subject-a-versus-from-the-underlands

Verses from the Underlands

VERSES FROM THE UNDERLANDS Subject A gnOme

Verses from the Underlands © the author and gnOme books 2016 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit: http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0. gnOme books gnomebooks.wordpress.com Please address inquiries to: gnomebooks@gmail.com Frontispiece: Zdzisław Beksiński, AA78. Public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AA78_by_Zd zislaw_Beksinski_1978.jpg ISBN-13: 978-0692621578 ISBN-10: 0692621571

A NOTE ON THE TEXT The selections in this book are taken from the treatment records of the convicted kidnapper and suspected murderer known as “Subject A.” Judged incompetent to stand trial due to insanity and imprisoned in a secure psychiatric facility in New York State, the inmate probably composed these verses during his incarceration from 1977 to 1980. Because no record of his discharge exists, it seems likely that Subject A was released from psychiatric care and remanded to state custody at the height of the period of deinstitutionalization which culminated with President Reagan’s abandonment of the Mental Health Systems Act in 1980. The subsequent cutoff of federal funding forced numerous psychiatric hospitals across the United States to close, and probably resulted in this unnamed individual’s transfer to regular prison. According to treatment records, Subject A had no birth certificate, no known family, and no personal history (apart from a “John Doe” criminal history and arrest record). Subject A’s treatment record ends with the closure of the hospital in the summer of 1980, after which all trace of him vanishes. Both Subject A’s confession to the police and his subsequent writings as an inmate suggest that he was responsible for an unknown number of crimes committed during the 1970s, a decade whose profound societal changes are often overlooked in favor of the more radical social revolutions of the 1960s. One of the more notable changes during this time was the introduction of new ideas of evil into the American collective psyche. The 1970s was the decade in which many of America’s most notorious serial killers materialized. With the emergence of figures such as Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, David Berkowitz, “Hillside Stranglers” Bianchi and Buono, and others, as well as the horrors of the Vietnam War looming in the background i

for half the decade, Americans were forced to contemplate a new, disturbing version of reality. In this reality, they had no choice but to acknowledge that horror and violent death were not only real, flesh-andblood manifestations, but they existed as possible and even foreseeable occurrences that could and would emerge full-fledged and terrifying into the everyday lives of ordinary people. From the dark centers of urban decay and the cloistered privacy of suburbia to the nightly news reports, the police dragged the dreadful, hidden lives of murderers and sex criminals into the light of day to reveal unspeakable acts of violence and perversion. It was not lost on Americans that most of these acts had occurred on the very streets that surrounded their ordinary, school-attending, churchgoing lives. Unsurprisingly, the sense of security and safety they had come to know in their own homes and neighborhoods rapidly diminished, while paranoia grew. There can be little doubt that the above-named killers and their crimes dominated the American press during the 1970s, while the reporting of less sensational items, such as common kidnappings and disappearances, was greatly downplayed. Consequently, many of the crimes of the man known to his doctors as “Subject A” are unverifiable at best. In his handwritten confession to the authorities, this nameless criminal claimed to have kidnapped more than one hundred victims, nearly all of whose names (which he had committed to memory with a sickening sense of pride) matched the names of persons whose disappearances had already been reported to dozens of police departments across the United States between 1973 and 1976. Police became increasingly suspicious of Subject A’s descriptions of taking his victims away to locations that were “not to be found on any map of the world” and “transfiguring” them in ways he described only in the ii

vaguest terms. Given the violent and bizarre imagery that frequently characterized Subject A’s speech and writing, investigators did not doubt the “transfigurations” to which he referred represented homicides. Despite an exhaustive search, however, the police were never able to uncover the bodies of any of the missing persons whom Subject A claimed to have taken and “transfigured,” and so the suspect was never formally charged with murder. Nor, it should be noted, did Subject A ever admit to the murders of any of his presumed victims. Instead, he insisted that they were all still alive and had somehow been changed into other forms in an alternate reality he referred to as “the Underlands.” Subject A’s treatment records contain multiple accounts of his imaginary travels in this dream-realm, which he described as a domain of mostly underground locales such as tunnels, subterranean rivers and bottomless pits, all situated underneath a bleak and lifeless otherworld of mountainous waste-places, deserts, abandoned cities and grotesque labyrinths. In 1976, Subject A was arrested following a hysterical teenager’s daylight escape from the cellar of an apparently abandoned house in rural, upstate New York. Shortly thereafter, he was tried and convicted, although sadly without the testimony of his victim, who was severely traumatized by her ordeal and never regained the mental competency to be able to testify as a witness at trial. Subject A’s final victim, whose name was not released to the public, was apparently taken into the custody of the psychiatry department of a major American university for “treatment of PTSD and clinical observation.” There, according to official sources, she came to be viewed as “a unique case” in the annals of psychiatry until her death which came less than a year later, the exact circumstances of which were not elaborated upon in the department’s published findings, iii

except to state that her death “came as a tragic and terrible surprise” to the researchers. After Subject A’s arrest, investigators uncovered new details about the crime, and the strangeness of the crime scene itself became a source of much consternation among the police. They found a well-shaft approximately 7.5 feet in diameter sunk into the earth and solid bedrock underneath the house from which Subject A’s victim had fled. The well was almost 180 feet deep, or the depth of a typical water well, although subsequent exploration revealed the shaft to be completely dry. The freshness of the chisel marks indicated that the well had only recently been excavated. How Subject A had been able to complete such a largescale excavation, seemingly without any steel tools or heavy equipment (neither of which was present anywhere at or near the scene of the crime) was a mystery. The only insight into the well-shaft’s enigmatic presence comes from its single mention in the confession Subject A wrote shortly after his arrest. Despite being a disjointed, crazed narrative of full of disturbing images and vague threats, the confession does shed additional light on the possibility of Subject A’s homicidal tendencies. Among the rambling statements about “where the higher eyesight merges with the lower flesh” and “the ghastly taverns they keep beneath the coffins” is this puzzling declaration: “[…] and there are pits for crawling down and pits for arising from, pits for burials and pits for resurrections, but this newest pit, as you will see, is just for feeding. A feeding pit, you can fill it with anything, and it will eat it. Fill it with dirt and it will eat it all. And no matter what building you build over it, or how many times you refill it, this is a pit that will keep feeding and feeding forever. And the pit wanted me to feed it the child that I took. So I showed her to it. I stood the child on the edge, so that she could look down there and see. And it opened its eyes for her to look into them. iv

That was when she broke free and ran, the damned little scamp! But I know that it hasn’t stopped dreaming her face through its eyes ever since then. I know, because we became One down there in the dark, and I know it’s still hungry, still hearing her, still seeing her, and it will always be waiting for her there, forever.” P. Shelton, Archivist and Criminologist 2016 v

“Invocation” From the utmost depths of infinite Night, Within all energies, spaces, and Time, From the dark between the center of Light, I exalt realms dire and hells sublime. Torments of pleasure to pulverize stone, Oblivion bliss and intolerable zest Scatter all life, tear bone from red bone, Cast the world’s flesh into sting-sweetened rest. From limitless bodies of nameless black rock, From spaces so distant, there starlight is null, I summon the Powers, the Gates I unlock, Thy Wisdom is wine and the chalice my skull. Grant to me insight and godly attainment, Shield me from misfortunes, do not depart Till your foes’ rubies of true ascertainment Stain the white sword that transfixes the heart. 1

“Begin” In tunnel-cities, crumbled long ago, On Underland canals by watercraft, Through dim-lit realms of shadowed indigo, Past empty webs in tunnels, and dark shafts Whose depths burn with a faintly crimson glow, Abandoning the earthly dreams we know, Adrift on heat-fused bone and steel-wire rafts, On subterranean lakes of lightless oil, The stirring in the heavy depths beneath From silence comes the sound of rasping teeth And wetly sliding noise of unseen coils That come to bless and tear apart each skin, Transfiguring into their archetypes With limbs and teeth and eyes of many types, The parasites gnaw, feasting from within. Let the dream begin. 2

“Solution” The viewer will be driven mad Who sees a demon’s coiling brain Pulsating in his own two hands Because his eyes have gone insane. One who hears a whispered voice Come creaking from the shadowed deep Will have his mind-stuff torn to shreds For this same voice will haunt his sleep. The speaker will voice no more words If he has spoken of the dreams That made him visionaire of Death And transformed all his thoughts to screams. The hands that touch the heart of hell Shall burn forever, without cease And only washed in endless blood Can such hands again find peace. 3

“Lost Ship” Decayed in senescence, this world is grey, Its corporeal beauty putrefies. Its gold is painted lead, its marble clay, The last remaining light upon it dies And sets upon its dreams the seal of Night And with dead hands that steer its ship aright By deviating star and sign it sails On oceans vast, as black as anthracite, Past craggy shores whose peaks no light unveils Into a caverned, mountain-guarded bay. Beyond the bay, within the Underlands, Our world unlocks one final passageway To where each world that sees its ending stands And reads in pouring hourglass sands its fate Like scattered Time-grains strewn in timeless lands Of cities wherein clocktowers conflagrate And tell the fateful hour with flame-tipped hands. 4

“Remembrance” What did you see as the stars rode above? Shadows devouring the flames whence they hung? What did you hear as the stars were engulfed? Was it the song of the Dark that was sung? What did you glimpse in the halls of the dead? Rows of stone tumuli, ornate with skin? What did you hear from each tomb as you passed? Sounds of teeth gnawing the stone from within? What did you view in the caverns beyond? Was it the dark light pulsating in birth? What did you hear at the precipice edge? Hidden ones howling deep in the earth? What did you see as you gazed at the Void? Were they who listen listening yet? What did they let you recall as you gazed? Was it the truth that you wished to forget? Was it the truth to which humans are born, That which all screaming infants begotten Know in their hearts ever waits for them here? You shall relearn what you have forgotten. 5

“Watchers” Crawling from a thousand sluggish oceans, Gazing from the black volcano’s crown, Pulsing ’neath the moss with fluid motions, Prowling through the sewers of the town, Feeding in the hollows of the hedges, Lying in the green and stagnant bog, Floating out beyond the lake’s dark edges, Waiting ’neath the wet and rotted log, Lurking far within the maze of thistles, Buried in the stones that choke the stream, Breathing in the echoes of winds’ whistles, Clinging to the unseen attic beam, Sliding low amidst the field’s tall grasses, Scratching in the long abandoned cell, Skulking in the craggy mountain passes, Glaring from the bottom of the well, Shrinking from the window of the tower, Crouching just beyond the candle’s glow, Rising as the sunset marks the hour, Grinning at the sleeping lands below. 6

“Conqueror” In endless reign over this world, the Night Is likewise endless conqueror of man And dooms his skyward gaze since Time began To stare at realms far off and recondite And know the gulf is one no road may span. Sheer distance fuses shut the farthest gates To gem-bright worlds and stars unascertained While man, the child of that to which he’s chained, Knows nothing of the Night’s arcane estates: The never exorcised, never explained. The voids that mock at man and haunt his dreams Are freighted with eonic abattoirs, While man stares through Night’s ancient prison bars At moons without a name in whose cold gleams Glow orchards sunned by never-charted stars. Enshrouded by the vast and utmost dark, The race of man views Night’s encrypted tale Of murdered meaning, infinite in scale. And Night re-echoes with a silence stark Man’s final unheard words: “I shall prevail.” 7

“Borderland” Beyond the scant clad vales and mountain passes, Through grotesque gorges rife with stony masses, The wind comes off the brown and blasted plain, Blowing like a roaring hurricane. No hill, no plant, unto the land’s extent – But for wind-moved sands, all is silent. Not even vermin live in that dead land. And there a monster’s skeleton does stand, Its shape is neither beast nor giant man. On earth no being has lived of size so grand, And with one lifted and extended hand It points away from that brown waste of sand As though all travels thence to countermand And send men from that realm by storm-winds fanned. 8

“Dead Moons” In desolated lands, where freezing night winds chill, Where sunsets, brave with gold, fade into sickly light As purple, hazy shadows consume osseous hills, Dead moons adrift in empty space come out at Night To shine on many dead and unremembered things That stand in silent ruin on the perished plain Of towers halved and tombs of eon-crumbled kings With jeweled lunar miens of shadow-filigrane. Dead moons arise in sapphire, ruby, pearl, and jade Before the sable tapestry of the starless black, With faces deeply chasmed and decrepitly decayed They sing undying hells and galaxies demoniac. 9

“Charnel Worlds” I dream of charnel worlds made manifest Where human life has long been laid to rest, From empty cities rich with weed and mold To vacant plains of soundlessness and cold, Where deathly blooming green and snaking vines The blasted trunks of blackened oaks entwine, By stagnant pools with shores of rotting roots, Where stand dead trees with carrion for fruits. In lands where stand the tombs of men forgotten Are stone lids shattered, skulls, and refuse rotten. In chapels filled with Death and unheard prayers Reigns stillness – sleep as one the slain and slayers, And high above in depths of outer space, The stars burn black – of light there is no trace. 10

“Unmaker” Abysms wherefrom no star beacons, Gates to black undimensioned torments Stand open, framing shapes blasphemic, Baring monstrous death instruments. A Night outlasting the deaths of eons Reigns over dismal, horizonless plains: Great Uncreation’s desolate altar Where nothing of souls or god remains. Nothingness permeates all that now is And nothing again shall live or be said. The ultimate pact of necromancy: Cosmos unmade – a domain of the dead. 11

“In My Name” I bless all kingdoms torn by strife, My love divests all worlds of life, I am the heart of hope’s despair, The force before which all shall fall Like winds that must heed winter’s call And raze the autumn branches bare. My worlds shall to one end be brought, My will throughout all lands be wrought, I use my rivals’ gloried names For soul-inspired atrocities That drag down all the centuries In carnage-fields of blood and flames. My temple is the blasted hall Where ghost winds blow and vermin crawl; The silence is my acolyte, My holy mount the tower that looms With tier on tier of blackened rooms Where once the fires burned through the night. 12

“Chained” Do ghosts of lost and vanished memories Dwell on in senile minds near half-decayed? Are thoughts still truly thoughts that none may know? Are dreams forever lost once they’re unmade? If living minds can decompose, dissolve, Like smoke into the upper air of Night, They lack such fortitude as would permit Their souls to make the interstellar flight. Instead of souls or ghosts for avatars, Ours is a share of power closely reined. This is the only world that we may know – From birth to death, to this our lives are chained. 13

“Descent” What know we of those who have gone To senseless realms undreamt by men, Awaiting some rekindling fire That calls the life from dust again? Within a grave-mound, undisturbed, Is one who perished years ago And fed upon his rotting flesh Until his strength began to grow. Outside his tomb’s unbroken walls His garden’s colored glamor gleams Where birds call in the midst of trees And voice their songs in human screams. His bones can feel their piercing notes Caress him in that senseless gloom With silken touch, as men condemned Might touch their instruments of doom. Where do we find those who have gone? What hands might touch the heart of hell In darkness echoing with cries And shadows no light can expel? A castle of the Underlands Within the realms unknown to men, Where skins are all worn inside-out And every mouth has webs to spin, Where bones hang white in nether webs And build the bridge and staircase frames, And pale eyes burn in shadowed shapes That once had human names. 14

“Hive” Towering black on the violet horizon, The dark manse stands amidst the pines, Dimly aglow with flames of red candles Far within its confines. Lost in the corridors’ crimson-lit mazes, My footfalls echo and wane and fade Through ranged arrays of the candelabra, In solemn, dim parade. Behind my footsteps, candles extinguish, Darkness and silence are lurking there, Shadows encroaching on either hand As I descend the stair. A moss-girt gate now stands before me, Set within moldering granite walls. Behind me now, in the echoing staircase I hear unseen things crawl. Putrid fountains adorn dead arbors Within the grove of rotting trees. There my ears caught the unexpected Droning hum of bees. I glimpsed the shapes of apiaries Within a sunken patch of ground. There lay gutted and broken bodies In swarms of black all drowned. Hiding behind vine-tangled curtains I watched the bees at their routine; Then, in a flash of understanding, I knew what I had seen. 15

There in the decomposing garden The swarm took flesh and blood apart With darkest, secret feeding knowledge They worked their ancient art. Busily, honeybees minded their duties – In and out and in they dove, Taking red ichor for the creation Of honey in that grove. 16

“From a Sea of Bones” I sew still-living skins upon my drum And take men’s hopeful dreaming for my thread. Each sleeper is devoured in his bed When rising from a sea of bones I come To greet the breaking of the final gate. Out of the sky my crimson clouds shall swim And churn with lightning tooth and swollen limb. The hurricane’s dark eye is where I wait. I am the sound of shrieking and the growls Of engines grinding men throughout the nights In halls of tasting eyes and hearing lights And tongues that see the Night, like starving owls. 17

“Castle” Its lightless halls and ebon gates Stand guard above the corpse-fed soil And stars, white shining, lend no light To rivers’ flowing violet oil. Deep pits of bones and walls of nails And red coals gripped in iron claws Reverberate with soulless moans Of those whose minds were snapped like straws. Dim pinioned forms and twisting shapes Depending from red fleshly strands Will fall to places where they die, Fed to a thousand grasping hands. Effulgent eyes and thrashing limbs Are discourse where the sleepless stir, They writhe in silent dance and claw At straining flesh where mouths once were. 18

“Garden” Tunneling past bars of ribs and twisting through the veins, The spider-thistle charts its path through flesh with eyeless windings, Nourishing the spindly stems of wasp-rose, black and wild. Hands and fingers clothe themselves in sanguine floral bindings, Scorpion-tailed orchids sway and scratch against the bones And slimy mushroom caps are waving glossy snail antennae, Pomegranates boiling black with centipedal limbs. Wormgrass grows in patches and its oozing coils are many, Scarab-beetles twist their heads in flower-petaled cells, Bloated tubers split the soil, their feelers seeking presence Shimmering, the locusts’ wings are waving in the weeds, They shriek and sing and beat upon the faces of putrescence. 19

“Caravan to the Buried City” On the bare, dusty floor of a narrow defile, Where no rain has fallen and none ever will, Walks a white train of figures, mile after mile, All as silent as their stark surroundings are still. Not a sentence is spoken, not a sound do they make, They tread solemnly, silently ‘midst the grey crags, Not a feature is showing, not an echo they wake, White hoods drape them; faces are white satin bags. Before these shapes trudges one shape with a book Upheld in one white satin, shapeless mock-hand. Behind it march two that exchange not a look As they arm in arm, stride to stride, traverse the land. They are shackled together, one’s neck to the other. Behind them, a pair fettered like to the first. The white pairs go marching, one follows another, Treading the miles like the doomed or the cursed. Before them, arising behind mountains’ towers Is the red-yellow glow of a desert so vast It evades comprehension by cognitive powers And fans the grey hills with its huge, heated blast. Amid the heat creeps a thin streamlet of cold. The parting hills unveil a sepulcher’s door. The door gives on darkness, unearthly and old. The white pairs pass through to be seen nevermore. Dividing that grey land, their caravans wend, The white shapes in shackles go down to their tombs. In mazes where passageways range without end They are wedded forever in stone-carven rooms. 20

“Feast” At the banquet where all virtuousness shatters There are one thousand covered silver platters And tallow lamps that burn with human grease, A dish of eyes, and bowls of glistening coils And breathing echo-gasps that never cease And pulsing sweetmeats drenched in darkling oils. Here lunar glowing wolf-shapes stalk the hall, Awaiting scraps that fall from off the table, Angels with blood-trickling lips raise sable cloths Textured like the black and velvet wings of moths, Draw nighted curtains over lancet windows Eclipsing every trace of the pale star-shine Green fire from torches; silver goblets glitter, Light drowns in pools of black and bitter wine, A haunting music drifts throughout the hollow From fungous shapes like noctilucent tapers Where vermin-shadows creep through drifting vapors Along dim paths no living thing may follow, Dark shapes that see without possessing eyes And without mouths, they can yet suck and swallow. They rise from hidden, eldritch granite tombs, Initiate their nameless enterprise, A feast of ecstasies surmounts the gloom. A subterranean great hall beckons them With tables that exhale a grim perfume. They rush in all at once like famished men, Fall on the angels, tearing flesh to tatters, And with abandon raid the thousand platters And grow them ever fatter, till they’ve died: Internal bursting – Death comes from inside. 21

“For the Darkness” Far beneath the Pyramids They sing into the darkness. Eyes of marble caryatids Behold only the darkness. The pharaoh to the goddess bids, With songs from hieroglyphic grids And dusty hands on granite lids Are searching in the darkness. The halls of subterranean stone Await, entombed in darkness. The tessellations wrought of bone Still gather dust in darkness. A voice throughout the passage moans The spectral silver bell intones. Sarcophagi, their sweet colognes Are carried through the darkness. From molten bronze there grows a blaze That flickers in the darkness. Drenched in volcanic amber lays That palace of the darkness. Upon their eyes the witchfire plays, The statues’ marmorean gaze And dead eyes in the endless maze That only see the darkness. The hand that once did taste the tomb And slumbered in the darkness Is born of Night’s unholy bloom, Again to walk in darkness. And far above her regal room Where blows the desert’s wild simoom, Though men know not the grave’s perfume, Soon they shall know the darkness. 22

She rises from a bed of jade And smiles into the darkness. Untarnished beauty now displayed, Retained by art of darkness, They welcome her in grim parade, The pharaoh and the spectral maid, The ghoul of form, the ghostly shade Pay homage in the darkness. The princesses of ebon skin Adore her in the darkness. The cobweb-blackened corpses grin And bow to her in darkness. They bring to her from vaults within The thickened blood of long-dead kin. In amphorae of porcelain They offer gifts in darkness. All rise up from paralysis To worship her in darkness. The withered lips and phalluses Are hers to take in darkness. The dire sepulchral chalices Are lifted through her palaces As she unites all malices To worship her in darkness. 23

“Crimson Fire” Beyond the hills, mad-carved and strange, Beyond the desert passage bare There stands a mighty mountain range Whose ridgeback parts the upper air, And far off in the distant night, Atop the mountains’ tallest spire, A lone and terrifying light Burns with somber crimson fire. A palimpsest of footprints snakes Across the waste, into the black, Not one retreads the path it takes: They seek the light and come not back. 24

“Towers Bordered by Nothingness” Hooded are the basalt towers Carved against a twilit sky. Silver starlight paints them dimly, Hidden from the moon’s blind eye. Buried gorges carry water Into lightless cavern halls. Mossy tongues of slimy dampness Lick the black colossal walls. Here the solar candle gutters, Does not dare to rise in gold In this place where sunlight trembles Fearing what it may behold: Those that howl from giant vessels Sunk within the river’s clay, Those that fly from nighted hollows Drinking deep of those they slay, Flesh-wrought horns and flutes transcendent Piping forth their litanies Waking all the sleeping idols Lost beneath the ancient seas, Chimes of mottled, sanguine silver Sing in red delirium, Joining them, misshapen fingers Strike a fleshy, writhing drum. All along the basalt towers Fortress walls of diorite Burn with nameless fires unnumbered Fill with yellow gleams the Night. All along the basalt towers Echoes of a demon’s harp Call from fiery-windowed bastions Where gates stand forever sharp. 25

“Shadowforming” On tunnel-eaten dead worlds, catacombed and muted, Beneath their ashen surfaces, endless chambers wind Through shafts and hidden passages profoundly convoluted To pits wherein they vanish, and leave no trace behind. Within the black abysms, forever now descending Into the depthless darkness of a bottomless ravine The lightlessness and soundlessness are solaces unending Where formless Shadow verges on the Dark labyrinthine. 26

“Carved in Wood” We entered the house, so dull and sterile And painted it red with purest blood. Its walls, impure as drying lumber Remade to be as all things should. Within the wood a world is lurking Thousands awaiting the chisel of life, Blood-oiled grains like twisting mazes Become as faces beneath the knife. Out on the streets, in greenish lamplight, Hunters are hunting; their prey won’t know This world welcomes the lost and stranded; It gives them a place where they can go. From house and sewer and prison-gate, In Night’s own flesh we carve our roads, From red-black woodcut eyes still living, Wide open, screaming in new abodes. 27

“The Center” Arrange your thoughts with woeful Earth the center, A perished soil beneath a thinning sky, A world that once knew life, now turned to silence, Bereft of all that it was nourished by. And there are trillions, indistinguishable: Worlds by desert vastitudes beset, Worlds where nightfall cancels all but starlight Or on whose molten face no foot may set. Against these multitudes, you would set Earth, Lone bastion of life in endless lull Of inorganic union and dispersion, Great burning zones and vast, unbounded null. How might the human soul rise up before that In triumph, and the Universe transcend? A trillion-trillion lifeless globes retorted: “No thing exists that is not doomed to end.” 28

“Naughtwards” Within a realm of vast, uncharted caves Devoid of architectural design, But in the lowest depths exists a sign: The rough, unfashioned floor becomes stone paves . . . Bare, dusty tiles beneath tall marble vaults, A tomb, perhaps, but unpossessed of bone. No sound therein the straining ear assaults Save that of empty fingers brushing stone. Full darkness – tomblike quiescence pervades. Black years prolong each echo as it dies Amid the endless, sightless colonnades In chambers of illimitable size. On one hand, marble pillars, smooth and cold, The other hand is stretched forth to a Night Whose visions blind the eye and all withhold Within eternal mists of anthracite. 29

“Nightrise to Sunfall” Mausolean stones are scattered Across a plain of violet light; The tumuli are all moss-girded And not a tower stands upright. Through the serpent roots and branches A drifting mist grasps at the grey And mottled bark of leafless saplings In softly coiling shadowplay. In the woods, they hang from branches: Skins of seekers now long dead. Breezes from far, far above them Flap them ‘neath a sky of lead. There within the blackest hollow, Whence I saw the sun retreating, I set my ear against the ground And I could hear a heart still beating. 30

“Fable” The King had heard tales of the Underlands’ cities From sorcerers’ whispers and oracle’s word Of cavern and catacomb’s fabulous dwellers, Of treasures and glory unending he’d heard. The King had heard tales of the Underlands’ tunnels From grey-bearded ancients he’d learned their repute: “Go not to the Underlands’ tunnels,” they told him “For tales of such things will bear unhealthy fruit, “And few from the Underlands ever return, “And those who return, they return only mad. “Go not to the Underlands’ cities,” they told him. “Healthier glories are here to be had.” “I shall not listen to grey-bearded ancients,” Said King to his Generals. “Harken to me, “Ten thousand ships I shall send with my armies. “Now gather your warriors onto the quay.” By month’s end the ships were prepared for their voyage, The troops were outfitted, war plans had been drawn. Ten thousand ships and more men than were counted, The whole city cheered as they sailed the next dawn. Ten thousand ships had set sail to do battle, And of those ten thousand, but one ship returned. The King and his bodyguard welcomed the vessel, But after they searched it, they had the ship burned. Burned it, and never gave word of its contents, While some from the bodyguard took their own lives, And even though no word was given, they now knew Of thousands who would not return to their wives. Now men whisper more of the Underlands’ tunnels, But of ships whose contents were burned, none may say, For of those who searched it, not one is still living, None save the King, white-haired from that day. 31

“Seeker” I sensed the Void of Amber Where halls of a thousand brazen columns Ring with roaring, unquenchable fires And glowing trails of molten copper Trace their burning paths forever. I felt the Void of Onyx Where nighted caverns whisper their secrets To unfathomed pits walled with dead ears And there in the gelid clasp of darkness Chambers of many eyes glimpse awakenings. I suffered the Void of Ruby From blistering metal towers and streets Of shrieking steam and tarnished ducts The pain of the shifting vapors engulfed And dampened the walls, forever groaning. I dreamed the Void of Diamond The eternally sighing clouds and mists Snared between two ultimates: The freezing celestial plane above And scorching pressures far below. I saw the Void of Sapphire For twelve turns down a spiral stair Into a terminus wrought of seas And coral paths and tangled weeds Sank ever downward, ever downward. At length, I touched the Void of Voids The unreverberate death of suns The dark beyond the edge of space From which no star ever has shone Nor eye has ever pondered Nor matter, nor form, nor voice, nor thought 32

Has ever broken from the Unending And opened the door to existence. Veiled in my blindness, I beheld it And sank into the caress of emptiness There it was that I first learned The name that was once given To the red-veined abyss that lies Beneath the floor of the Universe. 33

“Other Skins” Where prisoners claw red-hot iron cages Until their blackened shapes can scream no more, Their deaths are labyrinths of expiation, They lie in smoking gobbets on the floor. Here living eyes burn in the flames of candles, Pale ghostly shapes caress the blackened bricks And doorways, dimly lit, give way to darkness And distant sounds of bones that snap like sticks. Here emptied veins are woven into damasks, And silent courtyards tiled with serpent scales Hold nameless remnants lit by somber firelight Of burning bodies spiked with iron nails. Unwindowed rooms, long hallways of black marble, And charnel scraps comprise this maze of ghosts. Incorporeal powers of its formation Devour the very souls out of the hosts. Embraced abominations of creation, Exuviated skins we’ve always worn, Are cast into the flesh and entrail river And in their place our other skins are born. 34

“Genius Loci” Walk two steps and glimpse my eye, Walk two more and pass me by, But on your neck, the needled glare, The feeling leaves on a rush of air And I was never there. On valley, moor and lake, a shadow Passing waving field and meadow, No whisper haunts the quiet sky; Walk two steps and pass me by, Thin-fingered winds toy with your hair But I was never there. 35

“What Awaits” Peeling back our deathless flesh’s hundred thousand layers, In darkness, coiled forever in our frigid, droning slumber, We feast upon the words of misdirected human prayers And dreams that slowly rot in chains in caverns without number. Sunless is the ocean’s black vermiculated splendor, A memory of sound and voice that haunts this world of silence. In hollow halls of lead-wrought ribs the dripping walls surrender To wet and squirming roads of living, lashing, frenzied violence. Tall isles of twisted limbs adorn the asymmetric oceans. With viscous roars their waves of oil attack the twilit mountains. Catacombs and temples carved in mindless black devotions And chanting stillborn dirges from the drooling mouths of fountains. Over rotting cities loom the engines, dim and rusted, And headless statues draped in black, exuviated skin. Castles on the night-black earth with weeping eyes encrusted: A labyrinth of sights where our blood rots us from within. 36

“Song” Amidst ten thousand mountains stand, Behold the shadows on the land That still awaits a human hand Enter now the Underlands. Across the misty forest’s dawn To where the crickets chirp upon The miles of fields where graves still yawn, Enter now the Underlands. Past nighted lands of tumuli, Beneath strange moons and stranger sky Where valleys breathe a charnel sigh, Enter now the Underlands. Past the cities’ broken stone, Past the shattered pillars strewn, Past the briars, choked with bone, Enter now the Underlands. The grey-black sand grows twisted trees Whose shadows fall on oily seas, A pale mist rides upon the breeze – Enter now the Underlands. The dark abyss, the deep crevasse, The caverns’ breath upon the moss That sunlight never falls across – Enter now the Underlands Into a world bereft of light, In caverns ever without sight, Into the very jaws of Night, Enter now the Underlands. 37

“A Web of Centuries” When anger fires the forge for deadly deeds And when behind all loveliness lurks death, When all toward a whirling chaos speeds And withers in the ages’ cosmic breath, In these dark times of unreal panoramas And dreaded, sudden troubles rounding corners, We entertain to death-abstracting dramas And shame ourselves for jewels from false adorners. In windshook leaves is speech’s empty rattle, The breath turns ice, the gold of thrones to brass. On endless march we take ourselves to battle For paradise behind a looking-glass. In hidden histories in secret storerooms The final book of all immortal Being Is written in the hand of one who foredooms All those who claim they know, while never seeing. 38

gnOme is a secret press specializing in the publication of anonymous, pseudepigraphical, and apocryphal works from the past, present, and future. “(N)othing is more enticing, nothing more vitally idiotic, than our desire to have a name – even if it is the name of a stupid little puppet – and to hold on to this name throughout the long ordeal of our lives as if we could hold on to it forever.” (Thomas Ligotti, “In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land”) gnOme is acephalic. Book sales support the authors. GNOMEBOOKS.WORDPRESS.COM

Other titles from gnOme A & N ● Autophagiography Brian O’Blivion ● Blackest Ever Hole Cergat ● Earthmare: The Lost Book of Wars Eva Clanculator ● Atheologica Germanica Ars Cogitanda ● footnote to silence M.O.N. ● ObliviOnanisM Pseudo-Leopardi ● Cantos for the Crestfallen I. P. Snooks ● Be Still, My Throbbing Tattoo Rasu-Yong Tugen, Baroness De Tristeombre ● Songs from the Black Moon Y.O.U. ● How to Stay in Hell M ● Un-Sight/ Un-Sound (delirium X.) HWORDE Nab Saheb and Denys X. Arbaris ● Bergmetal: OroEmblems of the Musical Beyond Yuu Seki ● Serial Kitsch