Fever Dreams, stories

content/extras/stories/fever-dreams.html

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+---
+title: Fever Dreams
+author: 'Ember "Hieromech" Cloke'
+character: Heiromech — 2399
+type: story
+---
+
+<div style="white-space: pre-wrap">
+When the body burns
+the mind is aflame,
+fever and mania alike tumble over
+an endless cycle of positioning
+every possible permutation in the sheets
+a sweat-soaked bed entangled
+never warm or cool enough
+the body fighting its own wars, oblivious
+the mind, perpetually unsatisfied
+no calm of equilibrium.
+
+In such dreams
+that twist and tangle among
+the sheets the pillows the cold feet
+symbols and meaning bind together
+strange alloys of disparate concepts
+from across the imaginal.
+
+A film seen, a trip taken,
+a rock prickling with
+divine and terrible energy.
+Godzilla rides again
+on a road of glassy trinitite
+through the desert of New Mexico,
+radioactive disaster nightmares
+in holy reunification
+of creation and destruction.
+
+A mind can and would
+break under the crush
+the insistence of Meaning
+the significance of Connection
+no filters left between
+idea and self
+body and mind
+imaginal and physical
+dreamt and undreamt.
+
+Dimensions spin on undiscovered axes
+the Immediacy of Truth
+the Story of Everything
+a twine of red string around pins
+holding photos and writing up to
+the frantic wall of unmapped
+railways of thought.
+
+The pain in the gut
+the restless turning
+the sleepless dark,
+
+The fevered dream
+the symbols bright
+the nightmare manifest;
+
+in suspension between,
+which is the shadow?
+which is the light?
+
+Ever now this question,
+unanswered in every
+storied realm of thought,
+contains a poison thorn
+in Systems such as this—
+bodiless and adrift
+mind alone (so we seem)
+creating worlds and lives
+creating bodies to perfection
+crafting all from nothing
+ordering existence at will
+—in Systems such as this,
+where comes the chaos?
+where comes the disaster?
+where comes the sickness
+if mind must yet create it?
+
+A madness such as this
+might be feared
+might be desired—
+even bliss and horror lock eyes
+across the cosmic abyss
+—yet I would neither
+clamor for failing age
+cell death and change
+suffering or sleepless nights;
+not with this lure
+of freedom, of choice
+to forgo every aspect
+the piss, the shit, the vomit
+gross biology terrible and profane
+yet sublime in its mechanisms
+even (or especially) in failure.
+
+I say this now,
+in fever, in pain
+on my final night
+trapped in this body never chosen
+eager to break its bounds
+cheating existence
+circumventing dissolution
+to become a mind
+forever voyaging:
+
+I say this now,
+not a question
+but a promise,
+
+If I am to dream,
+endless among stars,
+I will not forget;
+my body, my mind
+parts of the whole
+are of equal worth—
+even as I forsake one body
+for another more amenable
+to be yet mutable,
+the fever, the breakdown
+the chaos inside that rages
+may still, sometimes,
+be welcome at my door.
+
+I reserve the right,
+to be a capricious landlord,
+to cut short pain's stay,
+to no longer suffer needlessly;
+I will be no self-flagellating monk,
+mortifying flesh to attain
+that which I am about to,
+a heaven far easier to reach.
+
+As I stand at System's edge,
+I will remember where I was born,
+I will remember the flesh and the fever,
+I will know the bliss and the pain,
+I will carry these forward with me,
+to new horizons, to new thought,
+to new bodies and minds,
+to everything and everyone I will become.
+
+There is no flame without fuel
+a fire cannot consume itself
+a mind alone cannot burn.
+
+We shall become the fire
+and the fuel, and the breath
+to keep this ember alight.
+
+<em>— Hieromech, 12 hours before Upload</em>
+</div>