The Collected Short Fiction
They say: today is
the birthday of someone
who would have been
so many years old.
So just in case you’re
not around next year:
happy birthday.
Hospital
People go in
who then come out.
People go in
who never come out.
In, out, in, out.
It makes you wonder,
“Will this place be
the last for me?”
But you don’t really
want the answer
to the question about
those ins and outs.
Still
Whoever you are
or think you are,
whatever you’ve done
or imagine you’ve done…
A tubercular poet
a syphilitic musician,
a mad philosopher,
and many others…
Whose voices were
always only echoes,
echoes that are
still reaching you…
Who are still thinking
and still imagining
who you are
and what you’ve done.
Closing Time
It doesn’t matter
if you were a hundred
or sixty-three
or seven and a half.
However old you
might have been,
whatever mark you made
will be erased.
Things don’t last.
When you’re gone
you are gone
and that is that.
It might seem
that something stays,
that some part of you
still casts a shadow.
It might seem a lot
of lunatic things,
anything except
the actual case…
The world closing up
that tiny space
where you used to be.
It closes so fast.
Calculation
The number of people
who have been born
is the same number
of people who have died
(or will someday die).
The equation is perfect
and must remain so.
Because if the balance
of the born to the dead
should ever be off…
If even a single person
who has been born
shirks the common destiny,
how could you stand to live
with such monstrous figures?
Memento
You meant to take care
and put your affairs in order.
But the unexpected occured
and there wasn’t time.
Later, the loved ones came
and gave away some things,
while putting aside some others:
keepsakes or valuables.
They cried over an old comb
that still had some hairs
twirling through its teeth.
Yet they laughed a little too.
Then someone uncovered
what you left in the attic.
“Oh, dear,” they said softly
and went home to forget you.
De Facto
In order to get things done,
it’s essential to have pain:
without it, nothing could be.
But we’re so easily fooled:
no one praises hunger,
yet everyone likes to eat.
Little pains and big pains:
they keep you living,
however much it may hurt.
But when it comes to dying,
you want your epitaph to read:
“He never knew what hit him.”
You Dream You Die
You wake up so frightened
because in the dream you
knew it was all over, the end.
Even if you aren’t bothered
by this idea when you’re awake,
it’s still there in your mind.
And so you dream it’s all over,
no more, the end of you forever.
You wake up so frightened.
When it finally does happen,
it probably won’t be like a dream.
At least you sincerely hope not.
The thought of oneself dying
and never waking up again
can drive a person to suicide.
Complexity
Whatever events may lead
to that last moment,
the finale is always the same:
Simple heart failure.
And all the time you thought
that life was so complex.
It’s just the beat of a drum:
Thump-thump.
The Conclusion
It was always your
sincere intention
to understand it all
before it all ended.
But your intention
was thwarted:
so many things
took your time away.
You can only wonder
what a few years
of focused reflection
might have gotten you.
Maybe they could have
helped ease the panic
before it all ended.
And maybe they wouldn’t.
The Taste
They said it could be over.
You were sure the end was near.
The dread of being so sure.
Yet they turned out to be wrong.
It wasn’t going to be over,
not with that kind of certainty.
But you had tasted how it felt
to be so sure that it was all over.
Now the dread of uncertainty.
If only you hadn ‘t listened to them.
If only you had no ears to hear,
and no mouth with which to taste.
Impossibility
You descend
the staircase
in the darkness
alone
and pause
before taking
the last step.
Behind you
in a room
upstairs
your own
voice cries out,
an impossible
sound.
Lights turn on
and people
rush about
the house
without seeing
you there
on the last step.
Your Evacuation
The excrement
of life.
The purgative
of death.
Why not
relief?
Why only
Pain?
Pity.
Knowing
Before you existed,
before anything existed,
nobody knows what existed.
This was a long time ago.
Then something happened
that started other things happening
and later on you happened.
This was not so long ago.
Someday it all may all just stop
or it may never ever stop.
Start, stop, start, stop.
Nobody knows how long.
Counting the Ways
Millions of years,
billions of bodies.
Some are where
they last fell.
Some are where
they were put.
Some are buried,
some were burned.
Some are scattered
in little pieces.
Billions of bodies,
and then yours…
Fallen, burned, buried,
or in little pieces.
Odyssey
 
; All sorts of paths
can lead to
all sorts of places.
Yet every place
ends up
as the same place.
This is the place
where the
paths are feeding you.
It’s not the path
but the place it goes,
if you didn ‘t know.
Request
You lie in the bed,
an arm full of tubes,
a mind full of drugs,
but still thinking.
You see the figure
enter the quiet room
and you lift your arm
and focus your mind.
You ask the doctor,
if it can be arranged,
that your last day
not be your worst day.
Thoughtful
When you’re on your last legs,
whether you ‘re confined to a bed
or screaming in a crashed-up car,
many things may occur to you.
Something that won’t occur to you,
either confined to a bed or screaming,
is that it doesn’t matter what you
did or didn’t do during your existence.
You won’t think, “That’s done with,
so why get excited at this last stage?”
Perhaps there are a few who may think
this way, but they are rare exceptions.
If only we could all think in this manner,
it might make up for what went before:
canceling out the chaos of our lives
and steadying us upon our last legs.
Carpe Diem?
Perhaps once in a while,
or possibly quite often,
it may strike you that
you are not yet dying,
not in any serious sense:
you can “seize the day”,
as has often been advised.
No reason not to follow
this bit of poetic wisdom
and to think of being alive
much as you might regard
some time off from work
or a vacation from school:
a carefree period of play.
This may be a simple view
but what else can you do
as you wait for the approach
of that awful Sunday night
before returning to the job
or the last day of summer
before the school bell rings?
Absolved of Debt
Possibly you’re the kind
of person who’s doesn’t
save up for a rainy day
or worry about a bill left
unpaid for a month or two,
or even one long past due.
It’s not that you’re dumb
or lazy, anything like that,
but you believe in things
known by heart not head,
and these are what make
tomorrow easier to take.
This is how it is for you:
all the years of your life,
you’ve been assured
that nothing will happen,
when you’re on the brink,
to prompt you to think.
Unthinkable
The thought unthinkable:
things will still be there
after you’re not here.
All of the trees, the traffic:
Those scenes from a play
for which you didn’t stay.
It makes much more sense
that when you are gone
the show won’t go on.
Still, you leave things behind
pretty much as you found
them, but never mind—
you won’t be around.
Night Voices
Why should you have to live?
We don’t.
Why should you have to suffer?
We don’t.
Why shouldn’t you have to die?
We did.
The Unholy City (2003)
The following a transcript of the spoken word CD The Unholy City, released in 2003 with the screenplay Crampton in a limited edition of 510 copies. The poems are recited by Ligotti over a minimal guitar accompaniment.
The Player Who Takes No Chances
There is a greater blackness than many would wish to see. There is a greater blackness than most would care to contemplate. Those who have tried to tell of the blackness have always found their words turned into nonsense. Those who have tried to tell of the blackness have always found their memories lost or transformed into doctrines and philosophies they never intended; or possibly their bodies and minds, as they conceive such things, lost forever in the blackness that few would wish to see and most would not dare to contemplate.
Perhaps in their final moments they may realize, or be shown, that they were, after all, only unknowing players in a nameless, endless game. And after these souls have been thrown screaming into oblivion, no voice remains to tell the score—save the howling voice of the blackness.
There is a greater blackness. No voice remains.
You Do Not Own Your Head
There are so many heads in the world. Wherever you go there are heads. Every day there are more of them sprouting up in the darkness.
At one time there was nothing at all, only blackness. And then, within the infinite spaces of that blackness, things started to develop. But as soon as those heads came along, nothing much has happened, or nothing worthy of note. The whole world reached its peak and turned into an enormous head factory.
Every day there are more and more of them, sprouting up in the blackness, which was there at the beginning; the blackness that, perhaps by chance, began to produce all these heads and continues to produce them, always calling out for more heads to carry out the business it wants done, its black voice roaring across the infinite black spaces of its head factory.
But none of the heads has any idea about the blackness that surrounds them, or the blackness that hides itself inside each one of them.
No One Knows The Big News
For all practical purposes almost no one is concerned with The Big News. They have other things, more urgent matters, inscribed within their skulls, and all kinds of business to carry out. Their heads are just too heavy with so many plans and schemes, thousands of tasks that will not allow them to focus on anything that is so strange, anything that is so uncertain. They have no time to confront some ultimate revelation. They have no desire to find out so incredibly Big News. Such a thing would take everything they know and arrange it in another way altogether, telling a story so different from the one that is already familiar to them.
Yet The Big News is always there. Like a tiny voice on a radio it chatters away through heavy static in a darkened room where people are trying to sleep, filling their heads with plans and schemes, inscribing thousands of tasks and urgent matters inside of their skulls, all kinds of business to carry out—little errands, odd jobs, atrocities both great and small—all of which, when taken together, arrange things a different way that compose a secret story that no one cares to make their concern, yet The Big News is always there.
And so few will ever seek to discover, and none of them will ever be allowed to tell, that we ourselves are the dark language in which The Big News is forever being written.
Welcome to the Unholy City
In some form or another, everyone must pay a visit to the Unholy City. There is simply no avoiding it since everything has been designed to lead you to this place. Any road may present a detour that unexpectedly sends you on your way into a great barren landscape where only a sliver of horizon wavers in the empty distance and no road signs exist to hint at your destination. Any hospital may be equipped with the special elevator where someone wheels you inside and then quickly abandons you. As the doors clamp tightly closed you finally notice that there are no buttons to
push, no controls of any kind. This is when the elevator begins to move, dipping and twisting like a carnival ride, taking you toward the Unholy City.
After enduring such episodes, or others of a similar sort, you may only wake up screaming, vowing to never again close your eyes in sleep. Or you may fall into a fever that no thermometer is able to indicate and from which there is no recovery. In more extreme cases you begin to glimpse a blackness like none you have ever seen, and wonder for a time whether this blackness is inside your head or outside, which makes no difference once it begins to compose the outline of the Unholy City you're about to enter.
The Name Is Nothing
"The Unholy City" is a convenient misnomer. For one thing, it has none of the usual features which define a city of any size, and might be better described as a small town or village; an out-of- the-way place long gone to see. Unlike cities both ancient and modern, the unholy city has never been marked on a map. It is merely an ever changing name without a location, and is far more likely to find it's way to you, than you are to find your way to it—unless of course, you have been provided with special instructions that lead to an infinite barren landscape and end in the heart of nowhere.
As for the quality or characteristic of unholiness, this is also misleading, a nominal facade designed to make things interesting for a world born out of blackness, where nothing holy or unholy has ever existed, where nothing exists at all except dreams and fevers and names for nothing, the creations, so to speak, of that original blackness which pulls itself over every world like a hangman's hood over a condemned man's head.
Nobody Is Anybody
Those of us who reside in The Unholy City, who sprouted out of the blackness of an old root cellar, or sprayed forth like dark ashes from an uncleaned chimney—those of us who are permanent citizens of The Unholy City are neither angels nor demons. Although, we are sometimes called upon to play such parts for the purpose of some game that has been going on since the world began; acting out our roles in a drawn-out and intricate stageshow that we will never understand, nor ever care to understand.
Nevertheless, we are really not so different from the tourists who sometimes visit our little town—and sometimes stay with us forever—who were also born of the same blackness as we were, as everything was.
Still, there is one respect in which we, the inhabitants of The Unholy City, diverge from all others in this world—who are so caught up in the game that is going on, who identify so completely with the parts they have been given to play in the stageshow universe, that they actually believe themselves to be somebody, or something. We, on the other hand, suffer from no such delusion. We are nobodies. We are nothings. And even to speak in such terms may be claiming too much for ourselves. Which is to say, we are just like everyone else, while they, without ever knowing or suspecting the true facts, are just like us.
Three Things They Will Never Tell You