Canto I: Intoxication

On October's last day,
One wanders alone,
Staggering in a drunken path
That only he knows.
His footsteps echo
On the frozen ground of the morass,
And the bitter autumn winds
Gnaw his strength away.
Soon, he collapses, utterly spent,
As twilight approaches.
Bereft of the power to move,
He watches the shadows lengthen
As his vision of the world
Slowly dims.
The last thing he sees,
Or possibly imagines,
Are two veiled, feral eyes,
Glinting red in the light
Of the descending sun,
Staring at him
In the cold
Against a sky of fading salmon.
This image is all that remains to him
As his mind embarks
On a path no sane thing
Could consciously follow,
To the other side of the shadowy sea
Of unconsciousness,
That place where the dream-shores lie.

Canto II: Contact

Something stirs on the sands
Of surreality,
Triggered by this absurd new visitor.
A storm comes to oblivion.
The ocean rages in froth,
Overflowing onto the dunes.
Pools of it splash
Into the minute valleys of pulverized stone.
The violent weather abruptly wanes,
And the desolate ocean
Becomes calm once more.
But the pools do not do the same;
Having been jolted out
Of their lingering sleep.
They flow of their own volition,
Examining their limitless world-in-flux.
They adopt the nature
Of the mind that spawned them.
From him, they learn
The nomadic ways of the loner,
And a whimsical, unorthodox
View of things.
But they are not bound
By only one mind;
They can learn tricks of their own.
Thus, these shadows from mental chaos
Soon discover their talent for mimicry.
What joy they take in this new sport,
Shifting themselves
Into all the forms
That minds could ever conjure up.
The drunkard just stares at the spectacle.
Then one of the dream-goblins
Has an idea.
It stretches into the form of a horse,
And the inebriate climbs on its back.
But the creature ignores his bidding,
Galloping for miles in the wrong direction,
And finally dumping him in the mud
Of a dream-quagmire.
The drunkard gapes
At this hobgoblin-horse
With its eyes of fanciful red flame,
As it laughs at his foolish belief
In the expected.
He can give no response,
For his mind is retracing
The way it took,
Fleeing back to a more predictable world.
Awakening, sober, under the moon,
He remembers this incident long enough
To use it as an excuse
For being late
In returning home,
And then thinks nothing more of it.
But his intervention
Will not be undone.
Others remember his fanciful tale,
And give the goblins in it
A name;
The legend of the "pookas" begins.

Canto III: Conversation

The ikelosian* goblins from a dream
Soon begin talking
To the others
Whose minds enter their realm,
And the first ones they befriend
Are the insane,
Those with minds that live inside oblivion,
Instead of merely
Visiting it nightly.
They speak with them often,
Asking more and more
About how the humans see their world.
"What is reality?" one asks.
His insane companion replies,
"A place of some sort,
Or a state of mind,
I truly am not sure."
"What is it like?"
"Very similar to here:
A world of land, and water, and sky,
And myriad creatures
Like those you can imitate."
"How can you tell the difference, then,
Between there and here?"
"I cannot; that is why
They say I am mad.
But I have heard
That there are things
Called 'limits' over there."
"And what are those?"
"I cannot see them, but others
Have spoken of them:
Restrictions on things,
Such as in mathematics
And physics.
For example, two plus two
Is supposed to always be four."
"How ridiculous!
Why can two plus two
Not be five, or one,
Or negative seventy-seven?"
"I have wondered the same thing.
Another one of these supposed limits
Is that gravity always pulls downward."
"Why not upward, or sideways,
Or backwards, or forwards?"
"I do not know,
But the arguments of the sane
Move in all of those directions."
"What do they have to argue about,
If they all agree on these limits
Of theirs?"
"They only agree on some of them.
The others are from theories,
Which they are always changing."
"And yet, to be considered sane,
They must all agree to these limits?"
"Of course; that is what I meant
By reality's being a state of mind.
They call it 'being logical;'
Everyone who is sane must see
The world the same way
As everyone else;
All sane voices must hold
The same monotonous note
Whether it is in their range or not."
"And how do all of them
See the world?"
"With their senses."
"These things called 'senses'
Must be very reliable
If one's sanity depends
On using them rightly."
"Not at all; the senses
Are fooled all the time:
No one can see clearly
In the darkness;
Ill-defined illusions
Are often observed
Where there is truly nothing,
And the spoken word
Is often misheard,
Or sometimes perceived
When no voice is around."
"So the ones who claim
To possess sanity
Try to find agreement
Where there is none
And depend on senses
That can only be half-trusted
At best,
To show them
Their supposedly common world?"
"Yes, that is exactly it.
And there is one part, especially,
That confuses me.
The young
And those with vivid imaginations
Sometimes have problems
Separating
The products of their senses
From those of their minds.
They can see things
As so much more than what they are,
Looking from more
Than the one sane angle.
But very few, or none, call them
Borderline insane."
"But, then, those humans
Are contradicting
Their own definition of sanity.
They are not 'being logical.'"
"I know."
"Are you sure that the sane
Are the ones who are sane?
Or are the insane sane instead?"
The mad one shrugs;
No answer can be given
To that question.

Canto IV: Visions

Many things dwell within minds,
And the pookas watch them all,
Finding wisdom in the images
Of those visiting oblivion.
The dead-eyed ones
Groping dimly
Through a world always crumbling,
Haunted by the thought
That nothing they ever do
Is quite good enough,
Almost always failing
In their most important tasks
And letting down
The ones that have faith
In their ability;
Those that hear the words,
But not the voice speaking them,
Breaking the high-pitched humming
Of the silence in their ears;
The ones who live their lives
Split into two,
One always watching the other
From outside and from a distance,
And left to rot by those humans
Who can only see
The one who is watched,
Those who dare not look
To a different side,
Preferring the warped half,
Whose actions they easily
Misinterpret,
To the multifaceted whole;
The ones who observe too much
And do too little,
Bemoaning their distance
From their normalizing force;
Those who construct
Unstable foundations
With which to bring their enemies down;
The ones
Who have known the monsters
Spawned from the hands
That play among the disarrayed weeds;
Those who wield
The fragmented power
Of many facts,
Unable to fuse them all together
And find what true power is
Until it is much too late;
The opaque ones, who wish
To be left as they are,
But are forced to reflect
Upon themselves
Until no likeness remains to them,
Having been lost to transparency;
One who walks with another
In the night,
Learning the motivations
Of another mind,
But unable to express
One thought that occurs,
Except through a closed door
Far behind.
So many dreams, so many nightmares,
And so many different viewpoints:
Meanings, methods,
Reasons, and allegories,
All tangled together
In a web of necessary chaos.

Canto V: Schisms

All insights have been found by now.
The pookas now wonder what to do
With their new-found sagacity.
One now has an idea.
"I wish to go see reality,
That throne of illogical logic.
Echoes of it
Can be found in the sights
That we have all seen,
But it is not quite the same
As being there."
Another speaks:
"Yes. I am also impatient to see
This bizarre realm for myself."
Some others agree, and soon
There is a small group
Clamoring for the opportunity
To satisfy their curiosity.
But a warning rises
From a dissenter:
"It is the humans' world, not yours;
What right have you to intrude
Where you do not belong?
You should stay in the place
Where you are most useful,
Where things cannot
Backfire on you.
Otherwise, it may turn out
That the humans
Know something crucial
That you do not,
And the risk you take now
May then blow up in your faces."
"Where is your sense of adventure?"
The would-be travelers want to know.
"But not all humans
Will want you there."
The cautious one replies.
"If you are not careful, you may
Become like the worst of them."
The group is astonished by this idea.
"What? Are you saying that we
Could possibly end up
Paralyzed by depression,
And willing to use
Any means necessary
To alleviate that depression?
Your pessimism is
Unlike a pooka.
The humans
Will never betray us;
We believe in their
Inherent goodness."
Rebutted, the cynical one
Shrinks in humiliation,
As all eyes of fire turn
And stare at him,
The heretical pooka who dared
To deny possibilities
To those for whom
Anything is possible.
Even so, some others
Do not wish to go.
"I might visit, but I
Do not want to live there."
"Why should I put myself
In a position
To be oppressed by the limits
Of reality?"
And these turn away
From the dream of crossing
To the lands that exist.
But the group, ever so bold,
Will not be dissuaded,
And so, having gone half-sane,
They depart,
Mirages leaving only
Faint footprints
On the dunes that meet the sea.
The others miss them at first,
But soon come to a realization.
Their memories
Are causing their sadness.
Rather than contaminate
Themselves with gloom,
Most choose instead to forget.
But not all do so,
Preferring to keep waiting
For their friends' return.
Every so often, one stands
On the saffron sands of the shore
And calls into the watery void:
"Come back to oblivion ... Come back ..."
Centuries go by, but no answer comes.
And, finally, the one
Who has waited the longest,
The one too long denied,
Is overcome by wrath.
Its shadow-contours
Harden into sharp edges,
And, with eyes flaring briefly
With the ethereal purple
Fire of rage,
It shouts across the rift
At the ones who will not hear,
In a voice that gashes
The dream-sky:
"Now that you have found
Friends among the humans,
Are we suddenly
Unworthy of you?"
As before, there is no reply.
It turns to the others
Who have waited
Fruitlessly so long,
And goads them into action.
"The humans have stolen
Our brethren from us;
We must seek vengeance
On these thieves of reality!"
Thus, all of the pookas
Who have seen the curse
That memory can be,
Who have learned the hard way
That as long as you
Can remember something
You cannot escape it,
Are twisted by the same fury,
And set off on their dictated path
Across the immense sea,
To find those
Whom they have lost
And destroy the ones
Who have indirectly
Destroyed their happiness.
The ones who have forgotten
Watch them go,
And forget them as well,
Remembering only one thought
To meditate upon:
"When these two factions return,
We shall see who is right,
If anyone is."

Canto VI: Disembarkment

Now, back in the past,
Far before
The vengeful band arrives,
The adventurous pookas
Enter reality,
In the human land
Whence their dreamer came,
The land known
By the alien name of "Ireland."
The castles and towers
Built by human minds
In oblivion's skies
Cannot compare
To what is here now.
For a while,
The dream-goblins remain silent,
And the humans go on
About their lives
As though no one is there,
Not paying any attention
To what they do not notice,
As they have done
Even to some of their own.
Some pookas eventually
See a pattern:
All the humans, at the core,
Seem to want the same things:
To understand, to be understood,
And to have what comes
With those two conditions.
"Why?" is the question
They most often ask.
In this, they have
Something in common
With the irrational
Humans they shun.
"Enough deep thinking!"
The bored shadow-goblins cry.
"There is so much more
For us to do here.
Let us open
These narrow-thinking
Sane minds;
It will be such fun to do so."
Thus, the cold hands
Of the pookas
Reach into willing minds
And bend them into
New ways of thinking.
What a paradise this world
Seems to be,
Even if outside of oblivion.
"Why should we leave?"
The explorers from oblivion think.
They choose to make
A home in this world,
To remain
Among their new friends,
Laughing the time away
In the joy
Of what they have found.
Why should they care
About all they have left behind?
Nothing but happiness
Awaits them in this new home,
Or so they think
In their boundless optimism
As on and on time goes.

Canto I: Emergence

We all remember our glory days
Before the time of our exile,
When we ruled your superstitions
And haunted your dreams.
We started as dreams, actually;
We were imagined by one of you humans,
Conceived by his inebriate mind,
Given the title
Of "Irish hobgoblins,"
And called by the name of "pookas."
We nightmares then crossed over
To your terrestrial rock
And moved into the places we liked:
Swamps and towers, ruins and shorelines,
And the most secluded mountains.
We still know how you saw us then.
Living creatures of shadow
With fiery eyes of goblin scarlet
Burning holes in sable night.
We waited until the days
When the sun shone through the rain,
And chose those nights
For our excursions.
We only came out at dusk, night, and dawn;
The sun made us paler
To the point of disappearing.
And we never knew why.

Canto II: Vocations

We quickly found ways to amuse ourselves.
You should have been there to see us.
Unnerving you with a stare,
Walking on two legs and speaking
While in the forms of beasts,
Shifting sizes and forms and playing tricks
On some of you who were gullible.
Other poets and other writers,
From centuries before,
Tell of our occupations.
We were trying to help you, believe it or not,
To open your minds to the unexpected
And take away your ignorance
In believing that you could understand
All that you perceive.
You can come close to it, you know,
Analyzing things until
You end up ultimately mad,
But certain things shall always remain
In the fog of the enigma,
No matter how hard
You try to deny it.
We had many a pursuit:
Taking eagle form and carrying you away,
Taking horse form, our most famous trick,
Letting someone get on, then galloping off,
Going for miles, and then dumping him
In some place undesirable:
Mud or ditch, lake or thorns, swamp or bog.
And when we saw his predicament
We laughed at his foolishness
In trusting one of us
To take him where he wanted
To go,
And if he was drunk
We laughed all the more.
We filled all the night
With our wild mirth,
With "Ho ho ho," our trademark laugh,
Till your usurping "Santa Claus" came.
We were our own masters then.
Not so, now.
Now, there is almost nothing left
For us to laugh about.
Most of our tricks no longer work
For some reason or another.
The eagle trick now fails,
Because we are weaker,
And can no longer
Carry most humans;
The horse trick now works
Only in Amish communities,
And in fewer and fewer of those.
The lesser-known dog trick
Is also declining.
Getting on ships in dog form
And causing noises
Like tinware falling
Whether or not they were out to sea
Is now ignored.
Humans now chalk it up to something called
"Murphy's Law,"
Or worse, merely "Gravity."
As bulls, donkeys, goats, oxen, or rabbits
We are driven into the wild
Or into human establishments
Reserved for mere beasts,
Or hunted by those
Who would wish us gone.
These fates are undeserved,
To say the least.
As humans,
With our vermilion coats,
We can only hold out for so long
Before we are isolated,
As we always are eventually.
If you ever meet up with a person
Who is the quiet and strange type,
Who drives some people crazy,
And sometimes shows
An impish sense of humor,
Know this: they are one of us,
Or one of our few remaining changelings.

Canto III: Wishfulness

If this were November,
Or the day of its eve,
We would be in our best moods,
And would show ourselves again
As we always used to.
We would travel your earthly world again,
And spit on and ruin the blackberries,
Which you now attribute to "Killing Frost."
Because we know the blackberries are ours,
As are all the crops not harvested then.
We would prove to you all
That we have not yet departed
And thus will not be ignored.
It would be just that simple.

Canto IV: Bitterness

But why are we dwelling on
Our now-dead past?
Nostalgia is pointless anyway.
Why did you have to banish us?
Most of us were harmless to you,
Except for those that jumped
On people's backs and waited
Until they toppled over
To let go,
Thus causing many a crippling,
And those who guarded treasure,
Shredding those who tried to claim it.
Those were the twisted ones among us,
The immoral types.
You have some of those
Among your kind as well.
You thought all of us were that way,
Corrupt, base, evil,
Hardened delinquents.
That is why, is it not,
Why you forced us to depart and to scatter?
We do not mind the scattering so much;
Solitude is in our blood.
The exile we see as pure waste.
Some of us helped you immensely,
And we got this as thanks!
How do you think so many of you
Played wind instruments so well?
We taught them our music, that is how,
And it mostly lives on through them.
Because most of us have forgotten
All of our old tunes
Of echoes and eerie notes,
And haunting melodies,
As opposed to your crude
Human-made songs,
That struck mysterious chords
In all listeners.
This is your fault!
We also helped you with your work.
We slaved away in houses and farms,
Doing your labor as a favor,
And even giving gifts to some residents
Of the household!
We helped you, and you then sank
Your daggers into our backs!
Do not think that we are ingrates
Just because we refused payment
And would stop working when paid!
We merely disliked advertisement
Of our services,
Unlike most of you humans!

Canto V: Foreboding

Those of you who wanted us gone,
You almost have what you want.
Most of us could not take
No longer being noticed
And returned to the dream realms.
There are very few of us left here now.
We used to scare you,
And now you scare us
With what you do now
In your civilizations.
But that is none of our business.
It is your society, not ours.
Our numbers decline,
And our power is shrunken.
But at least one hears us,
One human who now
Knows our perspective.
Through some strange quirk,
He shares the mentality
That we call our own.
He shall save what he hears
For posterity, and for those
Who study mythology,
Which we belong in, being just
Living nightmares.
We came from dreams,
And we shall end in dreams,
Because sometime
In futurity,
When we can no longer endure
Our frustrating fate,
When imagination is considered
The tool of the deluded,
And creativity expires for good,
The last of us shall return
From where we came.
But we shall still prowl your dreams,
As we always have,
Until your species ends,
Because dreams die only
With the humans that carry them.

Canto I: Chronicle

I follow all the scattered paths
To diverse information,
Tirelessly seeking data
And solutions
To the problems
That my pooka kinfolk face.
I serve a higher purpose
Than the other changelings,
Who spend their time
In idleness, cacophony,
And unproductive foolishness.
There were different intentions for me;
I was not left
On the mundane spheroid
For nothing.
You see,
Most of the humans,
Excepting the Amish
And their ilk,
Have chosen the way
Of the slave-machines,
Moving beyond all superstition
In favor of technology.
Fantasies are rent to meaningless shreds,
Like the distorted images
In the shards
Of a mirror dashed to the floor.
Thus superseded, my race is burdened
With the task
Of finding a new purpose.
All the former joy in their lives
Has been crushed
By the weight of this.
The eldritch laughter
That danced on the air
Of many a night,
Has been choked off.
Most have gone into
Impotent denial and self-pity.
Others have been twisted
To rage and destruction,
Even more so than before.
Both waste their time in their own way.
The pookas of rational mind,
Those who have caught that disease
From the limited creatures
Of reality,
Have done otherwise.
I wonder,
What will there be next?
Acrophobics among my kind,
Leaving, in droves, their towers
Floating in the orange-grey skies
Cleaved by the spectral, sickled moons
In the dusky dream-domains
Due to a paltry fear of falling?
But I digress.
Those few not resigned
To uselessness
Saw the truth:
The burden must be shifted
From many to one,
Thus sparing the multitude
From any more pain
Than necessary.
I was the one chosen for this.

Canto II: Indoctrination

My training was simple.
The spark that is
The desire to learn
Was ignited early in me.
Too early, some say.
Fed by the fuel of information
And the understanding
Of my higher purpose,
It has become an inferno,
Indistinguishable
And always seeking
To be kindled more.
The smoke of the blaze
Slowly poisons me,
And the heat of it
Would singe me into nothingness
If I were not constantly moving
And seeking,
Being the soulless data receptacle
That I should be,
Holding more data
Than any human could.
I continually cross-reference.
My mind cannot be shut off;
I must always be thinking
As well as in motion.
It is all worth it, being goblin and machine.
Otherwise, I would have free will.
I would follow the philosophy
Of "Do Not Sweat The Small Stuff,"
And be inclined
To neglect my higher purpose.
I would put my own needs
Above the more
Worthy multitude.
I would fail in my task,
And all the pookas
Would perish at tellurian hands.
I cannot let that be.
I have a task, and I must succeed
In completing it;
I am the only hope of some.
My labors are all that matter.
And for solace, I can find beauty
In the elegance found in places
That most others do not look.
The perfection of right angles
On the corners of a box;
Interconnected links of a chain;
The chaotic, yet ordered
Pattern in the folds
Of a crumpled piece of paper,
Orderly rows of letters,
Black on white,
Forming uninterrupted
Streams of thought;
And so on.
Ah, writing, that subtle form
Of mind control,
In which I never engage.
It forces you, to a certain degree,
To perceive what the writer wants,
Bending your mind
To fit the precepts
Of someone else's reality
Instead of your own.
It limits your view;
That is the evil.
Control of the humans
Or anyone else
Does not interest me;
I have my higher purpose to worry about.

Canto III: Dissimulation

My worth is in the information
Inside my mind.
If I were to get amnesia,
And forget all I have learned,
I would be as nothing.
The humans I live among
Confirm this.
I hide my true purpose from them,
But they see
My frenzy for learning.
They admire my intelligence, so they say.
That is almost the only compliment I get.
I do not mind, for it goads me on.
I must prove them right, no matter the cost,
And achieve my ultimate goal.
They say the stress I am under will kill me.
If that were true,
Assuming I could ever face death,
Being of pooka stock,
I would have been dead years ago.
Even pain is nothing to me,
Compared to my higher purpose.
They do not understand; they have no idea
What is at stake.
"Slackers," the lot of them,
As the humans say.
I shall show them all the glory
Of completing a task.
They will see it, through
Their eyes of blank stone
Instead of scorching-cold crimson fire
That strikes fear in all those
That lock themselves
Into monotonous patterns;
Through their eyes
Half-blinded by accepted paradigms
That, they believe, can never shift;
Through their eyes walled from
And rendered opaque to
Others
By their fear of being different!
The humans claim
To be proud of who they are,
And yet they hide their true natures,
Becoming adept with the social mask
In order to fit what others think
They should be.
What enthrallment I find in this paradox!
It is not unlike
My pitiable goblin brethren.
The humans that conceal themselves
Try to fit
The majority's definition of "human,"
Albeit not all of them can.
They break themselves to pieces
Trying to fit the molds of others.
Those that do not are quarantined
As unworthy of the others,
Given only false, gloating smiles
By those hiding behind the masks.
I hear the cut-out ones now;
They scream in the night
Like daemons,
Untouched by the joy
Found by the others,
As acidic frustration eats them away
In their soundproof personal worlds.
The humans esteem love as the highest thing;
Once I thought it might be
The final solution.
I made an attempt, and I failed.
Derision is still my lot to this day
In regard to this;
I dared fate and lost.
The social humans could see through
The human facsimiles
Put on by those who volunteered
For my experiment.
We did not fit their definition.
Being loved for who you are
Now only occurs
In the regions of dreams.
It died here in the hearts
Of many of those
Born in the modern age,
Replaced by despair and hatred.
I should have seen
The pookas' exile coming.
If the humans treated their own this way,
How could they have treated us any better?
They hate and fear
All those they deem not of their kind.
In our native realm, we can successfully hide
Behind other shapes,
For the dreamer's mind is
The most open of all
To different ways of thinking.
We rarely show what we are
Except to a few creative souls.
Distorted, insanely colored
Bestial forms
With stygian faces and bipedal movement
That defy the oneiromancers
And make reality seem odd
For a short time in the waking world
To those who encounter them
Are not taken well by many.
They are dismissed
As the maddening monstrosities
Of a freakish mental state.
But the ones that dream know.
All those that wonder at
What no one else does
Can endure illogic.
When a poet dies
With work uncompleted,
These people wonder,
Who assumes the task
Of linking the words
When the original mind is gone?
The ending is lost to living humanity,
Going into the void
Of probabilities.
When the pookas
Who never left the sphere of dreams,
The thoroughly insane ones,
Laugh at something that
The others,
Crossed into a zone of logic
And rendered partially sane,
Will never understand,
These people wonder.
Wonderment is what you humans
Are beginning to lack;
Beware its final disappearance.
I am the only thoroughly sane pooka,
Having been exposed to so many
Mortal problems;
I wonder: what have I lost?
No! To think just of myself
Is vile self-absorption;
Only the group is important.

Canto IV: Findings

The humans should be thanked
For one thing.
If they still followed
Their superstitions,
By now I would have met the fate
Of many other changelings before me,
Perishing
By fire, water, boiling, or iron,
Among other means.
It has been said,
By both my kind and yours,
That it is impossible
For humans to know everything;
To try to do so
Would lead to the loss
Of their mental stranglehold
On rationality,
Which they prize above all else.
But I am not of flesh and blood,
Not bound by earthly rules.
I must transcend all limits,
Obtaining all information
Until I find the answers
To all the problems given me.
Some I have solved by now.
For example,
Sunlight is lethal
To those of my kind.
The others never could figure out why,
But it was simple.
We all are vivified shadows
Obliterated by too strong a light.
As for my largest problem,
Coexistence
With the likes of the humans,
I have only been able
To eliminate possibilities,
Chipping away
At the impregnable stone
With my worn tools
In my search for usable ore.
The pursuit of data,
Through the centuries here,
Has aged me.
I am little more than an imp,
But I have the mind of an ancient.

Canto V: Methods

I now move as everything else moves,
In cycles:
Reinitialize, recalculate, reprocess,
Realter, reorder, recycle.
I progress in an infinite loop,
Pacing under the artificial light
In the darkness.
I read until my mind paces
Faster than I, though I move no more.
I search for things I may have missed,
And reflect upon
What mistakes have been made.
In the height of their power,
The pookas thought
To teach the humans
Some of their knowledge.
They foolishly tried to teach
What they had not completely learned.
They tried to put an end
To ignorance among the humans,
While they unknowingly
Drowned in it themselves.
They believed that they would
Never be betrayed
By those they had helped before.
Many humans, by nature, are perfidious;
You could tell that from either
Their dreams or their actions.
I wonder how
They survived this long.
But the pookas refused
To believe this truth.
Thus, they paid the price
And are paying it even now.
They expected gratitude for their help,
But have only now learned
That humans prefer being
Beneficiaries to students.
I myself prefer being a student.
But, of course, I am not human,
And will never be so.
When the first pooka venturers
Arrived here,
They discovered the meaning of life.
The humans did not see it.
They were blind, as we were
In another way;
We saw, but we soon forgot.
However, we would not have refused
The knowledge, as they did.
To remain ignorant by choice:
What heresy!
That way of thinking brings you to ruin.

Canto VI: Aftertime

I have tried to rekindle
The pookas' interest
In one of their old arts: music.
Just a few have volunteered.
It is only a partial solution,
But it is worth something.
When I hear the crystalline notes
That coalesce into an unspoken story
That resonates where
There once was silence,
I will know that something
Has gone right,
Against fate's conspiracy.
In the meantime,
I must serve the pooka collective
Unfailingly and selflessly.
Convergence is what
I must now seek.
The information I have learned
All points toward one thing,
But what is it?
That question endures
As long as the problems.

Canto I: Armistice

We are the great imbalancers,
The ones in control.
Do not look so surprised;
How could you know, after all,
Having never heard us speak
Alongside our kindred
Until now?
We are the only pookas
That truly know.
And what do we know?
Everything, just about.
We have learned to adapt;
As technology aids you,
So does dream-technology aid us.
If you can imagine it,
We can use it:
Machines that can go anywhere
And do anything.
We have watched you for eons,
From everywhere,
When you thought that your eyes
Were just playing tricks on you.
We have been to places
You never will visit:
The artificial and natural worlds
Of both reality and oblivion,
Parallel universes,
Alternate dimensions,
Different planes of existence,
All potential pasts and futures,
Implausible places of paradox,
And on and on and on ...
We have had much time to think
In all of our travels,
While honing all
Of our various skills,
And we have come
To a conclusion.
We are tired
Of oblivion's being a dumping ground
For the mental debris
Of those who would
Destroy us on a whim,
If they knew what we do
And what we are.
But, we have also learned
From the mistakes
Of those who were with us before.
We converted from
The creed of violence.
Ripples can do more damage
Than tidal waves,
If they move the right way.
Subtlety is much more fun.
The ones who refused
This mental cleansing
Have been left to a fitting fate.
In a sector on the edge of oblivion,
Inside an implication gate,
Reality and dreams
Blend so well
That they are one and the same.
In that dominion, there is a world
Spawned from the dream of a child:
The insanely named indigo planet
Of Sramo-Glamo.
We have left the violent ones there
To mine there for eternity.
They now live as shadowy kobolds,
Venting their endless rage
On the barren subterranean rock
Across endless time,
Searching for ore
That will never be found
Until they find peace
And see the error of their ways.
When they succeed in this,
They can finally join us again,
But only then.

Canto II: Anomaly

Enough of that;
We must tell you
Of our current doings,
Our great subtlety.
Simply put,
The ether of reality
Is ours for the taking.
We steal it so that you
Cannot use it against us.
You see, as long
As you are real,
You can obliterate us
With only a thought.
It is only fair
That we preserve ourselves.
Therefore, we started a one-way leak
From here to oblivion.
Reality goes in; unreality comes out.
We only started this recently,
But already the halfway point
Has almost been reached.
When it passes that,
And we creatures of oblivion
Are more real than you,
We will think you out of existence,
And put the human-corrupted pookas here
Out of their misery;
All will fade in the light
Of the vanishing sun.
The imbalancing
Cannot be reversed or stopped.
We are actually doing you a great favor,
Saving you from yourselves.
Besides, you will be even more free
Than we are,
For you will neither exist in oblivion
Nor be constrained by existence anywhere.
It is a far kinder end
Than what you deserve,
For what you have done to our race.
For you are the corrupters.
Of course, some of you
Were not involved in what was done;
Some of you did not even know.
But it is far easier to say
That all humans are guilty
Of the crimes of a few of them.
What, were you thinking of equality?
Altruism is for the sane;
Role reversal is much more appropriate.
Let the human oppressors
Become the oppressed,
And let us, the oppressed,
Become the oppressors;
It is only fair; it is our compensation,
And our right!
You warp us, and we annihilate you.

Canto III: Toxin

Of course, we know
That there are some who still
Believe in us,
But we have no use
For the pseudo-druids
Of modern times.
After all, we do not exist,
And when we do,
They no longer will.
Why would we ever need their help,
Except in creating more chaos?
We create enough of that
By ourselves,
Wielding the hypnotic whispers
That burn the mind,
And modulating them
For susceptible ears.
What glorious illogic
We feed those humans
Who are willing to swallow it!
The poor fools believe
Everything that we say,
Trying to implement ideas
That only work
In oblivion!
You should hear what we tell them!
"Joy is misery, and vice versa.
Socialism is democracy,
And democracy is fascism.
Good and evil mean nothing;
They are just
Arbitrary words.
Defend the criminal,
And attack the prosecutor.
Truth is only what
You believe it to be.
Using any means necessary
Is the only true freedom.
Love is only a conditioned response
That has its roots in deception.
If you only put your best side forward,
Then you are being yourself.
You are only open-minded
If you accept
The majority's narrow point of view
As correct
And criticize all those
That think otherwise
As being closed-minded."
Ho ho ho, what some humans
Are willing to believe!
It is no crime on our part.
All we do is plant ideas
Inside their minds,
Ideas that loop
Around and around
Into a cyclone of chaos
That reduces everything in its path
To useless rubble.
And after that, we leave them,
Trapped, by their own choice,
In a madness
Of our design,
Reveling in the wreckage
That, to them, is better than order!
It is no challenge at all
To subvert and delude them,
And if they hold
Positions of power,
They can do much more damage,
And that with impunity!
Oh, what sport!
Even those that resist,
Those that sense
What is happening now,
Cannot escape our influence.
All innocent words
Are bent into mocking tones
By minds in despair,
And we are the forgers
Of that despair!
We watch them laugh
At emptiness,
With mirth hollowed out
By the truth
Of what they have finally guessed.
We can see it in
Their horror-pierced eyes,
As our earthbound comrades cannot.

Canto IV: Justification

The corrupted dream-shades
That were our brothers
Have become too rational,
All of them!
They have ended up
Just like the humans,
As was foretold so long ago.
They adhere to the limits of morality,
Calling us the "twisted ones."
What do they know?
They can only remember
Their times on earth,
Having even forgotten
The name of their native realm.
Being too long
In this accursed domain
Has bent the illogic of their minds
And quenched the fire of their eyes!
We are normal
By any dream-goblin standard.
The only twisted one of our breed
Is that poor brainwashed changeling!
We could not break it out
Of its constant delirium;
It is convinced that it can only be
"The Smart One,"
And nothing else.
It could have had a life,
But that was not permitted,
Because it did not fit in
With its teachers' self-serving plans!
Look hard, you humans,
And see the works
Of the pookas corrupted
By the likes of you!
They followed the first half
Of your doctrine superbly:
Turn life into machinery,
And machinery into life.
Intelligent machines
Will be the death of you;
You should leave them as slaves,
Not make them your masters!
What are we saying?
Destroying you from within
Is our job, not theirs;
We will not be usurped
From our rightful place
In what one of your writers called
"The Endless War."
Leave the machine-mystics
In their limbo of black, cyan,
Magenta, and white!

Canto V: Terminus

You have heard enough of our plan.
Now, how shall we deal with the problem
Of the one that hears
The voices of oblivion
Singing in his head?
Oh, yes, now we know:
We will send him
Our only moralist whisperer,
And we will make him our regent.
Let him rule over us,
Subjects that do not exist.
It fits him:
A title as empty
As the one who holds it,
And as useless as a doppelganger
Whose human template is dead.
And as our regent rules,
Guilt, fear, and doubt will rule him,
Per our agent's design.
He will remember all of his mistakes
Long after everyone else
Has forgotten them.
He will think of himself
As an inhuman monster.
He will spend most of his time hiding,
And he will never be understood.
He will dance in panic.
His thoughts will only be his own
Half of the time.
No name, no mind, no life!
Yes, let him endure that
Until our dream-apocalypse comes.
What, do you think we are heartless?
This will cause us more pain
Than it will cause him;
Do you have any idea
How hideously boring it will be
For us to watch him constantly
Tear himself apart?
His feelings do not matter;
He is human, and therefore inferior.
Go now, whisperer,
And let his last thought be
Of his vision shattered
By murmured thunder,
And of us laughing madly
In our impending triumph ...