Staring in disgrace. Bring what it begins. Splintered. Severed from reality. Isolated mutant howling at the world's lost causes. At all the things he used to believe in before the vaults were opened and all his empathy released into the ocean. Resting. Rested, Tired and depleted. Stop praying--it only makes me sad. Stop believing because it's just too painful. It's easier to hate them all . . . to believe that you were not spawned by them.

Fading fast as he erases the flare.

The flare was his dream--quickly extinguished. So fragile and delicate. But there are others to fight the good fight. Plenty of dead girls and biohazards to envelop everything in embrace. To smother them so that they can think, because the world has lost its mind, its reason . . .

Discussing waves of atrophy. His cape is too long. His ego too short.

Tell me what it feels like to feel. Give me a glimpse and I'll give you the world. Give me the world and maybe all of these voices will stop haunting me. Why does it hurt you to hear what I hear? I'm tired of being told not to dream. I'm tired of being told that it's all for me when I don't control the visions that unfold--I just encourage them and hope that they destroy what they need to destroy.

Drawing the lines that will imprison me. Breaking the cage that squeezes me tighter. Freedom to recite dead poetry. Metaphors have atrophied his deliveries. Blind lyricists. Focus on what is not final. Focus on change. Transcendence. Don't be afraid, I've got you by the throat and I know exactly at one point we need to squeeze.

A flaw. An illusion.

It happened once and the rest of time was a broken stream of lament and rue.

If she was an illusion--I was happiest being deceived.

Cries from deep. Mourning til' morning as we watched the sun transform the landscape and the effects sedate the pain at least for a moment, as I sutured my wounds and prepared to run through the streets screaming.

She was a lovely dream . . . a dream worth having, even if she is now my worst nightmare. I battle her nightly trying to forget. Trying to push her away so that I can become numb and stare blankly as my screaming ghost runs through me again and again. I am not the Emperor, . . . at least that is what I was taught.