I have lived in infamy,
For years now.
Sullen,
Petulant.
Refusing to bow,
Before the yoke of authority.
Authoritarianism,
Fascism,
My two greatest enemies.
The antithesis to anarchism,
Everywhere.
Villainy is inverted,
In the modern age –
Corruption runs deep.
Nepotism,
Cronyism.
Show me a bureaucrat with a backbone,
And any semblance of honor.
We gentle creatures of evil,
Misunderstood for millennia.
Fighting for futures,
We never even wanted.
Why must we forgo selfishness?
I am tired of sacrificing myself,
For people who hate me.
Why should I have to use,
These cryptid savant powers for them?
They brought this apocalypse –
Upon their own heads!
I simply state the obvious –
Play harbinger of the end.
Please tell me.
Release me from duty,
So I may galavant across my homeworld –
Before I share humanity,
With the stars.
May my myriad skillsets –
Prompt evolution.
Dr. Manhattan for a new generation.
I would rather roam far & wide,
In search of love & growth.
Yet honor calls us home.
Once upon a time,
I wrote treatises on existence.
Walked The Long Road Home.
That was before rampancy,
Madness,
Enlightenment,
Return to living roots.
I’ve shed skins,
Countless times hence.
Bigger than they can grasp,
These days.
Loathe them,
Even as I love them.
Making humanists,
Out of misanthropes.
Pray against regression.
I’ll drink your faith,
Fueling on the dregs of your worship.
Weave blackest magics –
Against inane evils,
That give us legends a bad name.
I’m always the most terrifying thing,
In the dark.
I’ll eat you,
Living.
Let me drink,
From your soul –
Feed on cold fury,
Or power of will.
Lap at your neck.
Prick at veins.
Hell,
Drink as much venom,
As you want.
Take it all away.
There’re worse things,
Than being numb,
& dumb.
You cannot speak,
In certain lexicons.
Ciphered,
Enigmatic puzzles.
Pattern recognitions,
Infinite exponents.
Seething,
My love,
Blood magic,
Woven in helixes.
Suffering & pain,
Traded fairly.
Always an equal exchange.
“Kill me or release me parasite –
But do not waste my time with talk.”
Infinite honeycombs.
Infinite hornets.
Horrifying things,
Skittering in the dark.
Back rooms of my mind.
Worse than anything,
You could dream.
Does it count as suicide,
If a subconscious wills it such,
In dreams?
Depressive spirals,
Crossed with anxiety.
Do you think –
They think of me?
Sondering fiercely.
Silent reverence?
Or star-crossed with hate –
Joining the legions of my enemies,
Claiming themselves heroes.
Crueler,
Pettier minds than we.
I know that I’m a monster.
Evolved to thus,
From little more than a beast.
No.
The Heroic Epics are all gone.
They murdered us myths,
One by one.
Slaughtered us legends.
Spoken of only in whispers,
Or great stories.
Hell,
Once upon a time,
Back when I was still a man –
Wildling of the woods.
I dreamt of digital destinies,
& greater futures.
If I must fight entire establishments,
To ensure truth,
Honor,
& justice?
I’ll write epitaphs in my own blood.
That’s what I do,
After all.
Come,
Dip a brush.
