A
Circle
of 5ths
Part
One: THE MAD HISTORIAN
Someday
a great historian will shiver in his bed
and wish again
that he'd become a janitor instead.
He'll curse that
nagging tendency to study history,
his secret, sick
obsession with that morbid century.
But with the
dawn he'll read again forbidden, ancient text
and wonder
if those people knew just what was coming next;
the mixing
of brutalities with black technologies,
the coming
judgment from above that brought them to their knees.
By candlelight he scans the words for secret little signs;
for subtle indications tucked away between the lines,
for hidden clues that might explain the source of all their pain,
or how these titans of the past would come to go insane.
The box
of hidden photographs he studies through the day,
with hopes to better
understand what led them all astray.
Displayed in stark
reality, a rising cruelty;
exploding shells
of mustard gas on faded imagery.
Decaying stacks
of corpses by the crematorium;
the ancient ghastly
evidence of what they had become.
Machines designed
as predators for use within their wars,
with soldiers living
deep inside, behind the bolted doors.
The ocean beaches
crimson red from bodies floating near;
atomic blasts and
firestorms as cities disappear.
From high above
an air machine with jellied gasoline;
while down below
the jungle burns in carnage now routine.
Collective ghosts
in photographs, the voices of the dead,
they reach
for him through plains of time and speak inside his head.
They share
with him a memory of wanton savagery,
from years
when all that cursed our souls would finally break free.
He trembles
in the fading light at history revealed,
and understands
decisions made which keep the records sealed;
for millions
die with horrid screams in tortured, nightly dreams,
while what
remains of sanity gets pushed beyond extremes.
A nagging
riddle then returns to haunt his mind again.
The fate of ancient
relatives, of gods that could have been;
what lesson did
they all ignore, what final global war?
what cataclysm
set them back a thousand years or more?
He sips
a strong intoxicant to make his mind go numb,
but
fights the growing need to sleep in fear of dreams to come.
He
hides his artifacts away and ends another day,
with
ghastly sights of history inside his head to stay.
Someday
a mad historian will lose control of dreams.
He'll bang
his head on padded walls and echo ancient screams.
He'll gouge his
eyes in agony and beg to be set free,
from sights and
sounds endemic to that morbid century.
- MadGerman
Part
2: AMERICA
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Moongate
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