words are all I ever had to offer the phantasmagoric expressions of dreams and delusions fit for no ears under the sun tendered to trees, men and machines my words voiced, contemplated, inscribed the applause of empty audiences deserved the clapping and cheering of the absent still I fancied myself powerful for my memories of things esoteric ancient and obscure, born of lifetimes beyond those of others momentous even! in my command of the shadows the sortilege of my incantations the bravado of my conjectures but impertinence it was! insolence for I am but an inconsequential messiah gifted with prognostications of frivolity in a world of the pragmatic and industrious a harbinger of barren outcomes and I thrashed and writhed in the depths of my irrelevance half the world indifferent to me the other absurdly accomodating but barely a ripple I created in the vast ocean of banality where the brightest sparks merely glitter like dying embers and from the depths of my anguish a gem, a discovery the world to remake that no sooner would see the daylight than be snuffed under the sands of time a triumph stillborn, an opus magnum snatched from my grasp by the turbulence of a quickly fading, degenerate civilisation that angels turn their faces from [2-III-2020]