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James R Clobum Jun 2018
I sit here.

Viewing a blank slate.

The black blinking line mocks me.

I've been here for hours.

Where are the thoughts?

The words?

Where are the rhymes to save the world?

The language to disintegrate the pillars of inequality?

The stanzas to make me rich so I can quit my day job?

I should be making as much as an engineer.

They don't contribute as much to society as I do.

I rhyme, I'm a sentence builderd.

I build societal commentary with words.

Me me, I'm a word boy.

Do you have any idea how much student loan debt I'm drowning in?

It's low tide in my mind's sea.

All I can imagine --

and picture

-- is myself placing a toothpick under my big toenail and kicking the wall in front of me as hard as I can.

Or maybe I can use a flat-head screwdriver to pry off the nail from the bed.

I could use a tack hammer to tap and slide that under.

A serrated sickle perhaps?

Move it maybe.

Liberate it from being on a toe.

It wants to be on a thumb;

a much better class of nail.

Toenails of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your jam job!
Toes.
James R Clobum Aug 2018
It's so flat and featureless
you can see into tomorrow
and back to yesterday.
A Texas poem.
James R Clobum Jun 2018
America, the melting ***.
More like a cauldron of bitter slop.
Beyond the point of boiling over.
Take u.s. off the burner.
Lest we fully carbonize.
Turn down the heat.
Believe me.
I’ve seen this before.
My name is Jesus,
I wash the dishes around here.
James R Clobum Jun 2018
…I awake with a jolt, lying in dying herbage. I do not know why or where or when. I see a path through the choking, perishing growth.

The earth walked upon is formless and damp. I tread here with no specific reason I can recall. The smell of rotting vegetation lies heavy. My soles sink with every step.

As I travel a figure soon approaches. Disgusting and mangled the creature shouts. “Turn back, the path is dead”. Met with silence it falls and convulses.

As I walk my soul begins to sink. Every step becoming cold and lonesome. The dank and filthy air garrotes.  I fall into a muck.

With all my strength I push myself up. Bisecting myself from this ick. It tastes of licorice and stinks of misfortune. I bellow in anguish. Unthinkingly leaving an opening for them to flock in.

The swarm, disturbed from their home, march into my lungs. Still stuck in the muck, I cough and I wheeze. They sit with ease. Internal infernal grinding. Please take this life.

I pull myself to my knees, then crawl. I begin to walk. The parasites still procreating. With every step my soul rots. The pain is slow and chewing. A figure approaches. I collapse to my knees.

An emaciated decrepit one, consuming a portion of corpse. It raises its hand. I weakly stare into its voids. Eternal happiness and misery; both in different directions, I see.

It grabs my head. Clamps my jaws, prying them open. Vomits then chants. My mouth and nose forcefully held shut. My world spins and goes to dusk.

I cough…cough again. I open one eye. Expecting to be safe. Alas I wake, feeling a shake. A thump. Then another. Internal thwacking.

I open my mouth. Fermented pulp flows forth. The hive! There they lay, each on their backs and sides, dying. Rejoice.

I shamble and shuffle. Up from my knees. Continuing forth. Feeling a random caressing breeze.

I walk further. Stumbling only once. I see a shimmer. I rush. A flattened and still calm. A hideous substance. Be this water?

The brown porridge, thick with sediment. Mire on top. It must be water! This sister to a swamp!

The fetid substance provoking knots. I navigate the shore. Until I see what I have aimlessly been looking for.

A structure floating! Thanks be to it. It reaches across, all the way. I’ll be out by the end of this ****** day. Flat and a few feet wide, it will be my perpetual ride.

Halfway done and in the thick froth I see a slither. I ignore it and press on thither. Be it my mind? Illusions being made, by the weary?

I see it again, the slinking. Long, thin, and horrid. An foul long line. Sidlingly. Soon to have me skewered with fear.

I begin jogging, then a crack. A creak! A crumble! The path disintegrates in front of me. I about-face. The damage becoming symmetrical and identical. Front to back.

I see them, the creepy living lines. One. Two. Five, then twenty. They emerge from the liquid crud. All staring.

Their eyes, tiny and cloudy, cream colored and lifeless. All staring at me. All oozing grime from their clay colored skin.

I feel the flat slab below me. Vibrations, then knockings.

Please do not let this be it.

The living lines are drumming. A solo for dinner, I know what is coming.

The slab below my feet. Breaking. I fall backwards into the liquid peat.

I begin to swim for my life, impaled by panic. The disgusting slop, nearly holds me in place. I am almost at the shore! Those things will bother me no more!!

I kick and ****** through it. Something stops me.

A dull ******* pain. Then burning and ripping. The flesh from the right of my neck, gone with a peck. One monster, slurping away my skin.

One. Two. Five, then twenty. All maws slowly filled, my body plenty. I tear one off, biting its head; my only means of attack. I will soon be dead. They slip between my bones and tendons. I am still alive. Genitalia mashed in their mouths, consumed in a flash. They squirm through my abdominal wall to feast on my gall. A beast, long famished, its appetite replacing an arm. I scream, shout; pain coursing throughout. Then a bold one, ascending through my backside. Feasting. Death imminent, I can only hope. Movement is halted. Their gluttony leaves me halved. I feel myself sinking down into the muck. One swallows my eye, continues inward through there. Another eats at my lips and tongue, more slide down into my lung.

My world finally goes black…

I awake with a jolt, lying in dying herbage. I do not know why or where or when. I see a path through the choking, perishing growth.

The earth walked upon is formless and damp. I tread here with no specific reason...


How did this make you feel?
James R Clobum Jun 2018
We are all maggots

climbing up the inside of the same trash can.

There is no recycling bin.

No compost pile.

Only non-degradable waste.
James R Clobum Jun 2018
They are coming. The airborne winged bevy, the flock, the herd, the horde. Their hideous skin-wings, the revolting ***** of sinew. The cerci come for me, when I try to retire. My torpor perpetually interrupted, never completed. I have not slept in days.

The wicga want to lay their young in me. I’ve seen them do it! To the others!

The ****** spine-tailed hell spawn. I cannot sleep. I want to sleep. They will burrow in my flesh if I do not run. I need to run. I must run.

I hear the clouds, the living far-off black mist. I am warned by their distant revving, their humming. Warming their wings off in the distance. The far-off burn-up, thousands working as one. They are coming. They will find me.

Every night I am conscious at dusk; twilight sentience. I am chased every night until first light.

The swarm; my body their incubator. I am forced. I will sustain their young. The nymphs, the pupae. The larvae.

Ectoparisitoids.

I can hear them. Closer. I run.

Run, trip, run, Run. Run.

Run through this disgusting and hideous rotten silva.

Light fading.

The dark is here now. Murk, gloom, pestilence. This place; iniquity incarnate.

The miasma of decomposition.

The fetor.

This rotting place.

They are closer. The swarm. I do not want their brood!

I trip again. My ankle twists and shatters.

I drag myself, through the slime and decay.

I feel the stings. I am seized.

The burning. The buzzing. The biting.

The paralysis begins at my feet. Creeping through my legs, hips, and torso. I cannot move.

I feel new stings. Eggs injected now. Hundreds.

Pennate *******.

I feel them give me life. Their life. They fill my body with their offspring. My flesh will sustain their young.

Where the ectozoons will grow, consume. My body, a living nursery.

I shut my eyes tight. They force open my lids, many mandibles prying.

I feel the stings. I see them chewing. Everything blurs. I see them crawl in. They push through. They enter my oculi. I feel them fill to burst, their eggs many.

My world goes black.


= = = =


I awake. I feel the warmth of them all. The children in my derma. Hundreds.

Oviparity is nearly complete.

I can barely move, my dermis husked with them all. The young.
I feel my face. The sockets where my eyes used to be, a rind covering both. A stringy membrane tightly seals the unborn. I cannot see. My world is black.

I lie there trying to count, trying to fathom the number of nearly born within me. The many bumps and blisters covering me whole. Every orifice filled with oothecae.

Then I feel. I feel them kick, I feel them poke.

Birth!

I feel my belly split open with life.

They ooze out. My ears begin ringing with their pitter patter. Echoing. Thousands. My skin crawls. Pores sweat the fetid embryonic sap of life. Their life.

They wriggle and wiggle out; hundreds.

Every inch of my body bursts with birth.

My eyes hatch last. The pods split. I feel them. I help birth the spiked young, I pull them from the embryonic mephitic discharge.

The many legged, my anatomy their first meal.

My babies. My children. Eat ‘till you are strong.

My body is your communion.
How did this make you feel?

— The End —