The slow decay in a dragon's lair,
  lichen lycanthropes snuggle, sleeping,
  against a massive mound of mushroom.
Spore-shackles lie, a layer
  bridging between the rot and denizens
  and the hoard of items
  lost, left by a long-gone species.
A hungry dog arrives.
Snags a bag, *****, writhing, but hope --

  "No. No. No. Our hope, our hope.
     Our pride, our hope. No."

The dog flees, empty-stomach.

With jawbreaker eyes
  and a rot-you smile,
  they wash you again.
Dissolved, in solution, rinsed
  around the glass of a warm beaker.
"Get cooking," his voice comes through
  the pleasant taste of a grin.
It won't stop. You will react.
Judgment has no weight
  against the pace of a smiling god.

Ich ging durch den beschmutzten bevölkerten Korridor mit den Reben, die drinnen und draußen wuchsen, entlang und ich sah in jeder Tür mein Spiegelbild, während ich vorüberging. Ich wohnte genau zum Zimmer – nicht einhundertfünfzig Zentimeter weg; die Entfernung war fast nicht größer, als ich war, und nicht alter. Ich erläuterte meine Angst vor dem Dunkel mit einem Frösteln. Meine Zähne klapperten und klingelnden Münzen, die in meiner Tasche blieben, schrien in meinem Ohr gewohnte Lieder.
Eine Tür öffnete und einen Moment lang hörten wir das Weltall. Wir allesamt waren in dem Korridor. Ein krystallener Stab wie einer, den Leute in der Versuchsansalt oder in der Kneipe benützten, zerbrach. Der Stabinhalt floß in die Hand des Mannes, der sein Zimmer verließ, eine silberne Flüssigkeit. Das Echo des Wortes „Quecksilber“ klang in dem Korridor.
Jedes Zimmer ist gleichbedeutend wie das Letztere, aber es ist auch unterschiedlich. Jedes beinhaltet grenzenlos Fähigkeiten, und unterschiedliche Chemikalien, unterschiedliche Chemie, und unterschiedliche Emotionen.
Ängstlich öffnete ich meine Tür und trat in einen millionsten Anteil von mir selber und ich war ich selber. Symphonien flossen von meinem Kopf weiter, und von den Symphonien kamen fliegende Fische.
Es war nicht wichtig, dass andere Menschen ähnliche Zimmer wie mein Zimmer hatten; es war nur wichtig, dass ihre Zimmer verschieden waren. Ihre Zimmer waren Käfige, genau wie ihre Herzen und auch ihre Hände. Der Mann im Korridor, der hirschartige Augen hatte, blies das flüssige Metall, das seine Hand fasste weg. Die Flüssigkeit wurde Staub und glitt zu mir wie Backpulver oder Schnee im Schneesturm. Ich konnte alles hören und ich musste mich von dem Weiß, das der Staub brachte, trennen. Ich hasste den öden Morgen, den das hervorbrachte.
Ich wollte meine Tür öffnen und wollte den silbernweißen Straub vorzeigen, dass ich auch Sachen in der Luft erschaffen konnte. Ich wollte, aber ich konnte nicht. Ich konnte Sachen in der Luft meines Zimmers erschaffen, aber nicht im Korridor. Man braucht Ressourcen, um etwas zu ändern oder zu formen. Ich besaß Keine.
Die Welt schüchterte die Leute ein, die Verstand hatten.

A cold place
(long hallway, dying breed)
paints itself warm with
the contagions of
skewered cerebellum.

A void of frame
shows a warmer, longer
hallway, with monochrome pillars;
opens up into charcoal sky:
painted by the charcoal eye.

Yet, fear –
later, below a wooden cross,
rests the screaming of a thousand
souls.


I SHOULD FLEE

Escape is not an option.
It has me;
the color has me.

A sworn, torn man stands at the top of the world’s longest staircase, and my friends and I have signed up to ride. Millions of others stand between us and the top, waiting for their chance, their prime, to resign. We sulk in the depths of the sea and hope that someday we may be free.
       The man holds penned paper that the depths cannot perceive, but we know it. Our ticket to the roller coaster lies, with number, on a digit. I and my friends were anglerfish before, but now we are eels. We no longer need dangly lights to guide us to prey, and now we tie ourselves and each other in knots.
       Life is fun later when we are dolphins, then porpoises, then whales with legs, walking onto the seashore as brisk as can be, drinking our saliva as though it were a river overflowing with our survival. We walk in to the forest and steam lobsters over a log-fire. The wings with the tickets laugh at the monotony below him, but we’re below him even in that.
       Grey skies cloud overhead, and we realize where we are. I and my friends run from the thunder that comes in every drop, the acid in every drop; where the water helped before, it now forms uncomfortabilities in our skin, nonconforming to the mutations of standard evolution. We need shelter, now, fast, and together. A huge tree is mostly protective.
       Eventually a ladder of clouds drops down and draws us like a magnet. We can’t stop it, the clock has rung fourteen for two days now. We then have arms and can climb it, so we do, though the rain left pimples on our faces.
       We ascend to the front of the line.
       “Hello, ticketman, where are we headed?” we ask. He says, “Darlings, you haven’t been anywhere in the first place; how can you be headed to a where? First, go tackle a why.”
       The rollercoaster takes off, shoots off – a rocket propels us through precarious stages of life. We have ups and downs and sideways parts we can’t really decide the morals of, and we enjoy it.
       Then we are dead.

Passenger seat, looking through–
dark window, tinted sky,
and black treeline.
Pairs of yellow orbs float by.

We’re almost to New Orleans now.
Soon, the world
and its atmosphere
will have a dance around you and
your money.
Oh happy, frugal dance –

But tonight it is dark,
cold
(bitter cold)
and it rains with the tears of risen demons;
it rains with the things that came back
from a place beyond the grave.

He never should have come back.
I’m sorry you have to deal with this, Mom.

He stopped mid-sentence.
He took their offense
quite seriously
and, with a dash
of omnipotence,
saw the fall folly.

One and only one arrow
points to this tree, narrow
and quite bleached and,
with a European tint,
sheltered a girl.
Leaves burnt on the skin
of Mother Nature,
burnt by lack of chlorophyll.
Pumpkin-orange yearns to
cause tree-white
harrow.

Back in the debate
“Kannst du nicht warten – wait!”
Mahogany trends
designed this room of
uninterested people with
hunger to sate;

His powerful, wintry heart
is taking a step back
in time. He is harboring
fate in his heart like
iron boots left aside –,
grievous greaves weighing things down in ferrum.

He fell back from
his wooden podium
showing a modicum
of care
by yearning the boat to come.

A cryogenized hull of darkness
was his mind, melting
in the warmth of a
dying tree a ways away.

He clutched his core
agony pushing far beyond sore
OPEN THE DOOR
HE’S GOING TO DIE

But he had a dream –
However black and white
he spoke to seam
and seal
would never end the color
of the turning wheel –
He had erred, but now
Winter ended “how.”
How he wished to
return to the girl in
fall, but
too late.
He already fell.