The Dark:

Where the night falls ceaselessly
Into the abysmal, unaccountable 
And uncaring sea,
There lies the Dark.

There lies the land where,
In foetid air, thick and bitter,
Swirling like mustard gas,
The Dark Messiah reigns,
Squatting like a leprous toad,
Draining love and light from an
Unbelieving, quiescent world.

He lounges on a groaning throne 
Of broken dreams made real,
Reeking of things long dead,
Dripping ordure into the waiting mouths
Of petty sins and evils,
Hungry for growth.

A snow white unicorn is chained to one side,
Gasping, its horn protruding from its heaving ribs;
A jet black twin to the other paws violently,
Its teeth bared and eyes revolving, mad with hatred.

Other than the blood, the hair
And the protruding horn
Of the white unicorn,
The lightest colour is grey,
The grey you see on a man’s face
When he is seven days dead.

Around the Dark Messiah's throne,
The unavenged murdered, 
Rebirthed as ravens, 
Perch at clerk’s desks,
Quills clutched tightly in claws,
Scratching down on glowing parchment
His every utterance
As he makes his judgements
On the stone cold petitions and prayers
Of his damned supplicants.

From time to time his minacious eyes
Wander idly around his court,
Falling inevitably, over and again,
On his jester who slowly, 
Almost delicately,
Disembowels
Two fallen angels for his Master's pleasure,
For he knows of his execration 
For those who begat him, and his twin.

Servitors shamble around the court,
Wired and lusting for the gratification
Of executing their Master's bidding.
Noxious and crooked creatures, these,
Made so by time, torture and terror.

Awaiting orders to fulfil each judgement,
Gorging on suffering,
Listening, for their entertainment,
To the wailing cacophony of crippled souls,
Nightmares, and the screams of savage deaths, 
There-from to enter the unsuspecting world
To gleefully discharge their Master's commands.

Dark and helcoid they are, like him they serve,
And other denizens of his Domain, 
And dark, indeed, is their slow, sadistic pleasure.

Assassins and Secrets, Murders and Retribution,
Perfidy and Betrayal, 
Lies and Concupiscence,
Putrescence and Plagues -
All serve the Dark Messiah,
And slither and slide from shadows to gloom,
From anguished dreams to nightmares,
Whispering, snarling, muttering of vengeance,
Of drawn-out, excruciating and meaningless pain.

The mind-tearing terror of their victims 
Is an opiate they snatch, breathe in,
Suck deep into their dark souls,
Accentuating their joy to rapture,
As they pierce, slash, gouge and club, 
Scrupulously equal and fair, 
Favouring not one or another,
The good, the innocent, the beautiful,
The grotesque, the loathsome and the depraved.

All from Pandora's box are there,
Opening just the same,
For the guiltless and the guileless,
The twisted and the debauched,
The saints and the sinners, 
The view across the Acheron through Hades' gates, 
All, that is, but one.

And those servitors who please their master best
Are those who sustain their victim's
Torment and anguish most exquisitely,
And in the most excruciating and brutal way,
Their throats ripped hoarse with screams, 
Their souls shattered by absolute horror.

But these repellent, chthonian creatures of the Dark,
Are not without horrors of their own,
For their Master brooks no failure, none!
And terror haunts each unloving minute,
Each shuffling pulse of their atramentous hearts.

His punishment is unsophisticated and eternal,
And their torment is beyond envisioning,
As the dragon-tailed, three headed hound Cerberus 
Ceaselessly cleaves, grinds and mutilates,
And though Charon the ferryman makes no fee,
They cannot lose his taunting laughter.

And given time, fail they must,
For simply, and until Hell freezes over, 
Beyond the Dark is the Dawn, 
Dawn, the bringer of Light.

And with the Light comes 
Pandora's Hope, 
That which allows for Love -
Tormenting and enraging 
A howling Dark Messiah -
And Love is the buckler his twin,
The Light Messiah,
Holds steadfast against the Dark.