A DEMON RESIDES within Chip’s soul . His mood flip–flops and the faint sound of wind chimes announce his appearances . Chip is a bushy black dog of questionable ancestry . One night on a walk ; dark forces awaken .

  Chip pulls the chain taut like sledding huskies, tail high, seemingly happy, but with Chip nothing is certain . Midnight nears, the Projects quiet : only the jangle of the dog tag in the night chill .

  Suddenly, infrasound vibrates through the chain, then swells into a ferocious growl . Chip wheels around in attack mode, fangs gnashing. Sensing danger behind, Chip fends off an ambushing dog pack .

*[ WSB ]_.

T

HIS WAS THE THIRD TIME . It blobs into the dimension medusa–like, not as amorphous, but still black as a clouded new moon .

  Anne knows this time she will not just think it away like before . The ooze strengthens with each incarnation . She senses determination, consciousness—before there was only unfocused malevolence .

  Anne assumes a stance of power, asserts, “ I’m not afraid of you, ” as the convolving tentacles fire. It snatches the child into its darkness .

  Years pass .

  Anne, amnesic, steps from the nor’easter blizzard shadows onto her moonlit yard . Home . Anne’s mind, now, has become the stronger of the two .

A

NNE DOES NOT RECALL ESCAPING the inconstant mass, a visible darkness connected to original Chaos . Notwithstanding amnesia, she feels a general uneasiness .

  Still, being Anne requires great resolve ; she will never be a little girl again . However, the name is all she remembers .

  Later though, she dreams of being hunted by something tearing through the night, unholy . It works quickly breaking through the barricades of her mind for entry, finally getting through . A single tear is all Anne has time for .

  Anne, inside the murkiness that disdains other agencies, locks hers away, the last vestige against the tightening dark arms .

B

UT THAT’S ALL OVER .

  A teenager in high school, Anne puts the lost time behind her, presses on, despite the occasional nightmares ; gets a boyfriend, social network, after–school activities .

  [ Thirty-nine lunar months ]

  The tentacles of darkness reappear with a vengeance, worldwide—the sun struggles to make day known . Anne surges with a feeling of oneness with the world .

  The showdown :

  The fight is apocalyptic­—a real Revelations light show . Earth is saved . The darkness is plunged back into the Chaos manifold . Anne stops glowing .

  Later, Anne muses why the monster wanted out of the Night–Time in the first place .

T

HE AMORPHOUS, QUANTUM IOTA pulses expectant like the opening measure of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the crescendo surely to come . The choral explosion carries creation still . Joyous, but furious, the harmony of the spheres cycle through the four movements . The falling strains in the finale signal a reset to atonality .

*[ WSB ]_.

Autumn equinox :
The black cats form a circle,
The Mabon moon large .
In the starry carousel
Brooms dust the harvest heavens .

In the past was a man named Abraham
Who puzzled why many gave not a damn
Respecting each person’s soul .
And to keep America whole,
Lincoln freed all the slaves of Uncle Sam .

Skimming over Neptune and
Looping into the ecliptic shadow,
The geometry of Triton encounter
Determines the final trajectory
Away from the solar world,
Deep towards the constellation
Pavo . It is likely no other star
Will be encountered in a hurl
Into the deep end of spacetime .

.   .   .

The last of the stars extinguish,
Blackholes flash and evaporate,
And as the longest wavelengths
Of light stretch in the expansion,
The matter constituting artifice
Fades into the cold, dead cosmos .
The monotone hum of interstellar
Space simmers into silence,
All is calm and nothing is bright .