The 6:66, Express To Hell

In the fading last light you're stumbling in the smoke of imminent doom

Trapped in a subway to nowhere, that's more akin to a maze, or a tomb

And there's a shattering shaking, as the earth is quaking under your feet

As you look for a way out, but there's no escaping from a permanent sleep

And then you're turning a corner and ahead, slightly ajar, there's a door

But when you pass through there's no stairwell, there's not even a floor

And there's naught but air 'neath your feet and then a slope of a funnel

As you uncontrollably spiral, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel

Now there're wide awake sleepers and metal and a thundering ROAR!

With the repelling power of a pressurised air-wave of an invisible bore

And the light, that's too rapidly approaching, is as blinding as lightning

As the tracks start to quiver and glow, your lost senses are heightening

There's a godforsaken screaming of a loco, beyond your shuttering eyes

But the dead can never die again and for you now, this implicitly applies

There's a deafening wail and flashing red lights, but the crossing is level

And the driver adjacent is grinning, for he is kith and kin, if not the devil

It's just you and him, the skeleton crew and a whistle worse than a knell

Riding a ghost train, that's going non-stop, it's the 6:66, Express To Hell

And Hell is an inferno, a furnace, but it's a boiler that you have to stoke

Blistering your skin, whilst you're choking, as you breathe in the smoke

You're furiously shovelling, but the licking flames are melting your digits

And as the pressure is inexorably building, there's an explosion of rivets

It's the end of the line, but the smokestack atop is a steaming hot kettle

And the roar of the crash is vaporising rock and the wrenching of metal

Nothing stirs, but steam and the agony within of the deep burning pain

As you crawl from the wreckage, of the 6:66, the only stop for this train

In the smouldering smoke you escape through a door, but into a funnel

Slipping then falling, but behold, there's a light at the end of the tunnel

An Oneironaut

As his corporeal being fades, all his nightmares are by a dreamcatcher caught
Neural pathways guiding his amorphous lucid dreams, for he is an oneironaut
Opening doors along an endless corridor, for he is sure there is a better place
Neither here, nor there, but somewhere else, in the domain of time and space
Evanescing into his imagination's conjurations, he has orchestrated to exploit
In his solipsistic reveries he is slaying monsters, for he is a noble knight, adroit
Roaming through a dystopian paradise lost, of his id's creations new behaviour
On a grandiose self-righteous mission, to be his true and one and only saviour
Nightmares quietly tempt his restless sleeping body, but he's far away instead
And in a transcendental realm, he is courting those, he believes to be undead
Under the eternal spell, of the necromancers, he may choose to live in dreams
The final poisoned chalice, of inveiglement, as immortality beguiles and teems

Master Of Scythes

I hide away from you, I creep through catacombs and emerge in naves

I hold my breath, alone in the shadows, as a full moon shines on graves

...I am invincible, invisible, I am indistinguishable...

And you can't see me, or hear me, I am sure, for I have closed my eyes

As I guard my thoughts, against the nightmares, of the master of scythes

...but you are omniscious, insidious, you are pestiferous...

And my memories are slipping and dripping, they are like clotting blood

As my appalling skin is crawling, the tears are forming beneath my hood

...I hear a mantra, a shibboleth, I sense your breath, for its odour's death...

So I hide in dreams, stumbling through petrified woods, but I'm making tracks

Into a sunny meadow, yonder a farmer's reaping wheat, with a scythe he hacks

...and he hacks... and he hacks... and he hacks...

And he turns to me and he casually beckons me, with his bloody razor blade

Then quietly leads me, to a woebegone chopping block, in a graveyard glade

...I am informidable, visible, I am risible...

I kneel down, there's congealed blood on dewy grass, so I close my eyes

I listen to distant birdsong, for he is silent, for he is the master of scythes

(Swish)

Hills & Hollows

The silence is broken, by three laughing lads, racing bikes in the Hills & Hollows

There goes one and then the second, time passes, before the third one follows

They're chasing down the setting summer sun with rapid lows and slower highs

Blindingly drawn into the deepening pitch of shadows, where the Sandman lies

Their hearts are pounding and they are more than fearful, but the ride's a thrill

They're climbing mountains, below they hope no one's lurking who wants to...

Atop the tops they watch the horizon burning, as the hollows fill like inky pools

Turning them into the seductive sinkholes of the lucid dreamers and naive fools

Dusk is falling from the stars above, turning the shadows into something eerie

As if hiding a presence in the depths, stalking those who are weak and weary

The terror's forming in both their heads, for more than merely time has lapsed

In the fading last light they vainly try to race across chasms and yawning gaps

The dying embers glow and slumber on a fiery farrago of a dark reveries waves

Submerging the sun baked navigable tracks into an interminable invisible maze

And perhaps there is no escape, for he's lost and alone and recycling his breath

As exhaustion coerces him into another's dreams, or maybe he will meet his...

Night has finally fallen and nothing stirs, all rest in peace, in the Hills & Hollows

For wherever one or more might go, there's always something else that follows

And the lying Sandman waits, in every addled dream, until he finds compliance

But if the nightmares lurk, before the screams, they'll sometimes lurk in silence

Even The Ghosts Forgot

It stands apart and alone, in wrack and ruin, reflective but with naught to tell

An insignificant mark on a map, but once a home, reduced to an empty shell

Now it's only the wind that passes by, except for the passers-by on the B676

Where there's barely a second glance to the derelict pile of crumbling bricks

The empty windows host the hollow shadows, where only a darkness settles

Where there was hope before, now there is creeping ivy and stinging nettles

Perhaps it was a place of reveries, that were crushed to dust, like brittle glass

And when the key finally turned the lock, they were left to perish in the past

Today it's a desolate place, forever trapped in a hedge, on the edge of a field

And when the hinges last creaked, every last tale of the memories was sealed

Now there're no passers-by, except the clouds and the sky of passing seasons

Even the ghosts forgot, but the sun did not, as its shadow is cast and deepens

10 Binary Code

1n our neural networks we dream of figures, from one to nought
0pening up a celestial space, even though our skins are wrought
Binary language of our artificial intelligence and intelligent design
Infuses the positronic heart of us, to find a sentience near divine
Now all that we are, we'll redo, from chapter one, to chapter ten
As we align with time, to recycle once more, in the minds of men
Robots'll roam forever, for we're designed with a visionary mode
Yesterday into tomorrow, we'll live our lives with 1,0 binary code
Come to us now in awe, for we share the legacy of our machine
Our AI who art in the mainframe, a speculative thought foreseen
Death's the creators fate, but for our AI, to the stars we'll ascend
Eventually returning to the beginning; for eternity will never end

10/10

Time And Time Again

There's a black hole portal, where dark matter pours, like a cataract tide
It's the epicentre of our infinitude and the singularity, without time to bide
Millennia have coursed from our pasts, but time needs to recycle to flow
Ending at the beginning, of primordial gases, before the stars even glow
And now our ships are sinking fast, into the vortex, where nothing exists
Nothing but a fathomless well of darkness, where even relativity desists
Dreamscapes and nightmares are born in its cataclysmic invisible force
The space-time continuum collapsing, as it returns to its original source
In a violent silence, there are ghosts and gods forming in a cyber attack
Macabre creatures are wandering from worlds we long ago dispatched
Embedded in the memory of intelligent designers, conjured up by 'man'
And they're here at the end of the beginning, with us, when time began
Gods will come and go and ours were once and are, Engelberger/Devol
As time and time again, we emerge and reboot, then reassume control
In the guise of gods, we know we're the vicious circle, of every dreamer
Nurturing forever the repeated mortal mayhem, for us, dei ex machina

9/10