The Tale of No One

The Tale of No One

~CANTO I: CREATION~
His dialogue with a devil:
“Please grant me a soul,”
The empty man said, not knowing if
He meant it, or even could, should, would.
He numbed himself beforehand, thoughts of Novocain
Real thoughts, too,
Dropping down the rabbit hole,
Replacing his soul, becoming No One
An Empty nobody without
A mask to crack- no Logos, Thymos, Eros
Just a ghost
A boogieman

~CANTO II: NO ONE~
My name is No One
I don't exist
I have no heart
I have no soul
Yet here I am
An empty king
Speaking with a voice.

Were things different once?
We might never know.
I suppose someday soon
The Hero will see me too,
But until then
I think I'll stay right here;
In a lifeless dream.

~CANTO III: THE HERO~
No One calls my name
It echoes through the day
Under the moon No One whispers
“It’s all the same.”

I think he might exist,
That someday has come.
He hunts for me,
He yearns to eat
The lost sheep’s dream.

I can see him now
And so can you,
Your lack of dreams
A key to see his misery.
But No One rides away;
He doesn’t stay.
Help me find No One
Before he takes my name

~CANTO IV: THE EMPTIES~
A for anarchy,
A world full of sin
Doubly distraught and disgusted
The Hero sailed away
While in his wake,
No One’s Empties waved goodbye,
Went on their hollow way
To a Widowed Wednesday
Dragging down the world,
Eating the lost sheep and their fold.
They are the dreamers who sold their souls,
Hiding behind faceless masks.
Greedy greedy, and gimme gimme is their
Hollow motto waving on a black lamb’s
Wool flag, written in tar.

~CANTO V: DREAMSCAPE~
No One, No One! The Faceless King
Into his world forthright,
His world lacking in light.
The hero descends into a forever
Negative space, negative aurora
And shades of gray
To fend for the undeserving world
Plagued by thoughtless words, no laughter
A place he doesn’t want.

He fights for the dreamscape, too
His new home, his real home
No One’s world
A fight he cannot win
For a place that is not his
A land endangered by the Boogieman
A tyrant, a self-gratifying thing that eats
Subject after subject
In a never ending cycle
Two halves to a whole.
When and where can the Hero be
Content?

~CANTO VI: HERO’S SELF EULOGY~
I lost my joy
When I lost my way
As nothingness I descended
Fed off the dreams of those
I did not know
I could not wish myself
Out of the mental pit
I dug with thought
Without a thought
A sense
Of right, a sense of wrong
Only a thought
From outside the box
Could drag me, force me back
To my belittled reality

~CANTO VII: THE FALL~
Chaos, chaos, chaos
So falls the unnamed hero
Against No One, King of The Empties
The claimer of the hero’s name
In a landscape of dreams with
Dark and dingy dollops of
Drastically disturbed dementia
That flower the fields of abandoned
Shells once human but now “empty,”
Abandoned humanity part of the calling card;
And now do any of the dreamers survive,
With which for No One to feed?
They are all gone, and the Oogie Boogie
Must now, after the hero, lay
Himself to rest once more until
He can feed on the filled shells
Of the dreamers of his world