Poetry: Grandiose Mendacity (Ode to the Demiurge)

A new year, a new poem. Enjoy.

Grandiose Mendacity

(Ode to the Demiurge)

James D. McCallister

In a perfect fury of arrogant accumulated dishonesty

a nonmaterial patterning factor affecting matter

exists Forever in Saturn’s far-famed shadow

This superintelligent hyperobject craves 

submission from a future which controls the past

Examine this inanimate spectator of the spectacle

in whose metaphysical nihilism we call the world:

In an expressed interval of grotesque perfidy

it projects vacuous laughter into the silence

yet understands the role played by secrecy,

the theory and practice of concealment, while

interweaving unmeasurable temporality,

an otherworldly extravaganza of becoming

Descanting from a hollow empyrean throat

within the limits of its perilously dark womb,

the quintessence of this metalline vehemence

devises a science of evocations and reactions 

and grandiose humiliation for his creations,

testing their limits of adaptability and empathy

The grim necessity of unceasing human effort is

a liturgy into which all are born fully initiated into

a hidden principle of subtle yet total capitulation;

the consequences of His squalid mendacity will

matter only until the time when the sun bursts

(December 2024)