Pressure pierces my eyes
ventured into the stone
descent never cold, never dark, perpetually in croaking gray
Gerem Ratzutz Alei Arafel La-tehom
A drop swallowed by void’s greedy lips
Golesh, Ruachi Akura, Avdan La-ad.
I have sacrificed nights drenched in beads
never purged from my coil
The obsession to be the chosen one
perhaps found in the stones prodding
in my fingers,
or the image of the stone I had to find
in my cortexes,
that make the wet edge of every step undulate
So much blood spilled,
in the hope to climb these stairs,
whirling into a delusion called stability.
I crash, but I never land,
aching like all the rest who tried.
Graaaaalck! Snapping of every bone,
the atmospheric frequencies abrade the skin
reveling in having lost itself,
curled, melted, and peeled from me
Gevia Roggiol Afel, Alei La-tehom!
I never should have received Samael’s gift!
Descending, I catch the scent of my brothers.
They flow along the edges—red now—meeting my rage,
blurring the burn of flesh against stone.
At the mercy of this grievous gravity,
oblivious to the goal, otoliths dazed.
In enantiodromia the circle bleeds back along its own bruised track
its genesis outrun, the screaming spiral tears wide open
Gorey jetsam of the divine, tumbling down the laughter of this cave
I, but a clod of earth falling with dull thuds into this visceral mud,
exposed muscles bounce in the toothed spiral
Short shrift of negative solace for the king of Salem
Vertigo is the fingertips of Elohim that trace along the spinal fluid
It is a pleasure forbidden to me, I now dry, devoid of the water that makes me human
Righteousness is the thirst disguised as light.
In this stone throat I am a spec in a chasm of nonexistence.
Garon Ra'av Avadon La-netzach
Consciousness lost pulp pounding stone,
Recalling roaring laugh, ultimate high.
— 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, the latter available in English, and in 2019 he released his first comic, CFBT, a cyberpunk thriller trilogy. Currently, he serves as fiction editor for the literary magazine Blood+Honey while publishing in Don’t Submit, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, Expat Press among other magazines, with additional work forthcoming. 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.