Author: Void.Engineer

The Abyss stares back with contempt. White Jesus points to a mass grave. Earth is a holding cell for hell. | #horror #storyteller #writer #theologian

Dark Places and Blind Guides: Reflecting on the American Apocalypse and the Anxieties of New Birth

We are in a dark place navigating new spaces, renegotiating our understanding of the world, and striving to find the light. Blind guides rise like the priests of vengeful gods to direct us back into the darkness from whence we have emerged. We are surrounded by so many false guides claiming to hear the voice of a holy Spirit, but the Spirit isn’t holy–it is Fear.

The old world strains to hold itself together, refusing to believe that it is the shell the new world must shatter in order to be made manifest. The earth and her people cry out for hope, mercy, and a better way, but the better way demands a reckoning with the diseases we allowed to infect us like Cancer.

For too long, we have been content to allow selfish desire to motivate the direction of our world–selfishness that benefits the few while the many suffer. We are divided in every way imaginable, and many of us have been fooled into believing that we are not the same. But we are.

Regardless of how we look, sound, and love, we are the same. Beautifully diverse but still the same. And yet, we have used that diversity to fuel conflict between one another and to justify the inexcusable suffering we have been content to ignore.

Covid-19 crossed every boundary we put in place to divide ourselves. It killed indiscriminately. Our ethnicity, race, religion, political ideology, and every other point we cling to feign superiority did not save us. America, for all its claims to exceptionalism, was not spared. In fact, it led the developed world in preventable losses.

Covid-19 was not evil. The virus acted according to its nature, finding hosts, feeding, and reproducing. Covid was what it was, but for us, we can argue that it had been a test. A test we failed miserably. Like an apocalypse peeling back the world we know to bring revelation, Covid revealed–for all our posturing and talk–we were incapable of loving our neighbor.

The inability to love our neighbor as we ought to love ourselves is the disease from which our symptoms of hate and bigotry bubble to the surface. The institutions that speak of a God, a savior, and divine love as the cure for our sickness proved to be havens for our worst symptoms. The curtain was drawn back to reveal the devils behind it, and now they scramble to expedite their grasp for power, violating each commandment they insist we uphold.

Now, a choir of voices emerges to demand the exorcism of every devil in every institution and constructed system that uplifts a privileged few on the backs of the many. The elite insists their positions have been acquired by “merit,” but this so-called merit is little more than a coat of white paint covering stone crypts filled with dead bones. The emergent choir, the rightful heirs, demands a better way to meet the needs of all people, not just the needs and desires of the few who have cheated their way to power.

The call to dignity and the just treatment of all people has been resisted by blind guides and their misguided flocks. They are afraid of the loss equality will demand they absorb, such as sharing the commons with those who live and look differently from themselves. Symbols of hate, intolerance, and violence are among their banners; foolishly, they call these things love. And yet, to live according to their interpretation of love requires the death and destruction of those unwilling to conform to the conditions of their “unconditional” love.

In America, many people invoke the name of Jesus Christ to justify their resistance to what Jesus called them to observe. Biblical illiteracy and raving antichrists have profaned the sacred; their holy water is poisoned. Once again, the house of the Divine has become a den of thieves who steal, kill, and destroy. Woe to them and their blind guides who stand condemned lest they repent.

These same amplify their voices to create an illusion that theirs is the voice of reason, yet heeding them has yielded only economic, ecological, and social despair. These blind guides demand we return to the darkness, calling it, making whatever ideal “great again.” Darkness has never been great. It knows this, and it is why it fears the exposure the Light shall bring. Banning books, denying history, calling truth lies, and withholding education from as many as possible are the desperate strategies of those afraid of what the light will reveal.

Be not afraid but persevere. The death rattle of the old world is long and drawn out, desperately lashing out and grasping for anything that might prolong its existence. Stand boldly, march forward undeterred, and love unapologetically. Be not swayed by their posturing and hordes of gold. In doing so, we will usher in a new world with room for all.

ReWriting Facebook Community Posts: Trashcans and Weeds in the Alley Created for Trashcans

There I was, surveying my kingdom. Everything my eyes fell upon was mine and owed me deference. And yet, some of my subjects refused to honor their fealty. My eyes grew sore and anger stirred in my chest. How dare they not live by my prescription.

Are they engaged in more important endeavors? Are they struggling with other issues, making weeds and trashcans unimportant? Do they suffer malady to which weeds and trashcans are unassailable tasks?

Doesn’t matter. My eyes are sore and I am entitled to their conformity. And since! they will not acquiesce—regardless their circumstance—I have no choice but heap upon their heads an enormity of shame.

None shall offend my royal senses without recompense. I will have satisfaction, for I am so entitled.

To:

To:
The literary scholar who hates books,
The one who loves her mother,
The one who tries too,
The one who loves kittens,
And the one who discovered
The secret power of chocolate muffins,

To:
The artist with the dirty notes,
The swimmer who’s taken hard roads,
The one who is like me,
Stimming and neuro-spicy,
And the one who drives us on,

To:
The ones I’ve come to love—

Thank you for softening
So many rough landings.

The Conflagration of Rome

O, to away from here in anxious haste and reckon not with cosmic consequences so wrought by aged hands. Whose myopic visions gave no consideration of posterity, and the same who lived under accursed pretense that they be both first and last — the very same whose achromatic Christ promised hastened return if they but wreath the world in flame.

And so black smoke rises, and the sky falls, and those who’ve drawn heaven down upon our heads dare not look up. Cowards and curs fault sin beyond the chapel step but disregard the unsettled bones preying within the sanctuary of baroque cathedrals.

O, that we might blot out our progenitors and cast off their crimes for which we are called to give account. Is there no justice in Heaven? Has God been so struck blind? Do not the angels watch in wonder and rally to our cry?

Divine stars! Align yourselves against the wicked of this age who, with braids of gold, fashion for themselves a noose for a necklace. Let them sway as leaves in the gallow-groves of their sowing. Or! — may the rattling rebukes of their little gods empty their corrupted thoughts and bid them sleep, and sleep forevermore.

O, may you — my friends — pronounce your curse, upon those who defraud us our humanity — who put us at enmity with God and do pit us against ourselves. Make caverns of their chests and topple their damned towers. And there, let Rome reign in Hell.

A Pandemic Lecture Through the Underworld: Revised Edition

Mass upheavals of long-maintained societal structures and paradigms marked those dark days. A strange virus swept through the globe like none before it in a hundred years. The effects of defunded public education in America had never been so evident as millions followed misdirection and listened to whichever voice pleased them most. It was the youth, however, that suffered more than anyone else. K-12 teachers and college educators were forced to rethink, reimagine, and repackage entire course curriculums — most turning to a program etched into the annals of history, Zoom.

As American society reckons with its apocalypse, Dr. Ellen Sterling teaches poetry to an online class of dedicated English students attending the illustrious Fresno University. Several faces bathed in the electronic glow of computer screens smile and greet their professor warmly. A young Lauren Dial listens intently to the Job of the Week! to learn that Makenzie DeFrame, class of 2011, has just completed law school and passed the bar exam. Lauren has no intention of becoming a lawyer, but the story of DeFrame fills her with the wonder of all the places her degree would take her. She is not unique in her wonder, for her young baby-faced classmates, too, shine with hopes of a bright and glorious future.

The optimistic conversation starkly contrasts the conversations just outside their doors, but the cheerfulness was not meant remain as Dr. Sterling soon introduced the confessional poem.

“The confessional poem” she tells them, “demands of those standing before its altar to place upon it the deepest, darkest, and most sinister secrets hanging like skeletons in their locked closets. The secrets must be true. The confessional poem will know instantly if your offering is blemished and unacceptable.”

Dr. Sterling seeing the color drain from such young and pure lambs, offers them a glimmer of hope. “Though this form is known to reside in the realm of Shadow, humor might be applied to lighten its burden. Humor has seen many souls safely down the River Styx and through that terrible Valley of Death.”

The glimmer is momentary, and she returns them to the architecture of the Underworld. She says, “Any structure may safely bear your secret through Hel and Hades’ realm. Sonnet, villanelle, sestina, or even free verse. Even stanza and rhyme are left in your hands. Rise to the task.”

The screen shifts and the professor introduces her students to the deeply tormented exemplar of confessional poetry, Sylvia Plath. The very name of this complex patroness summons her spirit into the virtual space. A brief summary of her life burns onto the screen.

“Demons waged war on me.” The specter says, “I kept them at bay for thirty-one years, speaking their names through spellbinding poetry. Once, the infernal spirits came close to seizing my soul. My body slept in a tomb for three days until I emerged triumphant over Death itself. But the war continued, and in one final campaign, I wrote of my descent into madness. None of it had been enough, and ‘during one of the worst English winters on record,’ the malevolent devils prevailed against my spirit.”

The screen shifts once again, and the patron recites a poem. Her voice carries the agony of a father taken too soon but his oppressive presence erodes all sympathy. He is a Nazi and a devil. His ghost inhabits her husband, and their marriage becomes a candle burned to its last. Dr. Sterling, tour guide of the confessional form, rejoices in the father’s demise–it satisfies holy justice. Enraptured, she sings the song of the confessional, “Ooh, ooh, ooh . . . you bastard, I’m through.”

The spirit fades, and the guide prods her baby birds to see if they have picked up on the tools they will need for their inevitable earthly plummet. Their feathers ruffle and they shake out their wings. Dr. Sterling holds hope for their safe landing. Failure would be as rain on a wedding day or a free ride down the river Styx when they’ve already paid the ferryman. A brief scuffle between Luke and Mary ensues as the class is brought to the ledge–that gate into the lands of the Unknown.

Dr. Sterling watches her students, one by one, begin their journey into the Shadow. A smile graces her face as they depart. She knows they will make it through to the Other Side, and there she will be to receive them.

Death Mage

Death Mage | 2023

Death cannot save you.

For I peer into the Shadow—
Plunder the Abyss.
From Hel herself,
Your soul can I rip.

Be not proud;
Invoke not your god—
That weak and impish sprite
Whom devils applaud.

Come, now.

Won’t you accept your fate
With a measure of grace?

Put to Death White Jesus: Spirit of the Antichrist, A Poem

Raising. Rising. Lifting.
The foul and desecrated cup.
Despised and despising.
Infernal hells now bear them up.

Wicked tongues now contend
To shatter souls by misleading.
Toxic words will they bend,
Poison masked in gentle seeming.

Make war and put to death,
The gods of these accurséd men.
Make nothing of their breath.
And to thy God—their souls commend.

Stir and rise, lowly Fool,
Let your wisdom be their folly.
Drive back the hellish ghoul
With fire and flame and volley.

Spirit of the Antichrist | MWB, Jr. | 2023