Rapture

I woke up in another place
That I had never left.

I closed my eyes to failure
And turned my head from shame.
I denied the truth.

I lost. But I was never vanquished.
It crushed my spirit. But It never had my soul.

I was alone in a madness of other people's thoughts.

I remember
a mountain
The imagination jumping off.

I remember
people dying
The futility of helplessness.

I remember
a storm
A battle between sky and soil.

I remember the Phantasm
I remember the feel
There was no other meal
To satisfy my taste

I remember the train.

In my mind's green eye
I could see it strobing by
Slicing through the real
That was all I ever had.

That girl
That face
That stare
Was she ever there?
I can't even recall where

I turned my gaze sideways
And caught a glimpse of elsewhere

I remember the moment
When everything had changed.
I crashed onto the passing cars
And flew into eternity

I hurled into everywhere
Beyond the here and there.

I saw the Real fly past
And in the blur of colors
It seemed to melt away.

It faded into black-and-white
But only appeared grey.

A snow of ones and zeros
Scrolling past my mind

It swirled into nowhere
Beneath the here and there.

It all sped by so fast
That motion lost all meaning
The ebb and flow of chaos
Was still within my thought
In a moment I forgot.

I lay among the universes
The stars they told their tale.

I saw my life.

Everything. The beginning. The end.

I remember
But memories cannot be touched

I saw the Beast

I saw myself.

I was the Beast.

I was an evil that could not be suppressed.
I have lied, lusted, loathed
The hate has burned within me
Like an all-consuming fire.

I was a pride that swelled to all proportion
Built up on a house of cards
In my mind's vain eye
I was higher than the sky
The pride has grown within me
Like an all-consuming fire.

I remember
Falling to the ground

I felt the sick sensation
Of falling in a dream
I was pulled into the depths
I spiraled into down

I remember
Begging for forgiveness

I threw open the doors to a creeping, calloused chill. The wind met my corpse on the threshold of damnation. It stung my naked skin, buried itself within.

I remember
But memories cannot be touched.

I crossed a desert of freezing flame. I froze in timeless agonies of a hundred empty lives. The world it did not know me, humanity turned its back. I crawled on bloodied knees through tortured destinies while a deathly arctic breeze eroded centuries. Icicles encompassed me until my bones refused to move.

The All-Consuming Fire
Licked my fallen spirit.

I cowered in a domain of small, an island of obscurity. I stared into the face of the Creator. The Maker of Real focused on me. I felt the intensity of two hundred generations.

I emerged leagues away from eternity. I was raised on a crumbling dias in a desert of ice. Time crawled far from near, space blurred up the clear. The cold wind reappeared, withered into fear.

I was made to state my defense against a lifetime of mediocrity. I was forced to plea my case before the Judge of All. All eyes were on me; the words they would not be.

Silence melted into oblivion. Slowly the ice cracked. I saw my destiny divide in two unbroken paths. Universes collapsed, the stars they only laughed. I died a thousand deaths as only cowards do, crouching in a corner of basement memories, whimpering in panic. Flames leapt from forever, the fires closed in together. I cried for it to end, I tried to pretend, to perfection I become. I fought to cut the ties, I fumbled into lies, in rejection of the known. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the fire cracked the ice.

I saw my failure. I realized the need as something more to say, I found the fallen voice and announced it to the day.

I was the Phantasm
I was a fraud.
I was an empty shell
Waiting to be filled.

The ebb and flow of chaos
Is still within my thought.

I found who I am.

When the rain began to fall, I stared into the All, it hit the ice and quenched the fire. I gazed upon the true, I saw all that was you, I touched the sun. I shined upon the world like a thousand suns of old.

I remember
coming to a conclusion

I remember
meeting God.

I remember the Phantasm
I remember the feel
It was more than appeal
An all-consuming fire.

The ebb and flow of chaos
Is still within my thought.

The real battle begins.