The Empire of Neon

 

Over the dark hill the sullen lamp-posts march

Extending the frontiers of the Empire into the vast beyond,

Slashing at the soft flesh of Night with their cold steel blades

Till the red blood runs down her face

(I can see on the horizon her red blood flowing

As my head is filled with her stifled screams).

The lamposts march ever onwards

Bearing the standard of Neon

The false god that never sleeps

His eye forever open on a barren world

And cold: the gaze of living death.

His soldiers swarm over the green fields

Pile-drivers hammer holes into the soft earth

Turning this valley of dreams into a concrete dustbowl

Building new temples to the modern God.

His great engines whirr into action

Screaming "Forget the Past

Everything old and eternal ignore

I am the Present: there is no other time."

And the Earth screams, but you cannot hear her.

And the stars shine on, but you can no longer see them.

And what sounds like a wolf howls disconsolately,

But it is only a bored guard dog,

For the forests are all fallen and the wolves are gone,

And a man can walk home alone at night and fear

Only his fellow men

While a woman would not dare to walk home alone.

In the Empire of Neon

Fear is the Emperor's hound

That walks beside him always, ears erect

And growls at the slightest sound

That is not made by a machine.