Beware The Abyss

They are of their time and their place,
 for today is their history. Today's 
prophets, as with those of antiquity
are denied, their dire prophesies
denounced; worse, ignored. Yet
they are not hermits with tattered
garments, gaunt faces embraced
with flowing beards and hunger-
trembling bodies, but once-respected
academics, philosophers, writers.
Above all among them those whose
position in the inner circle of
intrigue, fanaticism and violence
should lend credence but does not
for what they so passionately describe
appears as from minds demented
and as such unassimilable, lacking
veracity. They are not wild-eyed
zealots, nor threatening, but
give voice to the infiltrated presence
of same biding time and as they do
the chasm grows wider, prepared to
engulf the vulnerable and oblivious
in a final paroxysm of surrender to
inevitable conquest, stilling dissent.