Incantation Against Evil Spirits

M. Andre Vancrown

“Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."
—Occam's Razor

"It is vain to do with fewer what requires more."
—Karl Menger's Law Against Miserliness

To defy their condemnation,

we moan like wolf-chewed skulls in the wind,

each eye, a socketed ruby,

each tooth, filed to a razor-wire edge,

so that our bite slices clean through flesh,

pierces in proportion to our hollow outer shells,

severs our writhing, multiplying tongues,

until we salivate and gag

under each mouthful of worms

we're forced to endure, and consume

and digest.

One day soon this Machine-god will twine

its wires round our ruddy, pinched flesh,

by a simple process of elimination

it will select us,

and when we are gone,

it will rage at our lack of endurance,

perhaps reinvent us in its own image,

subject our ghosts to a full spectral analysis,

like sunspots to a palpebral shutter,

or molten silver dollars, reforged

into a lusterless, lingering conformity.