The Mirage Machine by Lord Bechard
The Mirage Machine
I. The Spark Beneath the Skull
In the temple of bone where the neurons hum,
Where the pulse of eternity softly drums,
There stirs a storm, unseen but bright—
A prism birthed from the absence of light.
A whisper crawls through synaptic seas:
"Suffer not from the world, but from your dreams."
And lo! the fabric of reason tears,
Spilling colors that never were there.
The mind begins its mirrored climb,
Through the fractal folds of thought and time,
Where nightmare, memory, myth, and muse
Collide like gods with no excuse.
II. The Kingdom of What-If
The dream unfurls—electric vines,
A thousand worlds in tangled lines,
Each one born of an anxious spark,
A rumor blooming in the dark.
There—castles built from phantom fears,
Their bricks are made of unseen tears,
Where kings of doubt wear crowns of smoke,
And laughter burns where silence spoke.
The rivers flow with thoughts untrue,
Reflecting skies of borrowed blue,
And every tree bears fruit of dread,
That feeds the ghosts inside your head.
O kingdom vast! O mirror made!
By our own hand, by our own blade,
We forge the iron of despair,
And breathe illusions into air.
III. The Dream Architect
Upon the horizon—a figure stands,
Blueprints drawn in trembling hands,
A weaver of what-might-have-been,
The maker of pain that’s never seen.
He murmurs in pulses, soft, divine:
"I am your fear. You are my spine.
I borrow flesh from your belief,
I am the shadow of your grief."
He bends the cosmos with his art,
Each thought a universe torn apart,
And from imagination’s womb,
He builds the walls that become our tomb.
IV. The Shattering
Then lightning struck the mental veil,
And truth rode through on a solar gale—
A comet voice of clarity spoke:
"The cage you fear is your own smoke."
Galaxies cracked, the dream was torn,
The mirage collapsed where it was born.
The endless suffering, all so grand,
Melted to sand in my open hand.
The serpent of panic hissed and fell,
Dissolved beneath a golden bell,
And silence—pure, unbound, complete—
Kissed the dust beneath my feet.
V. The Awakening Beyond Thought
I rose through the rippling, radiant field,
Where the wounds of imagination healed,
Where every monster’s face revealed
The frightened child it tried to conceal.
Each doubt became a blooming sun,
Each fear—a truth already won,
And the void, no longer black and vast,
Sang: “The future’s fiction, not forecast.”
Through starlit corridors of mind,
I left my old self far behind,
The dreamer woke within the dream,
And drank from time’s kaleidoscope stream.
VI. The Return to Flesh
Back in the skull-cave—breathing, still,
The heart resumed its subtle will,
And all the chaos, all the flame,
Were fragments dancing in my name.
Reality sat, serene and mild,
Like a mother watching her restless child.
And I laughed, I wept, I finally knew—
The worst I feared was never true.
For imagination is both sword and key,
The chain, the fire, the alchemy—
It wounds, it heals, it blinds, it frees,
It’s hell, it’s art, it’s divinity.
VII. The Final Flame
Now, when darkness claims my sight,
I paint the void in liquid light.
No longer slave to phantom pain,
I dance with madness in the rain.
For Seneca’s voice still hums in me:
"Suffer not from reality,
But from the mind’s own masquerade—
A phantom war the heart has made."
So I breathe in peace, exhale the lie,
And wink at the stars in the knowing sky,
For imagination’s not my chain—
It’s just the mirror of my brain.
And when it breaks, I clearly see:
The dream was never over me.
Listen to The Episode
Listen to the Mirage Machine on the Poetic Flows podcast
