a penny

[Sepia]

They told us to kill kurtz, they told us it was classified. We went up the river where we followed him, we followed his trail, we smelled what was left of him, what was left of his humanity, no longer interesting. We wanted his madness, like warriors of old ate the hearts because it gave us the strength, it gave us an edge on our enemies but made our friends creep out, made them escape, ghosts walking the floor and we keeping the respect of our dying elders.

As we kept creeping up the jungle we felt his presence, we felt his madness and as we were told he was an outlaw, we became one aswell as we felt his handiwork, we thought we understood his madness but all we saw were the edges of it, a rugged shape without form we thought we'd seen before, a part of our heart, a part of our mind, something from kurtz stretching beyond the maps, beyond the ideas we have of humanity, the concepts we have of decency and the civilized life

We meet older ghosts, dying in their infantile hope. They speak a language all the world once knew, and feared, now something different, something to laugh at, their old empire ground to dust while ours is still standing, never ending, not yet. They teach us of empire but we are too different to listen and they see we are less than so many else so they try to show us the chaos but all we see are the relics

[Eater of Clowns]

The horror.  The horror.

[Sepia]

The horror.  The horror.

I keep hearing these things from out in the street. I want to think that it's a mangled cat, not able to whine properly or a dog whose throat someone stepped on. The guttural in it makes me want to think it's something that can be killed without a law caring other than a petty fine but it's not, it's a man, something that only becomes clear after he begins to sing parts of carmen on the square, overlooking the river.