Cosmic Horror

Dressed in burnt sienna leather made from the skins of ashened drakes

Adorned in a celestial bronze cuirass and an imperial gold visor

Scented in tulip bulbs and drenched in willow whiskey starving for conflict 

Cryptids and chimeras whisper to you to not be so afraid of their dark embrace

With pupils that flicker like burning coal and grins that mimic their prey

Their camouflaged skin yearn to kiss the sweet warmth of the scorched sun 

So you wave your bone steel warhammer and fill their storm with laughter

You drunkenly hum a tune and confront fate’s inner sanctum and its library 

Infinite shelves full of artifacts from throughout mythological space-time

With Penrose stairs covered in an overflow of pendants, talismans, and patterned tattered texts and tomes 

And non-Euclidean clocks of all kinds tick away menacingly

With your stance readied and armed to defend the estate and your vault of tears 

As the clocks’ decrepit hands melt off the gnarled branches of cedar elms

You must search for the beast that formed from the unknown and the knowable amidst the cosmic horror

A misunderstood beast now understood that struggles to let themselves stay understood 

A beast with bad habits, shimmering claws, and ghastly fangs turned syringes filled with venom 

Yet you stand inert shifting through liminal spaces returning to dreamland and going earthbound

Experiencing worlds that speak to humanity’s deepest fears and bear the weight of the unsaid

A fake reality is like this beast who has formed through our cyclopean senses 

Digital abstractions determined by the unconscious and the subconscious

Whereas all sinuses become engulfed with vanilla and lavender 

You become overly obsessed with the beast’s prions and pheromones 

And how all its muscle tears and bone fractures fill with data and get grafted by silicon 

As its body aches to realize that pride is what ultimately caused your separation

Alas you are, but in reality, an oily, blackened vault 

A deranged vault that does not fear the grand depths of the ocean 

A misunderstood vault filled with indescribable secrets 

A vault that does not refuse to meet the sky’s reach but yet hesitates at space 

Those fears to be conquered by what remains in the form of this cosmic horror 

Which has left the estate in active decay and the vault drowning in salt and regret

© Niklen 4/5/26