The Towers Wait, The Tombs Hum. The Fortresses Crumble, The Dams Rot. This Decay Is Beautiful, This Decay

The towers wait, the tombs hum. The fortresses crumble, the dams rot. This decay is beautiful, this decay is endless and stalwart. It cracks and cleaves and splits, it’s tendrils push up, out, sling across, surge through. Sunlight and the drip-drip-drip of tenacious waters. Did Rome at its height dream that one day so little would remain, did the great statues abandoned in eternal sands know that their truest accomplishment is to warn of grandiose nature made frivolous, pathetic, from marching time? Our fate remains the same, irrelevant and brief— and beautiful.

I sit on the ledge, surrounded by concrete and glass— irrelevant monoliths and irreverent designs, all inhospitable, all hostile. Featureless as the faces of the dead. Snow comes down like pale, cold stars weaving through chilly air. Flex my fingers, see my breath spiral against cold air, my heart beating steadily.

Cold metal against my skin. Heavy.

A U T U M N: R E Q U I E M

Heart of forest leaves down in the color of murder and fire, mind in fog and chilly downpours, bones made by clawing leafless timber that wants to gouge bleak skies. Autumn endless.

W I N T E R: T Y R A N N I C A L

Heart of marble, mind of icy lightning, bones of inky black water. Winter eternium.

The Moon blesses me, rising into the sky in all its pale and hallowed glory, a howling face at my back against darkness.

Bones split, break. Pitiful human things to be discarded. My blood is an inferno and it burns against my veins, hot, flooding through the gaps in torn skin, turns snow crimson-black. Steaming.

I scream, and in turn my jaws shatter, buckling into a terrible snout. Teeth crack like sickening musical notes, flattering to the sidewalk as I lose them. Eyes bulge, midnight colored tears clouding my vision, until my sight glows with ethereal shadow unseen by any other eyes on the planet.

Spine broken before subsuming into something broader. Armored. Wings fuse outward, and then catch the wind, unfurling. Fingers mangled, lost, regrown anew in devastating talons.

My new jaws work, once, twice. Strong. Strong enough to bend iron, cleave flesh. Claws grasp in eager need, slashing at the cool air—

A howl in the distance. Familiar, and terrifying. Beautiful. My new face does not smile or grin, but even yet, I feel hungry joy.

With a flap like thunder, I sail into the night, searching for an old friend.

A dance.

The crash of behemoth legs, thick as tree trunks. Pillars to hold up flanks that could encompass all of the sea and sky and earth. Rising. Falling. Walking mountains claiming this Earth in deliberate, primordial strides led by yawning shadows.

A dance.

Furious horns and proud frills. Cracked shield-faces thrust up, out, and retracted, unyielding. Painted in striking bold pronouncements from one clan or another. Dizzying arrays of horns like an endless parade of the finest, fiercest blades. Sheathed in keratin to exaggerate, enlarge.

A dance.

Swaying, armored sides. Lashing tails clubbed and spiked, beaked mouths barking, snapping, coughing. Angry forms thrilled for a fight, eager to prove against predator malevolence. A thud shattering hungry teeth. A crack that splinters bone. A sickening slash at flesh that brings bloody rain.

A dance.

A thousand, thousand voices. Chorused, harmonized thunder. It sings out. It whispers. Valleys caressed, mountains mapped, islands charted; all by those who sing, those who speak. Entire histories dwell in those reverberating hymns, whole cataclysms preserved by undulating notes and howling requiems, chirped directions, screeched prayers.

A dance.

Great, crashing jaws crack the moon into pale macabre slivers like pitiful bone. Splintered, fragmented hopes dashed on fang numerous and terrible. They are swift and silent as death, archangels in the flesh and bear names as devastating as holy disaster. Shadows leaping, twisting. Leviathans sprawled. The dragons of old. Alive.

A dance.

Something ties them. Something conjures thoughts too abstract for the minds of mere primitives, something too vivid drives impossibly intelligent stares. In every guttural snarl are unspoken designs. Through slashing claws emerges a design. A unity.

A mind.

All that remains are silent chambers, aglow in waiting, alive with hissing thought

Mausoleums for whole worlds, each cell a tomb, each tomb a memory, empty of the dead

The starless skies are shields and swords, forged by celestial might, an uneasy warning

A forge that burns, that makes: bones into iron, flesh into lightning, desires and dreams turned to screams and howls

Beware the Legacy, remember the Lament

Utopia lies in hallowed ruin, guarded by those who know only long, slow cycles

Waiting

Waiting

Waiting

The primary visitor safari and campground of Jurassic Park: Arizona. Now featuring an open air display of the vicious Velociraptor!