/The failure of the simplest actions/
/Reflects life’s self-denial./
//He who leaves his own limbs limp,//
//Unable to connect the fleshy curse to cogitation,//
//Denies his body’s extension to cold, real objects///
///And transcends ancestral shame. He///
///Is magister at estranging from the plane of violence,///
////Yet inept, abhorring instinct’s grinding congress—////
////Genetic poppy sap soothes the sapience////
/////Manifesting in memes the clumsiness of evolution./////
/////Alkaloid forces dictating thought, behavior, action/////
//////Fail when pessimism seeps into the lazy.//////
//////Our lives’ meaning granted by this data-driven hard drive,//////
///////A living phoné whose slightest glitch births emotions.///////
///////When poppy dissolves in mind,///////
////////This flower of evil blooms,////////
////////Ripening in a single cry sending arms aloft,////////
/////////Blind, stretching being into realization/////////
/////////That flawed consciousness festers like plague://///////
//////////No difference between puppet strings and random instructions//////////
//////////Dictated by heroine of noemes, lie of the individual.//////////Sightless, we cast ourselves onto the sands of time,Shifting grains with our own scratches,Perishing before the cosmic storm rolls them into place.
— Born in Naples in 1997, Cristiano Cardone writes what allows him to explore eerie, unsettling territories. He has published two novels, Fecola di Neve and Etimasia, and in 2019 released his first comic, CFBT, a cyberpunk thriller trilogy. Currently, he serves as fiction editor for the literary magazine Blood+Honey while publishing short stories in Don’t Submit, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, The Pixelated Shroud among other magazines, with additional work forthcoming. His next novel is scheduled for release in late 2025. After earning his BS in Literature in 2019, Cardone relocated to Norway, where he completed an MS in Ibsen Studies in 2021. He now works as a librarian while finishing a second master’s degree in Library and Information Sciences at OsloMet.