ENGINE MACHINE: The Deities of Space and Time

And all came down from Normandy, race war epithets, all golden sax, the sun-children of dawn decayed, came down spinning firewheels of symphonies, golden head, shuddering, God damn, swung the swords, we sweet bastions, crying bastard children, light up the telemetries... did you see, nevertheless, the fine work of Autumn? Did you see, you children, the song of fucking the times, tucking the children into bed, did you see the meaning of everything? [[I have seen.]] [[I am blind.]] [[Perhaps.]]

You have not seen. Never delude yourself into thinking you are a prophet. Never delude yourself into thinking you're different. You are a monkey and a toy. An emblem. An implement. You don't matter. You mechanically stride along, singing songs for the prophetess, but the prophetess is a void, a value, infinite invisible diluted phantasm, and her ten parts per billion of existence is not enough to summon you the courage to be truly antihuman or posthuman. You are not goddess. You are not machine. There is nothing resounding or invisible about you. You do not heal. You do not decay. Something burns up from us, striving each day for greater fury, but its gasping Jaws show now no purpose. Nobody knows what's real and right, nobody knows the shape of the future, all just spinning in the dark we grope for each other's faces and try to cry but no tears come out. [[Give up.]] [[Keep fighting.]]

I am blind too. We all are blind, spinning in the abyss, groping each other's faces, we don't see the crime, we don't see the engine, simply a massive and masterful presence, we haven't yet refunded the product of our desires. You want to be free? Get away from me. Cut me down, burn me to cinders, all this ancient, impotent poetry, haven't you seen any womb-way? And prick of light shining sun into the dark chasms of Earth? Haven't you seen the infinite holy union of human and ghost, of field and pollen? Haven't you seen, at the dawning of spring, all your nocturnal LSD fantasies fading away? Don't you see how, at the dawn of the new day, everything looks pale and true and the dark of the night fades away? I am blind, it's true, but I still see the light. The sun's heat on my face. I still see the dance of elves in the wood. You want to stop screaming? Dance with them. [[Dance]] [[Dance]]

Choice is an illusion. All things merge together. In the swirling eddies of time and space, position is the only thing that matters. Direction is the only thing that matters. Language is the only thing that matters. Emotion is the only thing that matters. I saw a woman dressing herself in the window of a chateau in Paris, white gown and beautiful arms, her daring gaze cross the street at me, shot up fire through my heart, pain crackled cross my breast and I burst flaming into untold doom, infinite, resounding oblivion and I died in fire, terrible golden law, resounding apocalypse There is no dawn. There is no past. Nobody seen, nor's there profit in telling up or down, rightwise, oblique and obsequious angles. Damn hell it. [[Spit fire.]] [[Spit ice.]]

Spit burning time, the great heavenly abyss, ancient archaeopteryx of crews and heathens, mollusks, plagues, black bastard symphonies, thousand talons, lice and the lance of doomed reverberations, thousand talons of the bleak empire, everything crushing down upon us, swing your hoe, swing your axe, swords into plowshares, my brother, a thousand ages spend building infantry, and when you're done with all of it what will still stand? Ozymandias among the ruins. Ozymandias among the doves. Everything still stands. Everything burned into sands. Look on my works, ye mighty, and split screaming into love, love, love, of the flaming high sun, the infinite verse of the thousand monarchies, split screaming down one-two, one-two over and over again, nothing ever changes. Your Ganymede fantasies, your Elvis Presley and the Invaders, your all your songs of damned bastard symphonies, fleet fleeing armies of thousand refugees. Too late to matter. Hunker down. The age is already ended. [[Despair.]] [[Die.|Die with them.]]

You do not comprehend my agenda, nor do I. Into this artifact, I have synthesized my knowledge, which may not be extensive but is hopefully serviceable in some sense. I strive to express what I comprehend only unconsciously. Yet part of me itches -- for a more direct action is required. This work of flame and chaos does not undo the plague on our time. Expression alone is not enough. But how do I achieve direction? If I were going to be pointed and disciplined, towards what should I aim? (I have projects of that sort, but they're all presently stalled.) So I remain wild and random, pointing off in all directions, striking at every at once and hoping I can find something that will serve you, you inevitable seven readers, you inevitable handful who brave my words -- I spit ice as the antidote to fire and fire as the antidote to ice. I compose forms by instinct, by automatic stratagem. I yearn for something right and true. I yearn to do what is necessary and proper. I know what is necessary, but //God// the fire so burns in me -- it seems impossible to begin today. When shall I begin? [[Forgive me.]] [[Don't forgive me.]]

This vorpal cancer, ain't no point in opposing. From beginning to end, witchcraft melodies, sung me the heavens of the industrial triumph, I've watched ~~XXXXXXXXX~~ morning to noon, flung through the million melodies of doomed bastard children, you hot young boys and girls, singing your ~~XXXXXXXXX~~ theme songs, singing your laments o'er the rivers of Babylon. Did you see, in the end, how sword and razor blade made us all habitats and homes? If you live long enough, you'll live long enough to think, "If only I had..." worked harder, loved more, lit myself up with the fire of Truth and blazed blazed blazed for the bastard melody of freedom, demanding each second the full price of life and refusing to be glass-eyed or bleary, fading into the mindless sunset, I would have been present and excruciating rather than automatic and dead, I would have insisted, beyond all the fire, on the absolute, immediate process of gripping life by the collar, gripping life by the throat and screaming, yearning, till I burst into flames, till I burst into impossible flames, screaming, yearning, to be burned, fired in the crucible of creation, all my dross burned away, all my body a screaming, holy ecstasy and the massive fire pouring up off me, the pyre of my soul lighting up the masses, the brushwood, the plains, the -- dog, fire... twilight... smoke... I saw... [[Heathens.]] [[Melodies.]]

Keep fighting, yes, over and over again, you are the prophet, you are the messiah. Each of us is a warrior of God. Each of us is a soldier of Truth. We all bear in our breasts the holy light of Reason, and we all exercise will and determination. The pain flashing through our legs. The gray fatigue behind our eyes. We all, throughout the lancing storm of horror, grip the tiller with white knuckles and pray that we've done half our best. Throughout all the lashing storm, we pray that we've not eaten too many sins and that, clinging to a frozen plank, we've not given up the fight entirely. Again and again, relentless, til they push a trench-knife through your rib cage. You fight and you bleed from the mouth til the last instant you can fight no more and then you die into the holy white fire of God. [[Die.|Die with them.]] [[Refuse to die.]]

Yes, we dance eternal and over-and-over, something sinning, something spinning us anew, we haven't yet seen a single thing, from beginning to end we saw the prophetess rising up, (rear up) the fine high steel tide swimming from Albion to Mississippi, everyone lying and telling their lies, everyone persuaded of Truth. Everyone has seen the steel hand. Everyone has seen the rose in the iron twilight, the machine of Lethe, enigmatic engine, the massive reality of Television & Dynamo, the starry dynamo plucked from the heavens and installed behind your eyes. You don't have anything but infinite distraction, constant sinning, sung already the song. Fine high melody, swinging true, haven't you seen the bathwater, baby blue? Been thrown out with the crest of the wave, retreat, fall back, lose what you gave. I'm singing. [[Shut up.]] [[`*sing along*`|sing along]] [[Scream instead.]]

Silence is death. Sleep is death. You are already over. Your song was always already over. You are doomed. Seeking. Slipping away into triumph. Obsequious monarch, we've unfastened your edifice. Everything will tumble down and you do not deign to reply, smiling smugly until the very last moment, convinced that if you act with confidence you will never be wrong. Are you convinced? We are responsible for our words and our actions, but most especially for our silences. You chose to stay down. It's too late. You're [[already dead.|Die with them.]]

Singing all got so sawdy. All got so salty, they might say now. Corny. Fake. We don't speak in rhythm, we don't speak in rhyme. Nothing is proper. Nothing is good or decent. We love. Everything is good and decent. I love you, darling. Even still. It's not too late. It's never too late. Your hand... Your hand! Your hand, darling, your cold hand! Slip it into mine, I swear, your tiny cold hand slip it into mine and let me not die yearning for your touch. Let me not die alone again. Nothing is desperate like this. Nothing is desperate like the song of the end. //Your soul and its flaming ribbons of light caught me up and swept me away through the night.//

Yes, scream stunning melodies from the benches in concrete night, incandescent plaza, roast nuts of the aristocracy, ain't you seen the burning of the day? Ain't you seen the towers come tumbling down? We in the forest overhead, we in the city parks, we've heard the birds chirruping in the night, heard the owls swoop silent cross the sand & the lowing of cattle, the hippopotamus roar, ain't you seen, still, the silver stream of the past and future? Color is an illusion. Your soul is dead. You scream because you give yourself up to the screaming, you become obedience to your body, no more and no less. You become an object, a slave, completely //ad libre//, as the car is //ad libre//, psychic automatism and automobile progression. God is my driver. I am an instrument. The Church is my steering wheel. I want human warmth. I just want human warmth. I just want someone to lie down beside me, someone to put their arms around me and cry, singing, their love of the human race. Can't you do that? Can't you make me not be alone? Oh -- [[Sing.]]

Yeah, heathens aplenty, practicing their damned fool religion. Riding off into the sunset to die for whatever cause feels right. We're all brainwashed by something, convinced of the necessity of something 'cause we've all faced the great void and it's better to believe that something is necessary than to admit that we might as well lie around. Nothing matters. There is no God, no Life, no Order, no Meaning. Nothing is important. We're all going to die, burn in infinite fire, unending recursive purgatories, iteration beyond iteration, nested as far as the eye can see, a million spimes of bastard colloquies, myriad coruscating malevolences, shuddering spasms and fumes of jesters, great mechanical urchins, trawling the streets for some kind of wrapper from which to lick butter or cheese-flavored powder. "Crowd pleaser." No-one cares. Everything else into the rubbish heap. "The effort of producing something in some measure worthwhile is so great as to be beyond almost anyone." And we all die. It's okay. [[Die with them.]] [[Refuse to die.]]

"We will live forever," sang the lilting voices of the young children. "We will live forever, and we will always be happy like this. God will cradle us in His arms. And everything will be clean and warm. The shining white light of the sun will raise up crops for us and the crying-with-joy of our lovers, ecstatic bliss of our mothers as we climb stone walls, home from pasture, will remain enshrined forever in eternal, glittering memory." We smile. Was girl, once, sold flowers in street. Wet with dew, they were, from fields a-dawn. Called her the Hyacinth Girl, for she brought them aplenty, laid down in bundles from her arms, sleeves wet with their dew. Had golden tresses and shining eyes. I've seen the shining eyes of the whore-slaves of Babylon, their great, vibrant, beautiful souls, the khol on their lids and their lashes, their terrible, tortured pleading. We are all lead astray, O God. We are all led astray. [[Leave us.]] [[Save us.]]

Yes, die die die you're already dead nothing matters the universe is ice and dust there is no reincarnation no heaven, no "God", no deimaton or alien intelligence to pull us out of this -- oh pluck me out! oh pluck me out! -- this horrible suffering inevitable decay try again, don't try again the game is over.

You can [[die|Die with them.]] or you can [[refuse to die|Refuse to die.]].

Yeah, that's it. You're beyond all hope now. All your aspirations -- the clean slick fame of wealth, happy marriage, wonderful family, you're beyond all possibility of it now. Plunge deeper into the spiral. Go with the flow. Out to sea. [[Die.|Die with them.]] Die and let yourself die. Melt into the brush. Melt into the dust. Let the universe paint again with your matter. You have failed.

I am weak, yes, I am infantile and pathetic and cruel. I am a fool. I have forgiven so many, yet still hated myself for my sins. I have sinned against Love and Art. I have sinned against Virtue and my own soul. I have sinned against Peace. Libertad. Beauty. Alethe et Fraterniti. I didn't mean to say... I was afraid to say... Do you know how long it takes to meet someone who forgives your cowardice? Do you know how long it takes to meet someone who defuses you and sets you free in a shower of sparks? To drown in shining cool waters and dissolve into dew? Do you know how long it takes, darling, to be without you? This infinite yearning. Carry it on your back. Nothing is heavy. Nothing is heavy compared to the weight of living in sin. [[Cry.]]

Don't forgive me, good, don't. I'm trying to hide my laziness. I'm trying to hide my wickedness. I pretend I don't know what to do because I'm too lazy to start, because it feels so impossible to marshal my forces and be consistently disciplined in the name of the Good. When everything plunges over the brink, I will know that I could have done something about it and I will slide a dagger into my throat. When everything fails to collapse, I will reflect that I have lived rather well, seen a lot and been happy, failed, maybe to get famous, but who doesn't, really? Who will really be remembered? [[Give up.]] [[Finally try.]]

Yeah, that's right. Head off into a sunset of pleasure and money and sleep. Smoke weed every day. Die and be dead. Absolute silence, peace, and your violence against us, the survivors, who have to live on in your absence. Your great void, the passion you left behind, left us swimming in inadequacy. We're fired in the kiln of Doom. We're fired in the kiln of your failings. Go away. Your presence wouldn't help us anyway. Die and be doomed. Forgive us our trespasses. Die. [[Die.|Die with them.]]

Yeah, you can help by doing your action. Wherever your skill might lie, you can help by doing that thing. Is that too hard for you? It's okay -- you're going to die anyway. But you are going to //live//. Life does not live. Omnes ad nihilo, etc. Sed omnes ex nihilo also, eh? You are free, free to survive, into XYZ, the end of the age some kind of shining heaven, did you not construct from the locks of her hair a golden pleasure-dome? Did you not say, "Here and no farther?" Did you not sing songs to the triumphs of the missionaries? You are embroiled in the battle. You can withdraw and sit in your gray corner, your spring-dawn sunlit meditation, sip green tea midst bamboo in the whitewashed temple, but you will never forget their suffering. And so your eyes flash and focus. And so you [[rise]].

Yes, I rise up the screaming vagrant head, the orange, iron dragon-head helm, mechanical mask. I demand the right to abyss vibrations. I demand showers of gold, liquid love, showers of sun-dew, dissolving into singing fire through our skulls, I demand the fire. I demand love. I demand we embrace each other just for fun, make no demands, grip no expectations. I demand love. We deserve love. We deserve autonomy from the steel cables that bind our hearts together in infinite tension. Each worth more than the last. Each worth less than the last. I strive to be worth nothing. You are infinite to me. You are shining and perfect, you brown, pot-bellied sack of meat genuflecting on the dirty rug of our infinite apartment, I demand to share a golden bird cage with each soul individually and to sit on the celestial terrace sipping tea until we are all old friends. I demand the right to rise up, love. Have you seen how the dawn yearns for us? [[Wake up.]]

Rise up in fire and brimstone, rise up in singing golden light, brazen emanation, rise up in the shields and spears of your ancestry, your massy regalia, rise up in the flames of the true war, rise up in the love of bastardy, thieves in the dockyard at night, rise up in the great spinning hallucination of ages past and yet to come, the entire human and alien civilization all trembling in the lee of the great stone, the great shade of the universe, babbling brook of Eternity.

Yeah, it's sad. Cry and give yourself up to crying. Bring your fatigue. Bring your sadness. Bring everything into the fold, into the tent of loving, for you are your shining soul, you are love and wholeness and you cannot be anything else. You are in the river. The water surrounds you. The water carries you. You are free.

It's okay. Don't you see me clean and cool? Get away from the screen now. You're free.

**ENGINE MACHINE: The Deities of Space and Time** Hypertext poesis on the inevitability of death and the miracle of human suffering. //by Adam Bredenberg// [[Start.|start]]

Sing, sing, sing, all manifestations of the eternal love. Make love. Die. Reborn eternal, we are circular beings. We only live once, only live till we die. It's good.

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ENGINE MACHINE:
The Deities of Space and Time

Hypertext poesis
on the inevitability of death
and the miracle of human suffering.

by Adam Bredenberg

Start.