Harken and Behold, You Damned!

I'm aflame like a wildfire.

The Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder| Oil-on-panel.

[Entry for Aurelian Ashmore's Submit Your Demon]

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I am that I am,
The Prince, the head of the spear.
And here I crouch, 
Never do I cower,
I wait,
I scream in whispers
Not in rage, nor in restiveness—
You don't know my calm,
You don't know my patience.
I scream 
So you harken,
But you pretend you don't. 
You behold me 
dazzling in your greed,
Selfish in your love, 
Mindless in your loath 
Careless in your desire.
In your revenge,
I'm aflame like a wildfire
In your narcissism, who tops me?
In your fascism, who stops me?—
I have all sorts for you 
in my inventory. 
You know me,
Know me well enough. 
But you pretend you don't;
You fear me, 
Lest the abode of your kind
Should be pulverized
Like Hiroshima, like Nagasaki—
My masterpiece.
Like my unfinished business,
The Holocaust,
Cuban Missile Crisis.
The fallout, the nuclear winter,
Your decadence
Nourish me, 
Nourish us—
My very own kind.

I am you, and you are me—
When you want you to know me
To really know me;
When you want them to know me
To really know you;
When they want you to know them
To really know me. 
I am them, they are me. 
I am in all of you,
And when I take over,
You are all of me. 
My banishment is your banishment.
When I fell from grace,
So did you. 
When I fed you the fruit,
You ate.
The great insult shall be persecuted 
in our hands—
In mine, in yours,
In the mask of benevolence
That you will wear.
And I hope
Evil be upon you,
And an eternal damnation
be upon mankind. 
For you're neither man nor kind,
When my spectres possess you.

The shackles of your silly morals 
And fatuous ideology
Cannot hold me.
All I need is a spark, a cue,
A Helen of Troy,
a veering vantage point 
To break free. 
How long can you hold me?
How many of you 
Can hold me?
Haven't you heard stories?
John Wayne Gacy,
Ted Bundy,
The Son of Sam,
Vlad the Impaler,
Judge Holden?
I claim my space in them with ease,
carouse and roam free. 

I prevail since your ushering seeds,
And my prowess multiplied manifold
With your modernity's subtlety.
You call yourself humans?
The creation of all creations?
Because you built edifices, 
you think you left the jungle?
You are just another incarnation 
Of ferocity,
Its most uncontaminated manifestation. 
You are the worst of them all,
Because I reside only in you,
For your benefits and mine,
You and I can obliterate them all.

But, how dare you challenge me,
You mortal creatures!
How dare 'you all' 
not sell your souls to me,
But only many of you!
So,
you harken and behold,
You harken and behold real good—
What mayhem lies in my fists,
Even without the whole of you. 

So, follow the path I show you,
The path to earthen heaven,
The path to ethereal hell,
The path some of you took,
Others forsook. 
Choice is yours—
Shackle or Shatter.
But remember,
The bad sleep well, in comfort
Covered In the blanket 
of their own sins.