In the beginning there is nothing. Nothing ordinary about today and nothing extraordinary. I sleep the sleep of the devil and laze in the luxuriant light of pleasures passed and past. In the half dark I see you and ask why you comfort me when all around are preying for my death, my demise and my discredit. Many half-measure moons secrete in an oily manner over the distant hillside, silent save for the sound of howling wolves and errant knights. There is no measure of time in this universe just the exhaling and inhaling of silent air as if to fill the lungs of silent victims in a state of shock. If ever I get the feeling that the task has slipped away from me I will run headlong into worry and grave consideration. But for now, for now at least I lie here and contemplate life's doomery and gloomery. I see you in the half light now beckoning me to come forth but you are not as whole as you like to be with your withered finger of suspicion pointing inexorably at my head like a rusty nail in the air, poised at the moment of being driven home by the hammer. You do not scare me nor do you excite me. Moreover you fail to smile at my heart and my dreams and you seem content to luxuriate in the splendour of my pitiful downfall. A malignant shadow on the wall above, beside and around my mantle of doom you spray your venom into my ears without so much as a cursory consideration for feelings, hopes, aspiration and dreams. But this is no ordinary day. From the beginning there has been nothing and yet everything has happened. I have travelled the light of time in your musing company and have seen the wonders of life and the rigours of horror that befall all who glimpse your face. Rising from the pit of gloom that is my dishevelled bed and traipsing my sorry form over to the door I trip on your silent words as if drunk on the meanings and definitions of synonyms and antonyms. What way is there for me to say I have heard sufficient to last? In what manner can I summon the lexicography to explain the intention behind my imploring you to cease the remorseless interrogation? My heels are fixed to the floor and my eyes transfixed to the murky shadowy dawn of that is your silent passing. There is pain behind your eyes and a close welling of feverish hatred for my form and my life. Out of pity I hold you by thought and venture forth into the cold unknown of the frenzied hurrying and scurrying where shapeless entities meet and converse about death鈥檚 sweet release. How can it be that such remorse and such sorrow is ever enough at times like these? And how can it be that you are never able to appreciate how I moan? How I sob and how I grieve for us? Merciless onslaught favours the weak and I am prime company for the lost. My heart and hopes within are dashed on the time-ravaged landscape as if detritus of bitter conflict, where all forget and forgo humanity and where vileness and bile discredit the hopeful and the decent. Into my consciousness you burn and twist and writhe and turn your corkscrew to meddle with and impale my dreams. The insipid manner in which you delight in my discomfiture and the way in which your eyes light up at the prospect of my downfall leave me cold and unnerved. I wince at your sarcastic frame and yet violently reproach myself for being so weak as to not to be able to withstand your bitter interest. Malignant influence is your promise and lost and forlorn hopelessness and desolation is your legacy. How can the simple wrists of time be strong enough to bear the panic laden arthritic claw that you call the hand of help when all around is lost to drudgery, indifference and secularity? In your wisdom you would have me take of myself that which all would leave behind, save for the stench of rotten flesh that is my heart. In your ignorance you would have me believe that all is safe, all is sound and all is true in a world full of love, laughter and rejoicing in the supremacy of your instinctive shelter. The foolhardy take trips into the unknown without fear and without safe return. The fool hardy see in your face the sight of warmth and the plight of the forlorn. In your face all humanity travels weakly and irreversible down the slide of life into your cavernous mouth and out through the other side into fear, loathing and self-pity.听Friends are bereft of friends here. The dead wander the portals and corridors of misty vagueness, latching onto the light and the hopes of those they meet. Even the dead are not suffered to pass into your heart without cost. Even the dead are unwelcome to settle in your house of pitfalls and horrors. Inexorably you climb the wall to my head and slowly begin to work you evil magic. Inexorably you seep into my pours and into my blood and destroy the very thing I wish to become. Without hope I fade into uncertainty and pain. I close my eyes but you are there and I open them to find you gone. In all humanity how do you expect me to go on without your help? In all inhumanity how can I go with your help? The secret is to be found in the way you ooze your poison unction, like thick molasses warmed in the heat of my blood you weave and wander about me. Again I look for sleep. The sleep of the devil is coming over me. Ravaged by time and death and pain and misery I sink slowly into your warm, secretive and deathly grasp. | 
