This collection of poems is the record of a descent into the neurotic maelstroms and infernal abysms of neoliberal hell. It is a confrontation with the spiritual desert of the 21st century and all the dim beings who dwell there, chasing shadows, afraid of their own shadows, and trying to hide in the fire. These poems inaugurate an archaeology of repression, diving uninhibitedly into the maladies of the contorted psyche. There we find a madness that denies its own existence as it burns down its house, poisoning the Earth with the fumes of its rapacity and narcissism. But in the grotesquerie of this inferno - in doing the shadow work that the powers of this world neglect and let fester - we find a humanity immaculately preserved in the ash. We come to know that the Spirit is the thing that never dies: It rests immovable and endures as the profane world runs amok and flames out.

T. Abbott Collins has published poems in small literary journals since 2011. His first collection of poems, Apocalyptic Clichés, was published in 2024. He released the experimental rap album silence exile cunning under the moniker looCcaM in 2023. Collins plans to publish four more volumes of poems and has started work on a novel. All images embedded in this work are AI generated.