The sky is the color of a bruised iris,
A velvet static where the crows collide.
I am an architect of iron silhouettes,
Wading through the marrow of the morning tide.

They told me the soil was for planting,
But it only accepts the shape of a blade.
Every breath is a tactical maneuver,
In this clockwork labyrinth we’ve made.

My tongue is a rusted bayonet,
Sharpened on the stones of old regrets.
We speak in hollow-point whispers,
Casting shadows like fishing nets.

The infantry of days marches in silence,
A steady rhythm of leather on bone.
We are the kings of a crumbling cellar,
Defending a fractured, invisible throne.

The ink is bitter, the ink is cold,
A dark artillery for the stories untold.
We fire our verses into the gray,
To keep the ghosts of the light at bay.

For the war is not found in the thunder,
But in the quiet collapse of the heart.
And we are the soldiers of the lexicon,
Tearing the beautiful silence apart.

N.P.: “Tuvan” – EINKI

Spiegel schaut mich an,
Wer ist dieser alte Mann?
Ach, das bin ja ich.

N.P.: “Teufel” – Schwarzer Engel

No Number Seven

The floorboards are humming a digital hiss,
A gap in the sequence, a glitch in the bliss.
I’m stacking the vertebrae, pearly and white,
But one of the shadows took flight in the night.

One is a lonely, a thimble of lead,
Two is the whisperer under the bed.
Three is the triangle, sharp as a pin,
Four is the box where the silence lives in.

Five is the finger that points at the moon,
Six is the silver that’s tarnished too soon.
And then— The air turns to static, the gears start to grind,
A hole in the tapestry, deep in the mind.

There’s a ghost in the lattice, a missing degree,
A lock with no tumbler, a salt-crusted key.
I reach for the handle, I reach for the stair,
But the step that comes after is simply not there.

So I leap to the Eight, where the spiders are blue,
Counting the stitches of what’s left of you.
Nine is the velvet, Ten is the rust,
The world is a ledger of industrial dust.

But that hollow between them, that vacuum of space,
Is the shape of a memory, the curve of a face.
The universe blinked and the number fell through,
Now there’s six of the many, and eight of the few.

N.P.: “Tweeba – Fluke Remix” – sLEdger

Dream #3326 – The Archivist at the End of the Garden

I found the Archivist again tonight,
kneeling in the frostbitten garden,
feeding passwords to the snails.
He said the moon was misfiled,
that someone had switched its label
with a jar of counterfeit memories
left humming on the back shelf
of the sky.

He asked if I remembered the Agreement.
I told him I’d misplaced the paperwork
somewhere between the dream
with the burning carousel
and the morning I woke up
with someone else’s heartbeat
ticking in my throat.

He nodded –
as if this were the most predictable
of catastrophes –
and handed me a cracked teacup
full of static.
“Drink,” he whispered,
“before the clocks notice you’re awake.”

So I drank.
And the garden folded inward
like a paper fortune-teller,
and all the snails began reciting
the names  of people
I haven’t become yet.

The Archivist smiled,
wiped the moonlight from his hands,
and told me gently
that the world would end
three times tonight,
but only one version
would remember to write it down.

N.P.: “Early To Bed” – Bjorn Berge

Solstice

The sun gives up early, slipping out the back door
like someone who knows they’ve overstayed their welcome.
By late afternoon the sky is already bruised,
a slow-moving storm of ink and cold breath.

The longest night arrives without ceremony.
Streetlights blink awake one by one,
their halos trembling in the wind
as if even they’re not sure they can handle
what’s coming.

The world feels paused –
a held breath, a skipped heartbeat,
a hush that settles over rooftops
and creeps under doors.

Out in the fields beyond town,
the trees stand like a congregation of silhouettes,
their branches raised in some ancient,
untranslatable prayer.

The ground is stiff with frost,
cracking softly underfoot
like old bones remembering weather
from centuries ago.

Somewhere an owl calls out,
a low, resonant note that feels less like sound
and more like a reminder
that darkness has its own custodians.

And yet the night hums –
not with menace, but with a strange,
almost tender gravity.

As if the world is leaning closer,
whispering that this is the hinge of the year,
the pivot point,
the place where endings and beginnings
blur into the same breath.

People sleep behind their windows,
unaware of the quiet negotiations happening
between shadow and dawn.

But you – wanderer, insomniac,
keeper of small, stubborn hopes –
you feel the pull of it.

The reminder that light is a fragile thing,
and still it returns.
That even the longest night
has a seam somewhere,
a thin line where tomorrow
is already leaking through.

So you stand there,
listening to the cold wind thread itself
through the bare branches,
and imagine your own vow –
not carved in stone,
but carried in breath:
To keep walking.
To keep watching.
To keep a spark alive
Even when the dark feels endless.

N.P.: “More” – Miazma

The Democracy of Dirt

The streetlights flicker their last tired breaths

as the night settles in, thick as damp velvet.

Somewhere beyond the trees,

a siren wails and then thinks better of it.

The world exhales.

Here, in this forgotten cemetery

where the city’s glow dies at the gate,

the gravestones lean like old drunks

whispering secrets to the moss.

The names carved into them have been sanded down

by rain, wind, and the indifference of passing centuries.

No one remembers these people. No one visits.

Even the crows have moved on to better neighborhoods.

And yet the place hums.

Not with ghosts — nothing so theatrical —

but with the quiet, stubborn dignity of

lives that never made the history books.

The butcher who sang to himself while sharpening knives.

The seamstress who dreamed of Paris but never made it past the county line.

The boy who wrote poems no one read and

buried them under his mattress like contraband hope.

They lie here now, equal in the democracy of dirt.

The world never saw what they could’ve been.

Maybe one of them had a mind sharp enough to split atoms or write epics.

Maybe one carried a heart big enough to save someone who needed saving.

But poverty, circumstance, and the grinding machinery of daily

survival swallowed their brilliance before it ever sparked.

The city rushes past them,

headlights slicing through the fog,

unaware that it drives over a thousand unwritten stories.

And the speaker — me, you, whoever wanders here at dusk —

feels the tug of that anonymity. The reminder that

ambition is a fragile thing, easily crushed under the weight of

rent, illness, heartbreak, or the simple fact of being born in the wrong century.

In the end, the grave doesn’t care about résumés.

But there’s a strange comfort in that. A leveling. A mercy.

So I stand here, listening to the wind thread itself through the iron gate,

and imagine my own epitaph — not carved in marble,

but drifting somewhere between the branches:

A wanderer who tried.

A voice that cracked but kept speaking.

A heart that beat, stubbornly, against the dark.

And whatever walks here — memory, time, the echo of the forgotten — walks with me.

N.P.: “Worlock” – Skinny Puppy

N.P.: “Muck” – Die Warzau

Crack Ho

Alright, but listen:
Gotta put it in my ass
Cuz my coochie itch

N.P.: “Fight To Survive” – Megatronix