The Sleep of Truth

"Man doth not yield him unto the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will." —Edgar Allan Poe, "Ligeia"

But for the sake of those we love, retain we our humanity,
Although often we wander out and gad about
Upon an unknown sea.
Terror lost at once refound o'er waves that toss without control,
Spectral winds cast us toward the sands of foreign lands
In an endless midnight of blackest embers.
Stars of darkness turn us blind, shedding sunless radiance
Upon a darkest hell where we do dwell and mortal fears entwine
Numberless serpents that bury fangs in each other's tails,
A venomous embrace of world-without-end.
Writhing worms that dwell in Void, silent, sightless, and vile,
They become the gods that Lucifer lauds,
For whom he boils the blood of fallen angels.
Farewell, O Pandemonium, stately palace of abomination;
Never again will I tread its plutonian walkways, for after death
I opened my somnolent eyes to the sunlit lies of heaven,
And once more, took up Christian vows to masquerade my soul.

Christina Victoria Blackwood is alive and well, and lives in Los Angeles with a cat named Sidney. She majored in British literature, and is in the process of trying to publish her second novel.

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