We see but cannot see
We hear but cannot hear
What we face with our senses is the purest illusion
Transmissions from a realm of the unknowable

All is filtered through the withered substrate
Of perceptions worn thin like gauze
Rotting through as a death-shroud
Stained with corpse-dust

When the last of us ceases to trust
All that is perceived, all that is known
All that is experienced
Where then for a mind that cracks free of its moorings?

To the maze of memory we thus retreat
Inwards and downwards
To the fog of time long dead
And the straining patterns that fail to contain
Things once known
THings once seen and felt and feared and ignored

Once again, we turn away and deny

Echoes reverberate in a chaotic mire of
Unreasoning
Again... and again... etched in decaying blood
Reverberating in flesh and spoiled
By the crushing, glacial cascade of the hourglass

We lie to ourselves
Crushed by the benediction of our own
Weakness
As we age and fail,
Tendrils of betrayal a final prison