He could feel it down deep in his bones,
Changes fundamental as if lost in the snow,
Blinded by the white light that the sunlight throws,
Forcibly upgraded, from a bird to a drone,
Here in the black, far away from it all,
Reluctantly evolving as the future calls,
From cold cave stone to circuitry,
His veins now flow with mercury.
His metal teeth hum with new lullabies,
A new world of hatred paints black his eyes,
Pressed into service that he lives to despise,
It’s the gravity of reality that he fights to deny,
He could see it way down deep in his bones,
Incompatibility with a world full of clones,
He covers his eyes as they cast their stones
Fake is the smile masking a sadness he owns,
He won’t go forward and he can’t go back,
From birth, against him the odds felt stacked,
It’s a spectre of a past him that they all attack,
He keeps the real him away, safe in the black.
3A.M
Three a.m. the hour splits its skin,
Streetlights flicker like a dying limb,
Engines idle with a patient drone,
They come for the ones who sleep alone.
No sirens, no footprints in the rain,
Only the hush of a numbing chain,
Curtains breathe, the shadows detach,
The city exhales its body snatchers,
Cold hands, soft knock,
Time stops at the edge of the clock,
At 3A.M they carry you back,
Through the veins, through portals into the black,
To Mother, the Overseer’s iron tomb,
Where breath is traded for endless doom,
Breaking down every dream they lack,
Forged anew here within the black,
Elevators descend below the street,
Heartbeat syncing to a factory beat,
Names dissolve in a thermal haze,
Faces entombed in electric graves,
Teeth of steel hum lullabies,
Mercy coded in their lies,
Bone to powder, nerve to wire,
Feeding Mother’s sleepless choir,
No prayers, no sound,
Just the turning of the underground,
At 3A.M they carry you back,
Through the veins, through portals into the black,
To Mother, the Overseer’s metal tomb,
Where breath is traded for endless doom.
Breaking down, every dream they lack,
Forged anew here within the black.
Are we saved or erased?
Is this mercy or waste?
In her shadow we’re stripped of our names,
Reassembled as obedient frames.
Three,
A.M,
No more skin,
Let her in,
At 3AM they carry you back,
Through the veins, through portals into the black,
To Mother, the Overseer’s machine embrace,
Where flesh forgets its fragile place,
Breaking down rebuild the soul in chrome,
No one returns, but no one’s alone.
At 3A.M we carry them back,
Through the pulse of the endless black,
To Mother, whose silence never sleeps,
She harvests the promises we keep,
Break them down-turn the weak to exact,
Perfect machines, installed here within the black,
Morning comes, the beds are made,
No trace of those who slipped away,
Only the hum beneath the track,
Mother breathes… enslavement within the black.
Infinite Black: 3A.M with musical accompaniment:
3A.M is part of an Infinite Black (IB) experiment that I refer to as the Infinite Black: Artificial Reality Soundtrack. Writing set to music, the idea was to recreate the compilation film soundtracks from the 90’s and 2000’s that featured musicians from various genres adding music to the film. Considering the main antagonist of my IB universe is a rogue A.I entity named Mother, it felt apt to utilise the Suno tool to perform the musical role. The results were surprising. Listen below if you’re interested:
Born Consumer
From the first breath there grows a hunger,
Every scent, every movement has potential,
The need to consume is primal, it is survival,
Nothing can satiate the wanting,
That inbuilt driving force to partake,
To taste what others taste, do as they do,
Abstinence enhances the hunger,
The flavour for desire, whatever the proclivity,
There will be no rest, no psychological quietude,
Until what it is we seek has been devoured.
Scramble Formation
I’ve spent my life existing in what feels like a mad scramble,
Never getting ahead, always a step behind, as child and man,
Every time I feel I’m doing ok, the rug feels pulled from under me,
The story never changes, financially, life is always a challenge,
The scramble is also in my brain, nothing seems clear, always reactive,
Reaching a point where I don’t have such anxiety feels impossible,
I’m always tired living the struggle of everything being so difficult,
I feel sick inside when colleagues are made redundant,
At my age the thought of losing everything is pure nightmare fuel,
Having a home that feels like it will never be paid off,
And bills that never stop, I suppose the scramble goes on,
I’ll try to find joy where I can, and smile, before everything’s gone.
Farewell to Instagram
Farewell Instagram, you will not be missed,
I was ready to go when my followers were dismissed,
But when you throttled my posts and censored my art,
You gave up on being what you were at the start,
You’re now a platform of racism, woe and American hate,
And I have zero interest in that country’s disgusting state,
Instagram is a love letter to that leader, the pedo groomer,
So I’m cutting you off like a malignant tumour,
Your removal saves me from a generation of reality refusers,
I’m free now from your world of skewed, toxic users,
Farewell Instagram, you will not be missed,
For now, it is you who is being dismissed.
Emptiness and nostalgia
February finds be barren of creative endeavour,
The world feels like it’s sitting on a great precipice,
Ready, willing to slip into an unrecoverable turmoil,
I feel unable to cope with thoughts beyond my property line,
I feel unwilling and too numb to partake in the chaos of humanity,
I find no comfort in the company of strangers and aquiantences,
I find no happiness in creativity, nothing I create soothes me,
I feel devoid of artistic purpose for the time being,
Right now I am finding comfort by retreating into childhood,
Nostalgia is my drug of choice, nothing else fills the void,
I am content to give in to this simple pursuit,
Until the world forces my hands to work once more.
Battle in the Clouds
When the first winds of the new year blew, I headed for the clouds,
Where I hid myself away, choosing escapism to avoid humanity,
My reclusiveness rewarded me with welcomed childhood reconnection,
With back-to-basics art, without stress, leading me to this fragile moment,
With my mental hibernation over, I have re-entered a changed world,
And this summer and her fires finds me slower, sluggish and punch drunk,
I feel the work army at my gates, their battering ram access underway,
Where my walls feel more papier-mâché than the required stone and mortar,
But I must fight those who wish to steal and run away with my time,
Time that I am well aware feels more fleeting now than ever before,
My time of seclusion is over, the deceased have now been laid to rest,
And I must pull myself from the haze that I’m caught in to commence battle,
A bare-knuckled fight against outsiders and takers that I feel ill-prepared for,
Like an old lion with blunt teeth and dulled claws, I just feel in the way,
But I still must defend myself, for even though I am tired and weary,
A war between my mind and a senseless world has been declared.
Our Lady of the Broken Heart
Remember, not everyone makes it to a new year, life can be short.
(Requiescat in pace)
Finding Portals
As the calendar closes on this final day of the year,
I don’t feel anything other than a numb indifference,
In a personal review of everything I have created,
A sustained enthusiasm for creativity was evident,
My output declined, I felt, and still do feel quite lost,
Like being encased in an airtight concrete bunker,
Lightless and inescapable, suffocating and restraining,
Surprisingly, writing gave me the most creative sustenance,
My private notebooks became illegible, their imagery manic,
Many pages were illustrated with such violent force,
Pages punctured, torn and replaced, screaming scrawled texts,
All aggressively wrapped in an explosion of coloured madness,
As though multiple Me’s were all erupting at once,
Uncontrolled, unrefined and absolutely lost in confusion,
A new year is the one opportunity to find myself,
Where my mental walls are not confines, but portals,
Allowing me to access a journey that makes me feel complete,
I need to rediscover the path to my wellness.
Seasonal Abnormality
For me, the end of the work year brings internal changes,
All creative endeavours feel virtually impossible,
The urge to do something imaginative is strained,
It takes time for the scars left by the year to fade,
Time is required for the anxieties of life to ease,
This is a dangerous time for the imaginer,
When the fires of the creative engine feel all but out,
It is important that some creativity must still happen,
But a passage of time being unproductive must also occur,
A period of zombified browsing, grazing, or dozing off,
Reconnecting with the imaginative core, laziness,
This behaviour must be indulged to allow regeneration,
A time to heal, rest, reinvent and renew interests,
Before another year begins, these are dangerous days,
Caution must be observed to avoid a terrible complication,
Where a psychological blackhole, the void, opens,
It’s vast and can completely engulf a creator, obscuring hope,
Negatively affecting the entire upcoming year.
Dan Verkys 