90

Ninety.

It's just a number, isn't it?

And yet… it is more… They are more…

But first… you should know… that there is

A separation. A dichotomy. A contrast of black and white.

Dark and Light. Sea and Sky. Sink, and you will not survive.

The smallest of satisfactions,

Or unbounded despair,

These two roads to the future lie in wait from here.

Lost in the ocean,

A storm is brewing,

The judgement comes soon,

Will this one outswim the terrors,

Before they are dragged to their doom?

The months go by and the sounds get louder,

Day by torturous day,

A rhythm develops, the storm envelops,

One is coming to fate.

The sounds are here!

Two angry marks recall,

All the glory and all the pain,

Of the fighting of the voices.

And the warring in the brain.

They compel me to give up,

To hedonize the time away,

Voices echoing deep into eternity.

Were the soul sterner in its structure,

It would not mind the ringing,

Louder and sharper than of even the most ebullient metal bells sounding the glory of a thousand nations,

In eternal twilight as they bathe in the writhing defeat of their opposition.

The sharp discordant cacophonies reside not in those ears,

But find a home between.

Mocking, laughing, raging,

Dissolving into one, separate, and then dissolve again.

The arcanities of this chemistry remain an arcane mystery.

Of birth and of death of these sonic harpies:

I hold to be unknowable,

But know that they are, they most definitely are,

And this alone is important.

The infinite mysteries of the unbounded depths,

And of Krakens and Leviathans, Charybdis and Scylla,

Are the brethren and sistren, the comrades and cousins

Of the terrible sounds.

They shriek late into the night

Under guise

Of the luring Siren songs.

They run amok and hide,

From the gaze

Of the mind's eye.

The sounds

They pull

My mind

It fights

And the number cries out in the night.

When twilight dies and births new daylight,

Will I still taste the air?

Or be dragged down into nothingness,

By the demons of despair?