So close to death is the sorrow of love
—the ecliptic joy,
that I can feel its
long fingertips,
its sharp, venom-dipped nails
reach behind, right behind,
my inward-turned eyes:
they no longer see what I've always felt
they've seen,
they see man as you saw him—
in everyone else.
The wheel of life turns, consciousness makes abrupt shifts between, on one hand, a clear and distinct image of reality, and on the other hand, a vague and hallucinatory projection of the realm of imagination. Is it then possible to observe your own consciousness? Does it cease to be conscious of the link to the otherworldly if it is not dusted off?
The wheel of life turns, consciousness makes abrupt shifts between, on one hand, a clear and distinct image of reality, and on the other hand, a vague and hallucinatory projection of the realm of imagination. Is it then possible to observe your own consciousness? Does it cease to be conscious of the link to the otherworldly if it is not dusted off?
Walking past thousands of openings in the ether, long reddish cracks in a seemingly invisible wall, as they would appear to the trained eye, we were truly happy. Lyanna held my hand—something she usually didn't do for some unknown, inexplicable reason. I, on the other hand, was a romantic fool; hence, I loved holding her hand, showing her, and the whole fucking world, that I belonged to her. That I was her grangent, and nobody else's…
We always found ourselves in Magdalena, a quaint, abandoned town nestled far in the western reaches, Lya and I, as we ventured into the Spree. I didn’t know why. And I had never really thought about it. Until now. Something had changed. An unfamiliarity settled in, akin to a glitch in the synaptic code—subtle yet present, behind the scenes—rendering the details of our surroundings more vivid; the once-dimmed sun now brighter, the pale blue sky intensifying, and the weight of the prairie dust seeming to lift…
Breakfast. I always got my breakfast at Pushkin's. It didn't matter how early, how late, how tired, or how stoned I was—the coffee shop next to our apartment building had become my steady waterhole. The gent that owned it, Greg Pushkin—a middle-aged Russian immigrant from the Cuban colonies in the Atlantic—was a good friend, or rather, he'd become one, because I would always pay him straight up, with either creds or dope…
Lyanna was sound asleep. I looked at her. My eyes touched her silky smooth skin, lingered there for a while, then regressed, slowly, back into a semi-dark, blueish abysmal world of nightly dread and anguish—the buzzing strobe-light from the handheld projected screen faintly mirrored my pale, unshaven face on the wall…
It never stopped raining. It never ever stopped raining. Hence, the crimson red always washed away. Good, or bad? I didn't know. I didn't wanna know.
"Inexplicably dead, this man is, isn't he?" I thought, and turned to Lya to get her beautiful but sad-looking face remapped in the kibershop window in front of us…
During the hourly wake of the city's mourners,
I escaped
to where none of us dared venture,
with the veiled chameleon's long shadow
over my shoulder,
I escaped
to where no other nectar but yours—the XY-code's,
was harvested by the drones,
no other sound but the cyber-wind's
was silenced
by the hum of your ill-fated circuitry:
Lyanna—my cherished code and rhythm,
I have now finally understood
that I no longer need to recreate you
to leave a fresh imprint
behind
at the scene of the digital caper—
you are my truest reality
as I once was your most
fraudulent.
Step into the dystopian future of Spree, a genre-blending novella that throws all the storytelling rules out the window. Think sci-fi, cyberpunk, and then some—it's a wild journey that keeps morphing with every tweak and cut. This isn't your typical tale; it's a live experiment, guiding you through an unpredictable mental maze where the lines between reality and fiction, sanity and madness, are constantly getting smudged. Just like the portrayed instability, this adventure will leave you contemplating the dynamic nature of stories and the worlds they conjure, especially when they vanish.
Here, you can feel my presence
in the doubts
that overcome you,
when these words
in this moment
cast a new hermeneutic veil
over the world
and all its underlying metaphors,
so that you, later in life,
can find your way home,
all by yourself
and without doubt,
in my absence.
Here, you breathe me out
as I breathe you in—
your unappeasable memory
of me,
making my last attempt to flee
this lost but not shunned
empery
of thought,
will show whether I can hold
this breath
for more than one lifetime
or not.
Here, I'm free
and will always be
until the day
I no longer remember the setting sun
before the night
when you and I made love
without bodies
for the first time.
Here, I'm free
and will always be
until the day
I no longer remember the setting sun
before the night
when you and I made love
without bodies
for the first time.
Here, we face death together
and forget,
for a brief wonderful moment,
that we’ve both actually lived
a life
in absolute solitude—forced into exile
from our innate longing
to become one with each other
and come home,
finally,
to the unknown source
of our shared origin.
Here, I no longer need to be afraid
of the shadows
to which I've forgone my wide-open eyes
to be able to see you
as a natural part of me
and not a separate reality.
Here, my ethereal ink disappears
from reality
just as fast
as your bodily fright turns pale
in facing the moment
when you wake up, disguised
as someone other than yourself,
yet completely unafraid,
from this strange
but beautiful nightmare.
Here, I sing the great song of love
in tears
but still, facing the mirror of time,
never allow myself to say I'm sorry
for all the years
that slipped away—
hence my eyes bleed in anguish like yours
to be able to cleanse us both
from the guilt
that completely uncovered
covers our desperate future
with self-inflicted wounds.
Here, I no longer dress myself
in the colors of desire
—emptiness and uncertainty alike
have deprived me of my subtle ability
to dress
the fleeting days of remaining passion
in words,
that could make my love for you
easier and brighter,
without losing its heavy and dark
breath.
Here, I no longer dress myself
in the colors of desire
—emptiness and uncertainty alike
have deprived me of my subtle ability
to dress
the fleeting days of remaining passion
in words,
that could make my love for you
easier and brighter,
without losing its heavy and dark
breath.
We always found ourselves in Magdalena, a quaint, abandoned town nestled far in the western reaches, Lya and I, as we ventured into the Spree. I didn’t know why. And I had never really thought about it. Until now. Something had changed. An unfamiliarity settled in, akin to a glitch in the synaptic code—subtle yet present, behind the scenes—rendering the details of our surroundings more vivid; the once-dimmed sun now brighter, the pale blue sky intensifying, and the weight of the prairie dust seeming to lift…