in that chthonic tongue of the Chasm.
They said that he was the harbinger of things to come, that the Foretellings had begun.
And do you know what I asked them? I asked them how they knew.
Here only one spoke up: he said, “because, it is so.”
That was twenty-five years ago, Mi Cajsa, now there are some things you need to know.
18. [18]
Mestaphus, philosopher (gypsy elder).
One thing is certain about the chasm. Perpetual mystery is the nature of a void. It swallows all reason. Every explanation.
The chasm engulfs time and space and embraces us in its transcendence. Here we hover, hung between reality and an infinity
of conjurings.
What is it to exist? To we who hold no time and place. To we who met like grains of sand in the chasms fingers. Slipping
through sleep into a never-ending dream. A dream with no borders. A seam in the Order. A beam in the corridor. Allah,
hurdling through it like a person in a four-door, that is, a car from the old-world. He rolls the universe around on his tongue.
The devil infected the taste of the surface and so Allah bit down on him. The palace and its chasm, that is, the depression
Allah’s tooth left in the fabric.
Here we are suspended at the end of a puppet string. At the will of the chasm. You can pull yourself up the rope that snares
you, you can climb forever, and you will still be hanging.
In her peak, she’s shrouded in misery
In her valley, she murders viciously
We procure for her the sacrifices
Cost of death ripped from the Chasm’s vice grips
The Sorceress of the fourth obelisk
Prisoner of the concrete monolith
Warm blood will hurdle through their veins again
No, never stop trying to raise the dead!
Who are you to decide who should survive?
Within the limits the Chasm’s contrived
We are the shells of a folded tower
We ring the bells of a final hour
You can die or be risen, the wretch will
Never stop trying to render death killed
Never stop trying to raise the dead!
Never stop trying!
19. [19]
Anthony Seamus, chemist.
We control the territory between Pillars six and nine. The ganglands. We observe the 23 Pillars, we attend the two churches,
but we fight internally for our claims to the farms and the factories that produce the drugs. Visitors are never welcome,
always escorted upon entrance. This land is ours, no question, but with it comes great responsibility and duty. We produce
pharmaceuticals for the Tower and the Residences. We take care of the addicts, we abide by the laws, the laws passed by
the Aristocrats. The ones who consume the drugs. It is said we have a substance that will draw you toward the Chasm. But
these rituals, we practice only in the shadows, end only in darkness that is perpetual. None who can confirm, none who can
deny. There’s only one way to die on the island!
We operate the marijuana garden, the opiates, epinephrine, insulin, acetaminophens and the other heart medications
My boss is a great man. His vision is unadulterated
My name is Anthony Seamus, I manufacture Rivaroxaban, I sometimes synthesize Heroin
Marijuana is taken directly to the market. The Palace cares not of what intoxicates its Citizens
The gang is our brand, our livelihood, we are the Red Crosses, we worship in the East Cathedral.
Our rivals, the Blue Shields, they produce the hallucinogens, the anti-biotics, the anti-virals.
The few junkies are treated and taught to garden, for it is written, every Citizen has a purpose
And purpose is the antagonist of addiction, of course, no Citizen is worthless
There is a legend that once, Man’s medicine was his greatest secret, this was before the Chasm
Then there were medicines for Cancer, medicines for mental disorders, for epileptic spasms
Had a dream I was a lad, try as I did, I couldn’t stop the Culling.
That morning in the lab, Mikhaille, she couldn’t stop sulking.
My name is Anthony Seamus, I work for Jiro Kwon Sing
Had my journey to the Chasm, it said, Son, your life is worth preserving, you need but love one thing!
20. [20]
Father Raphael, cleric.
The Land around the Market of the Twelfth is landscaped, meticulously, with parks, the Arboretum, Botanical Gardens, the
Zoo, and on the west end, the greenhouses. East of the eleventh there are two churches, we praise the same Allah, the same
gods, but each in our own way. We are constantly in conflict over what to do with unwanted pregnancies, who should be
allowed to marry, to raise a family, and who should be allowed to die. We argue most in terms of what we think honors god,
but we forget, Yahweh transcends the limits of human speculations and sentiments. We forget, Yahweh is beyond all border,
beyond any definition.
Outside the churches there is a thirty meter statue, polished white bronze, of a sleek-furred cat, referred to as Bastet, the
goddess of protection, of joy, dance, music, family, and love. It is part of religion to worship and honor Bastet; the two
churches congregate as one mass every year – the day when the summer Decree is issued – the holy days, and we feast, we
feast and we drink and dance and chant and worship the cat. Cats of course are prized possessions and considered great luck
throughout the Palace. Cats are never murdered.
The churches are both beautiful buildings, two cathedrals of equal splendor. There is a large coal burner designed
specifically for incense; each building’s thick wooden beams, arching overhead, stained with the oily residue of six hundred
years’ worth of perpetual lavender lingering, like cedar in a chest. Slate roofs sloping dramatically, stained glass windows
older than the hills, repaired only by the senior metalsmith, altars of varying symbolism, scripture, faces carved into the
buttresses, the pillars, the walls, and the pews, stained, dripping in holy, holy lavender. The churches are places for security,
comfort, separation from the mind. Lavender facilitates this. The people don’t care which church they attend, nor do they
care to try the other church, for it is said that a population needs politics to keep its politicians honest. The Palace has no
rulers, just churches.
Mankind had created heaven on earth
Then Lucifer’s penance had been repaid
Yahweh said to him, “you are free, now go –“
Lucifer said, “Father, first release me
From Your binding Grace.” God said, “Son, I love
You as wicked love their ways”, hence Satan
Secretly lay waste to the Creation
Then God drew a great circle around him,
And said, “When you decide to traverse this
Chasm, it will judge you: If you’re truly
Cleansed, you’ll be delivered unto heaven –
If you’re ill-intentioned, to hell you’ll be
Imprisoned.” Bastet descended, gave him
Faith, saying, “Brother, you’ll always be loved”
22. [22]
Svetlana, zoo keeper.
I wake up brew the coffee & consume, three eggs, cheese, wrapped up in a tortilla, pepper sauce. I run into Becky, “Oh
hey Beck-“ we kiss, she takes a bite of my burrito. I do my rounds, the animals look good – they never die, but they give
birth sometimes and they hate their cages but they also probably think that those edges are just where the world ends.
Caged up and only bothered by the curiosity, the sad part is if they did see, the shock would most likely kill them. Built up
like a villain – the tower always looming over everything. I wonder if they wonder. You can’t know what it’s like to be an
animal, or even what it’s like to be another person sometimes. Trust me I’ve tried.
I am universal interloper
Even in the valley of death’s shadow
Or the mountain of Sisyphus’ babble
I am body, owner and promoter
The All Created equality clause
Part woman, part cat, part ram, part tortoise
Part cricket, part hawk, part gladiolus
I am skin-walker, the fists, and the claws
I am the Self extended, self-contained
Part man, part god, part freshwater mussel
Part mountain sugar-cone pine, part hustle
Part patience, part love, part order, part made
I am predator and the prey – the peace
I am Zoo, the bars, chains, and gnashing teeth
23. [23]
Venus, musician (at the market).
Cancers! Cancers! Two tiny white answers
Devil on the mattress, three mice and some matches (Refrain)
Dancers! Dancers! Two fingerprint ash marks
Old woman and a lantern headed out to the caverns (Refrain)
Hazards! Hazards! Pure matter in masses
Piece me together, break me down, make me better, oh (Refrain)
Bastard, bastard, scream up to your master
The grimy words you chant are just choking on laughter
Refrain: When the heavens come down
Come down!
Little devil came up and the world came down
Come, come down!
I open up my teeth you are the words that come out
Come, come down!
The Palace has its twenty-three seasons. There is summer and winter every year, the difference between these measured
mainly in rainfall, but the Palace also has its twenty-three seasons. Today is December eighth, of the thirteenth; the harvest
moon waxing, heavily approaching. When the twenty-third season arrives, they will burn the fields and offer the sacrifices:
the year of mourning, the season of the taking. Then, the first, the season of rebirth and giving, marked by uncommon
fertility, many children born that year will be marked for the Offering. The offering that comes once every twenty-three
winters.
But this year, this summer, we celebrate viscously, viciously, like strings of water clutching leaves as we plummet from
clouds in the midst of the tempest whipping between flashes of contorted bodies morphing into strips of electric dances and
explosions of snapping branches. We cascade down the cliffs of our own unaging mortality, we hurdle through each other’s
betrothed bodies. This year we bite into each other like animals of the wind and spit blood on the face of the Moon in honor
of Bastet, our glorious protector.
24. [24]
Antonio, metalsmith.
The thirteenth Pillar marks the beginning of the industrial sectors, populated with factories, grain-elevators and canneries,
breweries, forges, and refineries. Oil pumps, mines and quarries are located as the land dictates. There are textile factories,
electronics factories, food-processing, recycling, furniture, paper, waste-management. The metalsmiths replace broken
parts, broken tools, broken bridges. The mill grinds gravel from the quarries and produces concrete powder.
The air reeks of dust and oil and cooling tanks. Constant screeching, belching, honking, hissing, clanking, clanging, ringing,
creaking, thudding, and trickling; symphony of the Industry. Steam rising, dissipating, waving goodbye, or just holding out
a hand. The cloud factory. The paper ocean. The process of becoming so thin. I come to the industrial sector often, it is
where our metal-shops are located. We travel a great deal. We visit the mines, checking quality, fill out orders at the forges,
the Tower, replacing joists, patching giant pipes in Facilities. My life becomes the corridors, soldering pipes, welding joists,
wandering the corridors in my brain. The crane used out at Food-Processing, big fucker, I built that crane, me and Jameson,
the architectural engineer. We forge more than space in time here.
I am become alloy and chrome
My tendons, welded and wrought
I am become mercury, steel and bone
No longer disjointed, my seams sealed and blocked
Passion, my mortal enemy
Can you not see how you soften me?
Cajsa, I turned my back on you, and you’ve forgiven me
I am become iron, my heart is kept under lock and key
Your affection, it renders me hardened
Separated from indifference
My greatest words, gardened
My greatest pains, limitless
We are making ourselves children, welding excuses
I am plating my skull at the forge, forging confusion
I was a baker in Spain, 1808. My wife’s name was Cajsa, Swedish name, we had moved to Valencia for her new job as an
accountant for a leading land-lord and developer in Spain: his name was Alejandro Teodoro, a partner of her old boss in
Malmö, I’ll never forget how proud she was. Cajsa means Katherine, from Greek words for chaste and pure, or so she said.
We were friends for a longt time, but She was pregnant with our first child, and that day in 1808, it had been raining for
three days straight; the sun came out with a vibrancy so intense the earth seemed to shake. My Cajsa died in labor, and I
gave our newborn daughter her name. I left her there at the hospital and went directly for the bottle. That night, trying to
kill myself, too drunk to hold a razor steady in the alley, passed out, face down on a soggy newspaper. The headline is as a
dream to me, a reoccurring memory –
(in Spanish) July 29, 1809, Battle of Villafranca del Bierzo: French Troops Surrender –
my final memory before the Chasm reached for me, I should say, ripped my body through time and space and delivered me.
Woke up hung-over and naked on a rocky forest floor, freezing, but also innervated with internal warmth. Twenty-three
years passed, before the Chasm gave me Cajsa. Her mother’s face resting on a thin shuddering frame, her pale reflection
on the equally naked lake.
There are bones that grow thinner like a femur draped in cellulite, and there are bones that grow thicker like the ribs of a
tower, ribs that show through the concrete dress she wears in droves.
Such is the nature of many things known only in words, me I prefer steel and the lips draped delicately over your naked
bones.
25. [25]
Yun, mechanic.
Everything in this universe is a machine
Every universe is a piece of one machine
Every molecule vibrating consistently
Every human institution is a machine
Every law, reverberating legislation
Every word you’ve parsed is a part of the machine
Every body pumping alcohol through the veins
Every thunderstorm that rains down is a machine
Every dream in its seat of neural circuitry
Every act of copulation makes some machine
Every ripple in the surface of this water
Every wave of sound in a song is but machine
Every mountain pours itself into the river
My name is Yun, I am a cog in the machine.
Many things in this palace beyond understanding. Like microwaves and plasma-screens. I have a friend up in the radio-
room, he has a solid grasp on tele-communications. He said the Palace is equipped with internet technology, but the internet
fell with the old-world. We fix computers in our free-time, we designed the digital media archive, to ensure the DVD’s from
the stacks are never lost to decay and damages. I’ve come to be an expert on elevators and generators, we’ve cut up those
manuals like sandwiches. I work closely with electricians. I work often with architects. I have the know-how to fix most of
the Palaces heavy equipment. Jackhammers and payloaders – tools of the trade in the quarries. Conveyor belts, mills, and
granaries. A lot of mechanics don’t know these things – they specialize on only one machine, or they work for a specific
factory. There are plumbers and carpenters, metalsmiths and concrete-workers, chefs and community-planners, but
ultimately every building is a machine.
There used to be more things. Things that have died, that were never retrieved. There are others we’ve designed, like glass
cutters and water-filters. Others still, like toasters and cameras, their functions were forgotten or we just didn’t know how
to use them until the manuals were translated.
26. [26]
Carus, printmaker.
Hot tar splashes the back of your tongue, your throat,
Your lungs stiffen around a cloud of discourse throats
Ten AM and still trying to peel your body
From the contemplations of another sore throat
Cough, Cough – you really fooled them this time didn’t you
Said “get your fucking hands away from my poor throat”
The body, slapping back and forth, skin against skin
Hands safe distances away, kissing the whore’s throat
This is what I think of dignity: I drank up
All mine willingly, cost of my direct-pour throat
Unstiffening and quenched, only for a minute
Smoke pouring from your center, your deepest core throat
Blood rips through the back of eyeballs like red awash
In the low moon, pulls scarf to cover more throat
High enough to get out of bed and go to work
Eleven eleven, was it stomach or throat?
Doctor, I just needed something to take, someone
To come and listen to my suddenly bored throat!
I live in the west wing of the Residences
Walk to the factories, down the corridor’s throats
Call me Carus, the printmaker, I also do
Tattoos, I’ve done some intricately adorned throats
Working with print you come to know the sinews of words. You develop enough photographs, render them in black and
white, cut enough wood-reliefs, you come to know the tremors of the printing press. When to hold for a second of hesitation,
how to span the void between Decrees. The beauty in the whites between characters, you come to recognize the personalities
people hide in their blank spaces. Maybe you try to recognize more than they ever asked you to, but every story is two-sided
like the paper it’s printed on. Me, I am a printmaker, but I see the most amazing creations in blank pages.
You vomit up ink and pass out in a pool of your own palace
You wake up doused in words, your throat, raw from the acid
27. [27]
Word Chanter, instrument maker.
I turn a forest into symphonies
I turn hanging-strings into harmonies
My hands turn time-bombed bones into trombones
Sound into a castle of leaping stones
Turn your face inside out and just listen
I turn wind into the earth’s instruments
I twist rhythm out of tortured spruces
I ensnare melodies in their truces
Bend your neck around the bell’s embraces
I turn bronze into reverberations
Bent your teeth around the digeridoo
Built yourself the sitar out of bamboo
I turn gray into endless tapestry
I turn black and white into poetry
Here at the music box you never know what you might find, but you know this- we’ve been making instruments for hundreds
of years and we have the finest tools. Our work is the most detailed we have the most variety – banjos, electronics, pianos,
brass and woodwinds, and cellos. Be mellow, write yourself a song and come on down the music box! Let the black and
white be your guide, let the fingers free and they become flowing rivers of words that flood your brain, your tongue starts
flapping and the lyrics just pour out of your mouth.
I always freestyle. I always set my soul free and it comes back with a message from the majesty. And then for a while we
are conversing. But no it never requires any rehearsing, the heart opens up and sometimes my lungs transcend breathing I
become utterly innervated with poetry. That is, random ramblings become life energy. I am translating Allah, infinity. Some
call me the word chanter, I like to think of myself as the matter snapper.
28. [28]
Nery, field boy.
We live in the Field Community, the gates and the barbed-wire fence stretching from the eighteenth to the twenty-third
Pillar. We live here permanently, all my friends and their families. We take the 21st
line out past the sugar beets, the pepper
patches and the tomato plants and grapevines, we work the raspberry patches, our small bodies navigate the brambles. We
walk back together after bell-toll, we go to classes and learn our figures for writing and arithmetic. The adults return to their
fields at second bell-toll; we begin the evening meals and prepare for their return to camp. Families here have as many as
seven children, there is never any limit; for food and water here is abundant, that is, the land permits our bodies, I should
say, the earth beckons all hands.
(Field Song)
Drink up ye harvest, sweet milky winter
Your song is sour sucking on thistle
Deliver my message: moon in the river
Your face is fragile, your bed is brittle
Chasm, my guard’ian, save me my mem’ries
Carry my heartbeat out to the ocean
Child o’ mine who knows not but one sea
Stray from these paths that I’ve walk’d as chosen
Written it is that we’ll never perish
For man is captive, forever frozen
Run kid, ‘n tell them, you’re bent to flourish
Devil that calls us, our minds are opened
Drink up ye mountain, sweet trickling river
Kisses you bring me through my spine shivers
We know the fields like we know our hands – we concern ourselves with lines. But the fields are also thick with flesh.
They are also thick with thieves. They are all so thick, so thick. You dig down into the dirt with your hands, you pull up a
potato. You do it again, a thousand times a day. Then you admire what you’ve made. We know the fields like we know
our friends – we listen to what they have to say. But the fields know when the rain is coming. They know when the sun
will stay. My people, my family, we live simply, we live in prosperity. The fields give generously, ask only of our energy.
Few are so lucky as to be the field’s hands, actually a life here is appointed only by Decree.
Never by accident. The Chasm beckons me from the Raspberry patches. My parents are picking sugar beets.
29. [29]
Elain, horticulturalist (elder field-hand).
The field’s hands – I’ve become innervated
Do the devil’s dance, run in the place and
Tell them the plants don’t die here we harvest
Always, and twice a year we unharness
I’m starved for this, pour grains in the hopper
Fire up the massive vats of copper
Tonight we drink the last of the vineyards
Tonight we saturate our innards
Bring out the freaks, send them to the statue
No death here at the tower of babble
All deaths are reborn, paths spent have been mourned
Corner a cat you get scratched and get scorned
Earth returns all that is lost but not gone
Those who have crossed the field will live on
In the greenhouses we start seeds from the seed warehouses. How many onions are consumed in the palace every day?
How many sugar beets are processed, how many pounds of marijuana are carried to the market? How many bushels of
wheat define gross consumption? The fields never rest, they never tire of bearing fruit for the palace. They only turn once
every twenty-three years. The slowest dance ever conducted, the oldest conductor left on earth, the symphony of the field,
the longest song that life has ever wrote. Every olive and grape, every avocado and melon, every head of lettuce, every
tomato a single note. All with the same smoothness of sunshine, all in the same key as the universe. Our fields compose
harmony, god is in the clouds singing along soulfully.
You grow up tall and straight like a tower
You wither just like a garden flower
You bend yourself around year-roundedness
Like the vines of the purple clematis
You need a mauve carnation for your dreams
Fennel for your flattery and deceit
You need rosemary for remembrance
And a white lilac for your innocence
You gather the wormwood for your sorrow
Fistfuls of peonies for tomorrow
You need clover and oak-leaf for the strength
Black rose and lotus; lift you out the grave
Time will cool your heart like the hydrangea
Your dreams dance in a patch of begonias
30. [30]
Athena, linguist.
Not a lot is known of most of the pyramidal caverns inside the obelisks, that is, besides the obvious similarities to the ones
that have always been open to us. The twenty-third Pillar is public access and also serves as the westernmost entrance to the
field workers’ camp – the fenced-in community where I live permanently with my family. The twenty-second obelisk, the
second tallest, 88 stories insanely organized with the texts of every ancient language, every character and symbol of the old-
world. The “stacks” as this collection is called, contain more than forty languages, of which we have been able to translate
seven – English, Arabic, Latin, Spanish, French, Hebrew, German, and some Chinese. Some of the texts still can’t be
translated due to varying dialects, many of which may be branches of different, but related languages. Most texts are
unknown mysteries.
There are two languages in the Palace: English and Arabic. Basically, the Foretellings were written in english. Arabic is the
language of the ancient Decree; nowadays, most poetry and literature is written in english for clarity, especially in formal
poetry, for rhythm as well as tradition. Arabic is considered the “formal” tongue, the language in which the Palace was built
– the technical language of the old Manuals and the building schematics, still used in science and farming and technical
details of any craft, really. In any case, most people are educated in both English and Arabic, and the transition in
conversation is usually fluent.
I’m not a historian but it is thought that in the old-world, hundreds of groups of people just like the Palace each spoke their
own tongues with their own customs and practices. Then, these groups of people came together to be what is known as the
Pangeatic Union (PU). Then there was what would be described as a one world government, which ruled above all the other
languages. The PU was corrupted from the top down and it destroyed the earth, and humanity, and most of human creation.
Then the Chasm opened up like a cactus flower sucking in all the evil and hatred that remained of man. The earth finally
released a deep sigh of relief. Then something curious happened – this Chasm reached through time and space and just
grabbed children, literature, art, media, seeds, canned food, cats, toys, warehouses full of chemicals and medicines, etc. That
is, any thing from any time in any place and book after book after page after pages. And we’ve been making sense of this
mess ever since.
You take up bricks like words in a language and build yourself a palace
Take out the raw veins – universal circuitry is all that remains
Give yourself enough murder and you’ll see – some words are beyond planets
Some earths are beyond understanding standing up all red and ashamed.
You build a ballroom and you dance on a stranger ‘til your toes are blue
Even then, every word is the next footsteps, hip- swings in this sentence
And you built yourself a massive mannequin mind hole to make love to
Even then it seems your tower is bent over belching its penance.
You dig yourself a prison with a shovel, that’s one word: conviction
You dig a thousand more, paint the image every body’s been seeing
You and your phallic- ass palace, reality passed off as fiction
Take up your mortar, your martyrs, tongues like leaves of books beyond meaning.
And we are nothing – if meaning is as fragile as humanity
And we are nothing – if nothing is even a thing for us to be.
31. [31]
Daan Qureshi, doctor.
Traversing the Chasm isn’t exactly what it sounds like
You’re sucked into the abyss and gravity is intensified
So much so that your body is spaghettified
And in that moment of terror, you suddenly rematerialize. On either one of two sides.
It used to be, in the old-world, or so I’ve been told:
Every human being died eventually, just from getting old.
After the first culling, I went out to the Chasm to know
To ask why I’ve been spared just enough to suffer this cosmic joke
Plenty of people die in the Palace, but death just doesn’t hold the same necessity
As if it has been harnessed; become a slave of the Chasm’s puppet strings
We still suffer injuries and the occasional disease, but age just doesn’t have any grip on reality
As if the Chasm has taken time and space, and made them two separate entities
I was here in the beginning. We didn’t write the Ancient Decree, it was written.
And we didn’t build the Palace, it was risen
We didn’t give the offerings at first, but after the second culling, anyone else who disagreed was buried in the
Prison.
My name is Daan Qureshi, I’ve been here since the beginning. I’ve read the Masoretic Text, the Qur’an and the Holy
Bible. I’ve written as many poems as any man on this planet, this tiny planet. Treated more patients. Even cured some
diseases. You come to realize you care as much about alone time as you always did, in fact, I’m surprised you found me
out here in the west mountains, the most beautiful cliffs and waterfalls. I come here to sing to the wind and get high alone
– to release myself, to refind myself. I wasn’t a doctor in the beginning, I was only six. We all were, that is, we all were
kids.
You see, the Chasm reached through time and space and chose us to be its people. Yahweh didn’t do that, He drew the
Chasm into existence with His pinky – an empty void to snare the devil – then He smashed Satan with His thumb and the
Palace was risen from the crevices in His fingerprint. It was the Chasm that took us as its prisoners. The Chasm that
turned letters into laws and schematics, gravel into this unfathomable palace, ripping words from reality like
Michelangelo clawing flesh out of marble, the Chasm’s sweet tearing embrace.
It was the Chasm – always a trap. The devil jumped right in, it chewed him up in hell and spat him back. Devil on the
other side, laughing in Her fucking face. The Chasm, trapping its children like a jar, preserving the human race.
And it was we, who after forty-six years, were forced to make that unavoidable decision. To watch the moon and count its
bleedings.
We know there is not a price to life but there are lives that must be saved and
There are lives that must be taken
We know there is not a price to life but there are lives that must be saved and
There are lives that must be taken
We know there is not a price to life but there are lives that must be saved and
There are lives that must be taken
32. [32]
Alexandrovich, signature.
My name is Al ex an dro vich
My game is phal anx and bow-hitch
I feign to has this mast ered gift
Sly make shift all ex am pled bitch
Sly paint ed half necks add your pitch
Five shades is y’all ex mas o chists
Why wait if all is an chor age?
My vain est call to a dorn lips
Why tame eth Al lah, dra gon’s fist?
By flame this lord of death ex ists
My pain is al ways sand or mist
Dry rain has fall en stab’d our witch
My brain is cal loused hand grown vetch
My name is Al ex an dro vich
…
A special thank you to She, who reigns above all evil, and to the people of the Palace – without you this would not be
possible:
We paint the same way with tongues
Our buildings framed in veins of blood
Our visions stained; the remains of love
And to the great Prophet Francis Stetterly for it is written in his own words:
We all have a story to tell!
…
34. [34]
The Encounter.
6/19/92.
What happened to the matter snapper?
Asking myself, in a dream I remember
Asking myself what matters to a happen-stancer?
That is, one who believes in random answers
I should say, a chance dancer
I was walking on a path between a ditch next to a road
and a strip of trees situated behind a row of lawns behind a row of houses
along a road and so on and so forth, like a labyrinth of crops in a field of suburbs
Began with a dollar bill on the ground I found all balled up, pocketed it, chalked it up to luck
Came around the bend into the shade of the thicket
Little squirrel on the ground, spot a five, get all excited, feeling unexpectedly vanishes
Looked up – my eyes traced a path of dollars on the side of the sidewalk in the grass
Felt like I was looking at a trail of dead bodies
Pulled myself a twenty from the weeds and started running, ran past foreboding
Began climbing what to my surprise had become of the path; a cliff all covered in vegetation and crumpled bills
Had to find an explanation for this, like, “what is this, some kind of trick?”
Besides I wasn’t gonna just sit there and be afraid of shit, not when I’m dreamin’ like this
So I went with it, trusted my reflexes
Stash cash stepping, I mean, greedy every crevices:
Every waistband, underwear, socks and fists
Hoping I’d never wake up from it
But then I stuck my head up over that luscious ridge, that is, the precipice
Met the devil’s gaze, I should say, the source of all evil –
stomach sick.
It came to me as a man with a shotgun. Barrel-chested. Cowboy hat.
He nodded, I nodded back
Lowered my frame beneath the grass, exhaled, and my heart? It was reverberating!
This memory, it hurts me to even think of it
heart rate raising, herding language, that is, wrangling definitions
I should say, you who shepherds words:
Help me speak the sentence that evokes fear beyond all reason
Even beyond death, shame
Even beyond shame, savagery
Come to find you can’t change destiny
Just one of the sad faces of Satan standing maleficently
I woke up, that morning, and began to weep
For the fact that my endless pursuit of money will inevitably be the end of me!
-F. S.
35. [35]
The Leviathan.
6/24/92.
Two distinct feelings rattling through the corridors in my body.
My veins manifest electrical outlets.
Pulled a tiny daisy from the garden between sidewalks on my way to see her.
Had a dream to impart.
She held it delicately enough to strangle the meaning from it - I could see she was asking herself, What am I supposed to
do with this?
I wanna go back and let the little flower live. Next time, he says
I would return it to her when she outgrows her garden between beds.
Her doubts, I plug them in to me.
She is innervated, together we are energy, that is, the harmony of circuitry
I should say, one continuous memory
In coming to myself I have also stepped away
In stepping I have reduced my only way to ruin
In ruination I have depleted the very nature of a Chasm.
We walk as one freely between heavens
my faith in words lingers, diminishing
I use your word diminishing, I should say, ravaging
Michelle, your beauty is all encompassing
I mean it infects me, I am consumed, quivering
Love was the whale Leviathan
It swallowed our ship and I alone survived with him
Together we travelled, he delivered me to Jericho, the Heavens were rejoicing
And just like that, all sins were forgiven
And Baby, your arms were the ocean that carried me.
-Forever yours, F. S.
…
Also today:
Noah’s birthday. It’s been eighteen months since his mom died, I just really hope he’s doing great, I know we’ll talk again
someday.
36. [36]
The Sorceress.
6/30/92.
The past has come to me with many fingers
I use the word reaching, but I should say ripping the very flesh off of my face
Replacing it studiously
Constructing a man that is utterly cliché - until I crumbled into pieces, that is, until my revenge, my final revelation
She's read my poetry, though listened would be as accurate as words shrouded endlessly in a labyrinth of illiteracy
Wrestling with me; how to evoke understanding without saying it literally
Speaking explicitly – I came to a sorceress, residing in the pyramidal cavern of a five hundred foot obelisk
I seem to recall this fact, for in the dream I was looking up at it
There were faces too, at the base of it, murmuring
In the distance, a woman was singing, a flame was flickering, flourishing
There was chatter and gossiping, and then a cloud of gasps
I turned my head from the monument, but suddenly was inside of it, somehow stepping through the cracks
Staircase travelling, must’ve been dashing, burst through the doors as if something was pulling me
Like an infinity beckoning, I mean,
One that already had its hands on me
She showed me her face, it was missing something
I stood there in amazement, unable to look away when
I saw the two lovers hanging in their embraces like the caduceus, face to face like the two snakes
They were alive, but barely moving. She cut them loose and butchered them right in front of me,
On her hands and knees in a pool of blood and then began to hover, face down above the lovers
Her body, convulsing rapidly began absorbing their blood, that is,
The blood hurdled through her, I should say,
She cleaned up the mess. Stood up without a stain
I couldn’t look away – it was a prison of reflex
The sorceress had me hypnotized
And the fear, I was immobilized
She came to her feet, she was dressed in a pencil skirt, high-heels and a blouse, immaculate
There was the din of a siren in the distance, maybe I imagined this, maybe part of the dream
Sexy little devil, led me up to the attic made me strap on the animal mask
What was it, a jack-rabbit? Tied my hands behind my back.
Made me get naked. Began a load of laundry. A knock at the door, and then she left.
It was dark, the corpses of her past, a labyrinth of dish-racks and mannequins
Wigs, candle-wax and clothespins
I found a hole in the giant concrete slope of the wall and ceiling.
I looked out and saw a lake – dead either way – I threw myself down to it
Halt at the surface. Open my eyes. Breath. Total retention.
I was awake, my mouth tasted like house-fire and nauseousness
Laying in my bed anticipating our next correspondences
-F. S.
37. [37]
The Question.
7/10/92.
What’s beyond the limits of expression
What is this beauty beyond perfection
If all I am is memories, then you
Have become me – But what of me’s been you
Everything we have done so far stops here
It either matters or it doesn’t, dear –
Every word that’s been whispered in your ear
It all comes down to this moment of fear
You can live beyond limits set by walls
Or you can live beyond, beckoning calls
Might take you to the limit, to be judged
You can find your way, you will still be loved
Past perception is beauty sans limits
And Michelle, you are clearly caked in it.
-F. S.
38. [38]
The Tower.
7/12/92.
I want you to be the tower I visit in my dreams.
I want you to be the 183 stories, breathing in human bodies, exhaling, taut flesh stretched awkwardly over these bones and
ligaments, these genitalia and sweat, these fats and gasses and excrements.
I want you to be the single minaret staring out over desolation so patiently, with the blue eyes of a time capsule, enduring,
beyond rot, the point at the center of a void, the circumpunct transcribed by God. He reached down and scooped three
pounds of a beating heart out of our planet. All we are is scars that remain standing.
I want your feet to be the basement prisons, under ground, inhaling in the mountainside, like lungs, soaking in the sap and
bile of a people's sordid underbelly, churning, curdling. Your feet are prisons, your prisoners are decisions, always running,
like sand lapping at your ankles, dancing with the waves.
I want you to be 888 meters of longing, of man's long bloody, concrete-coated hands reaching up for the heavens. I want to
descend through you like my inevitable recession into hell, my soul petrifying, sins cascading through my veins like
turpentine, like footfall through your halls, your stairs, your elevators, offices, and foyers. Your officers and lawyers.
I want you to be the woman draped in walls who has occupied the minaret for more than two hundred years, she waits for
death to take her hand, massage her fingers, clip and file the nails, oil the cuticles. She is, and I want you to be, beauty in
utter purity, passion beyond all reason, that is, the dark chasms of human nature, god's truest creation, evil beyond all rules
of greed and jealousy.
I want you to be the endless titanium and chrome bellows of the generator. Screaming in the chthonic language, screaming
and masturbating in its own indecipherable anthems, always running, always running, you are, generating mystery.
I want you to be towering over me. I want to be four walls and a home to ten thousand families and I want your body to
tower over me.
I want you to be the wealthy, the middle-class, and the poverty. Your head is rich, affluent, conceited your stomach buzzing,
clacking away at a keyboard, debriefing a committee your feet are running, imprisoned, sickened. I want to be the work-
force that caresses your disparities. I want the good and the bad that you do to me. What you’ve always done, to keep your
eyes between your shoulders, your teeth between your legs.
I want your body to tower over my frame.
I want you to be wearing that dress of eyes, cultish, clutching your thighs, clavicles, your breasts, shoulders, framed in iron
and stone eye-liners, mascaras and crows feet. The litany of windows looking outward, inward, these words have different
meanings depending on what side of the wall you're on, but I know what side of the walls we're on. I want to be the thought
that made you laugh, that made you a heaving tower, pouring out a love that is deeper than it is risen.
-F. S.
39. [39]
The Ballet.
7/22/92.
Dreamt of the ballet.
Three thousand ballerinas stood on stage
At once became the crest of a single wave
One giant body became the tower heaving in a tempest’s drunken embrace
Three thousand bodies adhering beyond dancing symbolically
calmingly
towering over me
bowing
Then I was composing bodies like instruments.
Then I was composed of three thousand faces in the crevices of my fingerprints
And in that instant, I became aware of every minuscule movement
Every tiny heartbeat, beating in unison
Music turned and ballerinas started howling
Massive jaw of bodies devouring me like cactus flowers blossoming oppositely
-F. S
40. [40]
The Confessions.
7/29/92.
You gave me a dream and it was sensational
I vowed to be an object of your internal mechanisms
You gave me a picture of yourself
It paved on my tongue eight thousand words of lost protection
Forgotten suggestions
I’ve become so intertwined with my ambitions I’ve forgotten who my sentry is
You gave me your faith and I just got fucking high again
I love you but is that enough to bridge the gap between our differences
I love you to the core of me, I couldn’t just let go of you without letting something die in me
I think that’s where the importance of the Palace lays
That an entire world lies beyond the eternal chasm of space
That this is the chance I take
You, my entire planet
Do I dare turn my back on it?
Or do I offer death my body, and let this dream consume me
Should I offer you my body and let two become we
I’m torn between two realities
One where you leave me and the Tower crumbles to the ground and it was all just a fantasy
And one where the faces in that crowd at the base of the obelisk become my family
You gave me everything that composes you and I gave you a symphony of excuses
Denials of my own purported inadequacies
I think they all die and that it was a dream
I think I need to fight for your existence and then win you back
And then battle three-thousand demons while carrying you on my back
And only then, when these lips have embraced infinite blood
Should they be allowed to taste your love
And make speculations about our relationship and its transcendence of time and space
You gave me at least enough reasons to run,
And I did more than return the favor –
We each put our animal masks on and the bloodbath had begun
If sex is a cold blade, then you my love, are salivating on your mandibles
And you eviscerate me searching for a heart that works
But mine are all off-beat and backwards
I love like my heart is made of passwords
And you were the only safe-cracker with an answer
You gave me an ultimatum: shape up or ship out
Well I’m still here, aren’t I?
I set sail but the only bearing I could remember led me right back home to you
I’m always coming back home to you
No matter what prison I live in or the walls I push through,
I’m always coming back home to you
-Love always, Francis.
41. [41]
The Lessons.
8/8/92.
This time was diff’rent, under the wicked moonlight
This time there was children and the vivid moonlight
Dream starts, I’m teaching kids everything I koew
The dream teacher, they show me the blood-red moonlight
Speaking in tongues I’ll never recognize, but we
Were communicating, in window-wed moonlight
I read the signs and manuals of their palace
In the womb of the tower, dressed in dead moonlight
I taught them how to write and translate languages
Semantics and syntax of a gutted moonlight
I dreamt of days with them yet with ev’ry breath time
Hurdled through me, reminding of the bed’s moonlight
So far away in space, and yet the same moon shines
Two palaces twisting through the time-bled moonlight
The way the dream ends they die, I read it in their
Book of Law, couldn’t warn them of that dread moonlight
I let that fear reverberate in my spine, I
Sighed, without goodbyes, woke up to sun-fed moonlight
You either have a name, or a reason to be
Call me Frank Stetterly, eyes closed, I tread moonlight
-F. S.
42. [42]
The Bees.
8/10/92.
Some people stack up romances like their fingernails,
Comparing the length, throwing ‘em away
Like a castle of branches waiting for the fire,
The fire that keeps all your emptiness at bay
Some people grow out their flings like fingernails
Forestalling the grooming then cutting ‘em short
Like a tree, reaching for the sun, someday, son you’ll see
Erasing time by the leaf only to be cut down into boards
I want to wrap my dreams up in leaves
I want you to be a forest of books whispering to each other
I want us to be a library breathing in bodies, exhaling trees
I want us to be the evolution of languages: utterly discovered
Some people choose to communicate like bees
Dancing around the subject, lovelessly freed
-F. S.
43. [43]
The Mind’s Sonnet Dream.
8/15/92.
Draw a diagram of every mountain and tree the mind oughtta see
Take your first sip from the chalice, your first step on the mind odyssey
Open the doors of your Palace, built on the words of my prophesy
Here in the quarry of flesh and eternity please mine cautiously
Turn your teething of parasitic patience on my dishonesty
Give me time to bend your fate around mine like twine the noose mindlessly
I need you to be the hot-soft tower, pregnant with my dynasty
Turn your eyes to the atlas you’ve drafted and map my duplicity
The only vessel for happiness: tortured soul and its modesty
A gothic song of longing, see, this sonnet is mine obviously
Mine documented posthumously, manifests self monstrously
Hell-bound possibly life spent deciphering his strange mind’s mutterings
Dreamt I thought only in haiku poetry of the mind’s offerings
Dreams can just kill me already, my fear is they might martyrize me!
-Frank Stetterly
44. [44]
The City.
8/30/92.
Other side of my bed, jackhammers drive a dead rhythm
Windows hold red light under the black atmosphere
City twilight, tossing dirt on the damp street
Jackhammers run.
Other side of my bed, dark cars sell each other’s secrets
Anger is a dry hood in the garage.
Other side of my bed, customers talking like big trucks
They order eggs, sausages, and noisy stops
Dry flowers take faceless, dead jobs
Why does the sidewalk shop
Sunlight gushing feet
Windows eat.
Other side of my bed, corners walk with cold cigarettes
An empty room full of locked doors busied by its smile
Skyscrapers surrender, paper towels, a towering rain.
Other side of my bed, the slum runs on grimy sheets of music
Roads gab like a shrinking party
Exhaust curls up over the lip
Jackhammers pound the notes of a dusty drizzle.
Other side of my bed, you can’t see faces in your dreams
But I see them
They’re all dead.
-F. S.
45. [45]
The Yellow.
9/2/92.
Which came first, the palace or the dreams?
How do you conjure up a planet in your sleep?
And who will tear down that palace when you’re gone,
When thousand nights of dream-razed bricks are laid?
When you close your eyes and find they were closed,
Will you open them to find they were already open too?
And when smoke hangs like ribbons on morning light,
Streaming in at angles across your bed?
What becomes of your precious palace then,
When you stand up naked, already high again?
-F. S.
46. [46]
The Necromancer.
9/8/92.
Eyes close and she dies again
On my knees in a field by the edge
Eyes close and she dies again
Rains into my head
Thunder cracks between my ears
Screaming up to the heavens
Never let her lay to rest
Breaking out in a cold sweat
Never stop trying to raise the dead!
Eyes wide and I’m laughing
Begin chanting in Latin
Lungs begin collapsing
I’m in the ocean choking, the blankets are wet
She’s laying next to me on the bed
She’s in her sleep on a field dancing
Never stop trying to raise the dead!
Never stop trying!
-F.S.
47. [47]
The Bridge.
9/19/92.
Memories loaded, cocked at your forehead
Thoughts painting your inescapable hell
Enough waiting – pull the trigger for them
Benign penetrating creaking your bed
Tensing, quivering knees tighten to tell
Memories loaded, cocked at your forehead
Two people here, neither divorced nor wed
Us and them folding, folding the cards dealt
Enough waiting – pull the trigger for them
Left a trail of crumbs but needed more bread
Mind’s own prisoner, got dizzy and fell
Memories loaded, cocked at your forehead
Already genuflecting before death
Firing squad loaded, ready for the bell
Enough waiting – pull the trigger for them!
Wanted you to be happy, not force fed
Rough past – we all have a story to tell
Memories loaded, cocked at your forehead
Enough waiting – pull the trigger for them
-Frank Stettely
48. [48]
The Blue.
9/24/92.
Blue hangs over twelve dead captains
Like drought on a field of weeping hands
Weeping hands waving, waving and clapping
Blue hangs shaking, feet kicking
In the corner – the statue
Part woman part tower – part oak heart
Blue, strung up like a dog
Everything else is polyester
-F. S.
49. [49]
The Red.
10/10/92
Flesh wrapped bones guided by muscles, by brain cells, by physics, by god
Wrapped around whale graveyard bone handle steel six inch curved blade
Held up to neck electricity searing back and forth between the fingers and the brain
The corridors numb with saturation, raw with the friction
Between body and mind – the distance of a universe, the smallest space on earth
Crossed into the physical reality and innervated the biceps, cut into the throat
Timid blood. Composed of cells and gels, salty and beating, sweetly, and red that is pre-existing –
Red that erupts from energized carbon filaments at 4600 degrees
Red that hurdles through the microscopic chasms between molecules of glass
Red that reflects off the blood pooling in the bathroom sink
Reflects off the pool of atoms oxidizing at sensational frequencies
Atoms composed of sub-atomic particles
Particles of vibrational sources
By way of design, divine organizational forces
By way of the bang
The bang composed of speculations, mental illnesses conjured by the will that is
Universes banging spontaneously in the synapses
Synapsing on autonomy, the organism, captive audience of the agency
Tiny universes blossoming in the brain that tensed the fingers, pulled the hand, held steel against the neck
Devious universes willing the brain inside the body, the room, the house, the ocean, the galaxy
Universes inside of a universe that is a particle, that is, a part of the will
The will within the mind
The mind within the body of a god that is infinite
He looks into the mirror, all he sees is limited
He pulls the blade and the body the blood pouring pooling in
The sink that spills into the bathroom, into the sewer, into the sanitation plant
The plant that pours into the tap, into the glass, into the gap
The lips that bend and resonate with accelerated air-molecules, croaking, spurting blood, singing –
Dreams like these, even their reflections cast shadows on the dirt
These echoes open me – how else could I expect anyone to respect this shit?
-Frank Stetterly
50. [50]
The Game.
10/22/92.
You look a man in the eyes
Then you pluck them out
You plug ‘em into your sockets
Then you look at the world through his eyes
You put a man on a pedestal
Then you cut him off at the ankles
You step down from the alter in his boots
Then you walk around for a day in his shoes
You give a man a voice
Then you kiss him on the lips and
You bite off his tongue
Then you go and talk about love
You give a man an apple and a snake
Then you act all surprised when he taints the human race
-F. S.
51. [51]
The Green.
10/31/92.
I love you and who you become
When two turn two into one
Back on another reason to be resourceful
Lord, what are you gonna use my resources for?
I swear sometimes I feel her face, right here just like she’s talking to me
Lord, just tell me you’re convinced that I love her enough
And I step into the meadow picking flowers for Babylon
Lord knows she deserves as much
Even as my palace collapses there’s beauty here
Lord we both know how she comes galloping in to save me again
I love her so much it feels like my ribcage is bending open for her
Lord it feels like my heart is crushing my lungs into my chest
Feels like I’m ripping myself up into shreds
-F. S.
52. [52]
The Depictions.
11/2/92.
I am moon fragment at midnight Hate-tinted, rose inebriant
Cigarette tribulation tower lips Ember mountain mocking me
Hundred body narrative Self-love inoculated
Bedroom concert: on and off waterfall Trickling trickily
Real scars scream at me Y’entitled piece of shit!
Trying so hard to be different Institutional depiction
Colloquial goddamn power position Hurdling even down hillside
Body be water My disability mudslide
And village beneath memory Vessel can’t even host one me
Why stuff flesh into community? Fingers into gratuity?
Came out of the womb distorted Liquored breathless but fire gifted
Baby dragon’s treasure hoard I am bathe in molten gold
Rigid as tower idolized Soul be sloping mountain road
-F. S.
53. [53]
The Stilettos.
11/11/92.
Celestial hoards
Raving in the cosmic ballroom
Earth passed out on the dance floor
Trampled by stars with stilettos on
Face down and doused in the sun
And the cosmos partied on
Had a dream I met a man in a shed
He said “stand on your head and let
The blood flow over your eyes,
Into your mind” I didn’t comply
But then he turned and pointed up
He said “you need to go there!
You do not belong here!
You with the long hair,
Ass-bare, standing there
I looked up, it all disappeared
Twisting around to look at me
Pan-searing my sensory energy
Entire concrete tower bent over and fileted me
I woke up in a bed of rice and wet ecstasy.
High-heel holes in my story like Swiss-cheesy
-F. S.
54. [54]
The Insides.
11/19/92.
She dreams
On the insides
Projector wet
With slides
Timeline
John F. Kennedy
Only when the sun shines
He winks at me
Built out of blue and yellow
Hammered into green
Staggered out red
Dagger in head
Entrails
Confetti cake
We congregate
On the insides
Tiny screens
Both eyes
End-table
Marie Curie
Blast radius, Nagasaki
Radiate me
Built out of concrete
Consummation sky
Forgot to build the ceiling
Now I rise, I rise.
Cat faces
Carved into her thighs
55. [55]
The Corridors.
11/27/92.
Charge the molecules through the corridors in my brain
March the orders to my army – time to see if this man is even still sane
Made out of sticks and stones we’re all made out of dust and gravel roads
All held together by magic, all quarried the same chasm, the hole
We’re all mud in the same lapse of cliché hopes
And in the drought then we collapse the same mountains to molehills
The same concrete and ligaments into massive urns
Cash burns
Into my retina
Now all I see in you is ash-words
Eyes wrapped up in celestial corona
Had a dream and the man I met on the hill, he said,
“Old friend – we meet again! I was just a child then…”
Couldn’t see his face though –
I tried to tell him but the tongue was tied
Tried to smell the roses but my tower had dried
And all the rest was death that remained
All the best of friends had been slayed
Nightmare in a cloud of dust asphyxiated
Running in circles searching for some proof
That half of the plan wasn’t just a cosmic mistake
I wonder if the maker ever abstains from making changes
For fear of the inevitable ramifications
-F. S.
56. [56]
The Foretellings (Part I).
(Next three pages – early morning, 12/8)
1.
She who is above Decree will descend
And great evil will plague the hearts of the Citizens
There will be a Concrete Person, she will slay the demon,
Bastet- the one perched above all reason
The dark sickness will infect the populace
There will be murder, rape, falsehood, and avarice
The Woman will ascend to the highest tier of the Palace
This will begin the cleansing, the purging of the madness
There She will remain perched, the One above all harness
For three hundred years of suffering, battling the darkness
As the evil is defeated, so too will be the magic of the chasm
The people will be saved, they will be granted safe passage
And on the first night of the three hundredth year, She will be visited by a dream
She will then commence the exodus, her people will traverse, finally free
57. [57]
2.
Look unto the sky for the sun, on that day, will wink
You will be filled with faith for rain will tear your tower to her knees
You will traverse the Chasm, for on that day, it will howl from the deep
For then your thirsted minds will drink
You will be given life everlasting for death has been conquered
Happiness, for sorrow has been butchered
Love, for hatred has been nurtured
And Eden, for the will of heaven has been honored
This is a prophesy, for unto my eyes it has been imprinted
Unto my skin it has been engraved
Unto my eternal soul it has been named
Unto its falsity I am burned, but in truth I am imprisoned
This is a prophesy, for mortal bones have traversed the veil
For the Chasm has drawn for me the final breath it must exhale
58. [58]
3.
You will be freed from
The offerings, the cullings
And the Beckonings.
You will travel for
Thirty years, Eden will then
Be revealed to them.
You will know you have
Arrived, for God will reign down
And embrace His flock.
And your queen will have
Transcended three-thousand three-
Hundred thirty years
And your dreams will be
Electricity, funding
Your newfound city
Know that there is not a price to life, but there are lives that must be saved and
There are lives that must be taken
-F. S.
59. [59]
The Foretellings (Part II).
12/8/92.
What is it about these dreams, the underlying sexual themes, the women living in solitude in the peaks of giant concrete
shafts shafting the earth repetitively, the standing in front of them naked, not even noticing, the blood, and the hypnoses?
I was in a dream last night rowing a boat alone across a lake.
I came to the shore at the base of a cliff
I scaled the near vertical staircase carved out of the limestone like a ladder on all fours
So up over the ridge, I stood before an enormous colosseum yawning
Hardly busy, cats and dogs, basket-ball and soccer courts, mostly people walking
Endless concrete flatly and massive archways shouldering over me
I looked into their eyes
I couldn’t really see their faces,
I don’t think they could see mine
Crossed a steep hillside to the foyer of the tower
I took the elevators up as high as they would take me –
my stomach sinking deeper with every story that entered me
Then I took the stairs, walking right past security, as if they couldn’t see or even hear me
I ascended the simple spiral staircase in its massive concrete silo and lost my breath
I opened the door to Her Palace as if She already had me possessed
Instantly eye to eye, she began to say something but I couldn’t hear and I couldn’t breath enough to speak
She pointed at me, I looked down and I was naked, unable to believe I hadn’t even noticed.
I looked back and she began to scream, except this time I heard her explicitly.
Even now as I describe it, I can feel it in me reverberating
She pointed again, this time at the wall, I turned my gaze –
And it felt like I was staring at those writings for a couple days.
Bolt upright, darkness clouding around the laser-red letters that spell out 3:35am on the end-table. Snap lamp-on.
I must’ve written down every word from those walls verbatim (see above). Just as they were carved into Her, they are
now and forever etched into my flesh. I never looked away, never took a breath, never took the chance to communicate.
I must’ve written it in my sleep, because now I’m awake, lying with this journal on my chest, trying to get my bearings
straight like, “what the fuck happened last night?”
-F. S.
60. [60]
The Three.
12/12/92. Full moon.
I get you
Open your view
Up river sex
My style like
teeth more open
You Cajun queen
are less redeemed.
The country- time
Clouds get to
that angry dew
Come about 4 –
rollin’ smokes- me
on tacks, my
out – towering thing!
I open up my mind you are the words that come out!
Come, come down
I open up my teeth you are the clouds that come rollin’ on down –
Come, come down!
Father, son, and
The holy spirit
Sun hands danced
reigning down on
over -cast Their
memories only tongues,
my fingers chewed
enemies from Babble,
burning fields tasted
hellishly of heaven,
- Murder no stranger
My beautiful things
Demons’ arms have
already opened, happened.
![[1]
The
Palace](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/eaa52657-2fc6-4fc6-9a02-6e4b79492e04-161219033118/85/the-palace-1-320.jpg)
![[2]
The Palace
Nicholas Egersdorf](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)