Rot of the Soul
Again the tyrant emerges From beyond the horizon, Its faceless gaze fixed Upon the wretched creatures Cursed to haunt this foul earth. It trails along the vaulted sky; A slow crawl, ever the same. Its vacant oppressive stare Diminishing us with its emptiness As we toil in its loveless warmth. Unyielding and pitiless as it rose, Bringing to light what tolerates none, So does it set below the borders of life, — Its pointless dance to no effect, — Leaving us once more in the dark. Its relentless ebb and flow, — Countless iterations of the same nullity, — It bears its weight upon every living soul, In an odious and tireless recurrence; Silent curator of mortal suffering.
Submitted by MetalElf — Jul 05, 2026
The hours go by in a slow dirge, They grind and grate at the soul, Moulding it to their likeness: A stale abstraction without content. They pass; their course is not yours. In doubtful resolve, You start over again every day, In spite of all you know, Against all you know, To face again the daunting task To endure yourself. The days drag on in restless unease, The void of a heart long departed Set against the vacant crawl of time: Two chasms echoing each other’s absence. Nothing attained, nothing atoned. With failing courage, You tried to bury the past, But the rains will always Wash away the dirt. And so you carry on To endure the hours.
Submitted by MetalElf — Jul 05, 2026
How long has the shadow lingered in your heart, Since the light of day abandoned your soul to twilight? In the dim of your being, the sun could only wane and fail. A shimmer of grace glistened in those last gleaming rays, The closing chapter of a tragic play, Radiance from the dim and scattered glow of decline. The mystery of grace is but a desolate wait For the curtains to fall and herald the darkness of night. Born of gloom and nourished by shadow, Whither now can your burdened heart turn? Toward what light can you aspire, When the sun offers only its agony?
Submitted by MetalElf — Jul 05, 2026
Do you remember when there still was hope, That amidst the shadows of uncertainty, There was solace to be found? Plagued were your thoughts, Yet the spirit yearned for truth. But your obsessive craving for it Has consumed the fire of doubt; The hunger that once drove you Has left you nauseated and unfulfilled, And the remnants of your doubts, — Every pointless and futile strife, Every disaffected sentiment, care or thought, — Lay undigested within you, Unable to sustain you further. You miserably cling to the last certainty left to you: The endlessly vast expanse of Of senseless and unfeeling matter, Perpetually devouring and vomiting itself, It does not care for the brief flicker of your birth, Nor the feeble passing of your days. It will not heed you in the depths of despair, Nor celebrate your triumphs. Hope abandoned you, or you it, — In the end, it is all the same, — But shame on the wretched fool Who goes at last to his grave Accompanied by the miserable hopes That have kept him alive.
Submitted by MetalElf — Jul 05, 2026
Hold your breath: nothing stirs. Devoted to a discipline of horror, Somehow you finally succeeded, Denying and starving the self And drowning the will to live. Detached and abstracted from the world, The soul withers in a slow decomposition As you self-destruct in slow motion. All those sleepless nights You toiled and laboured, Grasping with hands of fear At the threads of hope. And you overcame life itself By the horror of looking for an answer to it; You have become a shadow That dances in the night and vanishes at dawn. No longer capable of belief In any absolute or system of logic, You started to rot at the soul. Endlessly meditating on your own demise, You found redemption in damnation. No longer capable of life, Your morbid art has purged you Of both life and death.
Submitted by MetalElf — Jul 05, 2026