ivannikolayevich

Socrates said “Know thyself, and you shall know the universe.” I heard the callings from the nexus in my head and I chased them as far down as the rabbit hole goes. I followed feral, silent spirit guides through the frost to the hidden glades where I learned the songs of rock and bone. Under the bodhi tree, the witches howled hexes and hymns to the sky, and the monks knew my colors on sight. I reassembled my fragmented soul and bent and bowed my body and brain until the scar tissue became living iron. The spirits showed me power and sex, the chemicals showed me transcendence and death. I still feel the tendrils, purple and black

 “Icarus!” Icarus lay on his straw mat, grumbling. “Icaruuuuuus!” “I hate this place,” Icarus actively grumbled. “I hate this place, and my stupid dad, and the stupid zeusdamn king of crete, and my stupid life.” “Icarus! Get down here!” He pulled the burlap sack that served as a pillow into his face and screamed “shut up” into it, resulting in a revolting sound both muffled and bitchy. “Icarus!” “I’m busy!” he finally yelled back. “No you’re not, get the hell down here!” Icarus surveyed the miserable little cell he

 “So what do you think we’re looking at?” Rugar squinted against the torchlight, teeth clenched. His free hand rested on the hilt of his hand-and-a-half sword, Sanctimony. Not his name, of course. He would’ve opted for “Stabber”, but the monks who’d put in the silver filigrees and blessed the blade had that passion for the theatrical you tend to get with zealots.  “Something that could make a cow into a pile of beef-sludge, and not need a blade to do it.” “Trolls?” “Damnit, boy,” Rugar spat. “It’s never trolls.” “Why not?” &

Amid the deepest dreadland crags,     just beyond my lording reign, A cathedral reaches skyward,     warmest wish and nagging pain-- Jewel of my horizon, hail!     If I could claim you as my own... To walk within your hallowed halls. To see the light that's yours alone. My arm is keen! My forces strong!     My stratagem exalted wide! With concentration, plot, and time,     I could breach the other side! But blundering in clumsy siege...     That temple wreathed in red and white, Too beautiful to lay to waste. A beacon shining in the night. In alabaster moonrise, I      will watch from my forgotten hill, And wonder at the warmth conta

The future is upon us and we tumble around Dressed in machines and their detritus like well-mannered cyborgs. Enshrouded in tiny robots to help run things! I confined to my space, and you to yours, Quietly reassured that with these little blinking rectangles, we’ll never be alone. Shifted and altered, rearranged and spliced First from wrist to wrist, then from toe to face Bookended, edited and re-edited like a regrettable first novel, Tossed on the shelf and promptly forgotten. The Hell I am! Look at me! Look at all these pictures! This evidence of my being! Flailing and gnashing teeth, arms raised to the heavens, The sacred nodes a

 Barry studied the photo, squinting. It could’ve been this kid. It was entirely in the realm of possibility that, in the three months since the license picture was taken, he had grown dreadlocks, which he’d dyed a deliberately filthy blond. It was also possible that he had regrown the three front teeth which had been very obviously knocked out. Or maybe they were plastic caps. The technology existed. Contacts could explain away the eye color changing from brown to blue. A lot of people wore them, these days. Barry himself opted for glasses, feeling they made him appear more sophisticated. “This is you?” he asked.

 “Pig.” I spun a touch speedier’n I’d wished. Snort. Hic. Belch. Cringing, disgusted, Heather sputtered out my sin. “Gluttony,” she’d yelled. It hummed near the tub. Facilely, she, on Cthulhu, bombarded tiles by grabbing piecrust ruin. I, langorous, coughed. I smiled. “Indulgent. You voracious?"

“It is beautiful though, isn’t it?” “Beautiful,” she echoed, gazing out over the rolling Italian countryside. “Not half so beautiful as you,” he ventured. She swallowed the cringe in time, but couldn’t stop the elevation of her eyebrows. He was staring at her with those big hopeful eyes, made to look bigger and more hopeful by the blue-and-gray flannel scarf whipping in the wind. She hoped he didn’t deliberately match it for that effect, but he seemed the type. The pants were too tight, the shirt playfully vintage, his artfully tousled hair and the woolen sack-cap he wore over it all p