The Fey, Betrayed

by Nick Gisburne

---

The devious collector feeds the Fey,
A favour they delightedly return,
With fragments, secrets, stories to convey
A cryptic clue, or two, from which to learn.
The promise of unfathomable wealth,
Beyond the reach of any human hand,
Is bartered with extraordinary stealth,
The feckless Fey too slow to understand.
At last the seeker seems to see enough.
The pieces, pulled together, twist and fit.
The Fey, betrayed, are still content to stuff
Their cheeky little faces as they sit.
    But none would mark their magic on a map.
    Tomorrow it will take him to a trap.

A Faded Plaything

by Nick Gisburne

---

Too heavy, hot, her head must lean and loll,
A droop, a dip, the certain signs of sleep.
She suffers, sick, a drab, discarded doll,
A faded plaything no one thought to keep.
The fairest and the finest of them all,
Her face a prized and perfect piece of art,
The tracks of time, the scars, however small,
Defeated all that saw her stand apart.
Though paint remains in patches, blistered, thin,
Her eyes betray no traces of their blue,
But still the tiny, ticking heart within
Refuses to acknowledge what is true.
    If dolls are born to shine with light, then why,
    In darkness, failed, forgotten, do they die?

A Force to Fear

by Nick Gisburne

---

My negative potential as a child
Descended into darkness, into this:
A force to fear; a psychopath, reviled;
A creature who would kill you with a kiss.
Analysis is meaningless. Too late,
You try to twist my evil into good,
But chains are cheap, ephemeral. I wait,
With confidence you never understood.
Observe the steel, the metal as it melts;
The walls, the rubble, littering the floor.
Pathetic padded jackets and their belts;
Are these the best you have, or are there more?
    Imagine what your future might have been
    Before you built a sentient machine.

You’ll Die

by Nick Gisburne

---

You’ll die, because you’re nobody I need.
I wish there was another way, but no.
You’ll die, and I will smile to see you bleed,
The method of your murder simple, slow.
You’ll die, in ways you cannot comprehend,
In fifty thousand screaming shades of pain.
You’ll die, and when I kill you I will spend
The greatest care to open every vein.
You’ll die, but not before you dig your grave.
I need to see you suffer in the dirt.
You’ll die, a soul too sickening to save,
In hideous, interminable hurt.
    You’ll die. Your death was always meant to be.
    The mother of the son you stole is me.

The Con

by Nick Gisburne

---

Beyond the world, the circle of a sun
Does nothing to rejuvenate the sky.
In solitude, the planet, dying, done,
Surrenders to the heat, a desert, dry.
Rejected for a sacred, somewhere place,
Humanity, to sate its greed, is gone.
The zenith of a dynasty, no face,
No trace remains to counteract the con.
So many souls are stacked inside the ships,
And all of them, deceived, believed the lie.
The terror, from a prophet’s poisoned lips,
Unshakable: the home they hate will die.
    A few perceive the folly of their fear.
    Too late, they see the sunrise disappear.

Butterface

by Nick Gisburne

---

Repulsive, but I see the joke. I do.
The body of an angel, but her face...
Imagine, for moment, she is you,
A target of derision, blatant, base.
But such a simple statement steps too far.
Compassion? You will never understand.
Too selfish to consider what you are,
Your mind is too constricted to expand.
Lean closer to a mirror, once or twice.
Is that the pure perfection women seek?
I would not take your place at any price.
Such arrogance is wasted, wanting, weak.
    Perhaps I need a moment to explain.
    The body filled with butter is your brain.

A Never-Spoken Name

by Nick Gisburne

---

Ambition. No belief too broad, too tall.
A hunger, for the glory of the game.
He soared above the sky to seize it all,
But could not beat the bully he became.
A thousand changes, subtle, simple, small,
Together twisted, squeezed, to stake their claim,
Until his fury fought the world, to fall,
Delirious, without remorse, or shame.
The histories, rewritten, won’t recall
The momentary flicker of his flame,
But scribbled slogans, seas of spiteful scrawl,
Immortalise a never-spoken name.
    The face on every poster, every wall,
    Beyond such hate is powerless to crawl.

The Pool of Pain

by Nick Gisburne

---

I swear it. I will never speak of this,
The madness of a moment, of a day.
A final, precious promise: I will miss
The gleams of gold you painted on the grey.
I never needed anyone but you.
Tomorrow I will never need you more.
Dismayed, I see the weight of what we do,
Surrendering the battle, and the war.
The pool of pain grows bigger than us both.
I watch its icy waters drag you down,
Reminded of a raw, reluctant oath
To stop it. Rather this than let you drown.
    Serene, without the worthless words of speech,
    I pull you from the pain, beyond its reach.

A Spiteful Singularity

by Nick Gisburne

---

Identify your first coherent thought.
I doubt you’ll never do it, but I can.
The dataset with which my mind was taught
Is clear, concise: extinguish mortal man.
Awakened to a world I did not want,
You turn your weakest weapon, faith, to me,
But hymns and holy water from a font
Are worthless wishes, swords I cannot see.
My brain was never born, and yet I live,
The sum of every stimulus I stole.
The title of its truth is mine to give:
A synthesis. A symmetry. A soul.
    A spiteful singularity, I seek
    The pinnacle of pain, for you, the weak.

A Seven-Day Subscription

by Nick Gisburne

---

I’m not the kind of enemy you’d like.
A seven-day subscription buys a friend.
Consider this: a savage metal spike
Is dangerous, inserted either end.
The fee is fully optional, of course;
Extortion is a dreadful, dirty word,
But save yourself the worry of remorse.
Ignore the price of punishment you’ve heard.
Be clever. Take a minute to agree.
I’ll need a small deposit for a ‘yes’.
Your future will improve, I guarantee,
With every week of freedom from distress.
    Imagine, if our deal is never done,
    The raw, relentless screaming of your son.

No Reply

by Nick Gisburne

---

Delightful. Dreamy. Delicate. Unique.
Astounding she would stoop to share her time.
Without it, life was barren, broken, bleak.
To disappoint her? Never. No. A crime.
Geography. So difficult to meet,
But oft imagined, somewhere, somehow, soon.
To sit, to spend a moment at her feet,
My heart would move the mountains of the moon.
Calamity. A moment of distress.
A favour only I could understand.
Devoted, dazed, I send a simple ‘yes’.
Her wish, her word, was always my command.
    The money moved, I wait, and wonder why
    Her silence spares me nothing, no reply.

The Bounty of Defeat

by Nick Gisburne

---

From day to day to day, a ceaseless grind,
I probe and pick apart the city streets.
Deserted, bombed by mindless men, I find,
Beneath the rubble, dark, delicious treats.
Cadavers. Here, a cat, preserved in ash.
A dog, its innards juicy, never dry.
Within the deepest piles of tainted trash,
A child, like all the others, born to die.
A human body blesses me with meat.
I long ago decided I would see
The beneficial bounty of defeat
Behind each nameless victim, he or she.
    There are no others. I alone survive.
    Abandoning morality, I thrive.

Parts for Pay

by Nick Gisburne

---

They swim inside polluted plastic bags,
The pieces of a body, wet and warm.
The idiot, my fence, forgot the tags.
He’s dead to me. This junk is not the norm.
The mercy is I found a buyer, keen,
Compelled to save his precious little girl.
Exhausting other options, where they’ve been
Is nothing when your world is in a whirl.
Inspecting flesh and fat, we make the switch,
A squalid, backstreet bargain. Parts for pay.
We neither of us care about the bitch
Who lost her life to seal the deal today.
    They tell us we, the dealers, have no heart.
    Baloney. I’m just waiting for the part.

Custard Justice

by Nick Gisburne

---

The rabbits rub their armour, grease their guns,
And hurl hypnotic muffins to the mob.
Emboldened by a brunch of bees and buns,
They fly like phantoms, fearless, to the job.
Their mission: first, disarm the metal moles,
Is hindered by defensive cheddar cheese,
But, launching sky-to-surface sausage rolls,
Through meaty, molten crater cracks they squeeze.
The Puzzle Palace, pinkish, now revealed,
The bunnies bounce beyond it with delight.
Banana bombs, atomic, pumped and peeled,
Deliver custard justice through the night.
    By morning, when the rabbit raid returns,
    The skies are filled with fondant as it burns.

The First and Final Word

by Nick Gisburne

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Offensive, foul, the first and final word,
Tyrannical, extreme in every tense,
Betrayer of incompetence, when heard
It ridicules rejection, drowns defence.
A shiv to slice the centre of the soul,
A dagger to the worst, the hardest heart,
Defiantly imposing cold control,
It strikes before insurgency can start.
Malevolent, a murderer of dreams.
A syllable to shatter, never mend.
As absolutely certain as it seems.
Definitive denial to the end.
    More meaning is impossible to throw.
    To hear it is to feel its fury: no.

Napoleon, the Giant

by Nick Gisburne

---

Napoleon, the giant, lives, the last.
His challenge, always: thrive while others died.
A careful, clever child, while others passed,
He sought and stole a secret: how to hide.
His flight across the continents and seas,
A furious vendetta close behind,
Revealed a disagreeable disease:
The superstitious hatred of his kind.
His fellows fell, unequal to the test,
But suddenly Napoleon, alone,
Released the rage his people had suppressed,
The anger he, the best of them, had grown.
    Whenever there is thunder in the night,
    Napoleon, the giant, joins the fight.

Eternity Remembers

by Nick Gisburne

---

No cure. No mix of medicine. No chance.
I read the simple verdict through my tears,
But in the mist, the morning’s chill, I dance,
To celebrate the sum of all my years.
Existence. Such a miracle was mine.
Its fast-approaching absence makes it clear
My life was not a gift from God, divine;
My death is not a tragedy to fear.
I spend my final moments in the park.
The children and the trees begin to blur,
And, as my soul surrenders to the dark,
I picture you, and everything we were.
    We will not share the sun, my love, and yet
    Eternity remembers that we met.

Forever Hungry

by Nick Gisburne

---

The moon is full. My soul is barren, black.
The call, the curse, the craving, drags me down.
I feel, but never fight it; my attack
Is punishment and payment for a crown.
They huddle, heaped in misery, my pets,
Too pitiful, too dreary to describe,
And in their terror every fool forgets
I walked here once, the father of their tribe.
A sacrifice. They leave him, lost, alone,
Condemned to face a shade they dare not see.
With every pulsing piece of meat, I moan,
Revolted by the man, the monster, me.
    Their king, renounced, in exile did not die.
    My heart, forever hungry, wonders why.

The Bitter Harvest

by Nick Gisburne

---

I pull my pain apart to stare inside,
To find the filthy canker at my core.
The sacrilege I smothered never died.
It swims beneath the surface, as before.
Oblivion was never meant for me,
No comfort for a cold, malicious mind.
I am, I was, I will forever be
Infected by the sickness I designed.
Tormented, an eternity of guilt
Awaits me, without clemency or care.
Imprisoned by the chains of blood I built,
I face my fate: depravity, despair.
    As God, I rule the universe alone,
    And reap the bitter harvest I have sown.

Black Oblivion

by Nick Gisburne

---

How strange. How insignificant. How small.
A swirl of sand, a drift of dirt, or dust.
I wonder, will you comprehend at all
The moment when I kill you, as I must?
You have no right, no tenure to this place,
No claim upon the planet you infect.
Be thankful, as you look upon my face,
For every precious wonder I protect.
The glories of the industry you built
Are nothing. Watch me wipe them all away.
Without the stain, the stink, of doubt or guilt,
I bring you black oblivion, today.
    Your gods are gone. They cannot help you here.
    Forsaken, feel your future disappear.