On dusty, aging shelves
rest countries of minds
drying in paper jars:
mummified in culture,
embalmed in ink,
reincarnated in conscience.

Go forth! Adorn walls and altars
to honor epitomes of thought:
precise rhetoric of Socrates,
vivid horrors of Dante,
articulate utopias of Moore,
cryptic lessons of Sa'di,
heroic voices of Shakespeare---
all epiphanies of poets
and projections in prose
collected together.

Yet if ignored and neglected,
such wisdoms are wasted,
and intellectual temples
aimed to inspire and instruct
remain silent, standing crypts.

This is ancient land, this is
       hallowed ground, this is
21 kilometers worth of tunnels.  

Blood stops flowing after death
                                                          becaus­e the heart is no longer beating;
no longer forcing blood to gush through veins and arteries and vessels.  
It gets lazy, becomes stagnant.  
Slowly slides down to the
                                               lowest point on the body; creates a
                                          reddish purple discoloration on the skin
similar to a bruise, but not quite the same thing.  

          This is what I imagine the fifth level of the catacombs to look like:
                                           a reddish purple discoloration
                                          spread across my mother’s back.  

This is what I see when I close my eyes and rub them a bit too hard for a bit too long.  This is what I see when I look into a hole in the stone walls that is big enough to fit an infant.  This is what I see in the reflection of the Trevi Fountain.  This is what I see when I try to remember the shape of my mother’s sleeping body as it curled in on itself on top of a flat hospital mattress.  

The color of death is not black, is not white.  The
color of death is the color of blood: the way it looks
through the skin after having
                                                       hours and
                                                                ­            days and
                                 weeks to
slowly slink down into the
lowest bend of the body.  

This is the reddish umbra of the earth that the
                                                                             eclipsed moon hides behind.  
This is my body given for you.  
Take and eat.  
                                                  Do this is the remembrance of
                                                                ­                                                me.

Write a scary poem about Halloween?
Weirdest ode you've ever seen!!!
What is seen at Halloween?
Bloodsucking Salem zombies,
TV addict Abercrombies,
Spiders and maggots in their hair,
Crypts in the garbage tip over there,
Witches floating round my room
Fit right in here as they zoooooom............
Yes, my other car's a broom!!!!!!

Yea I found a flaw!
You like meats ****** raw!
We go to sleep in the crypts,
Hungry like black holes, like pits.
We saw magic on the trees,
Made by yellow bees.
Then you took a fall,
I ran to the tree,
To cry and call.
You fell to darkest torment,
Your back was crook’d,
Depression and anathemas I cooked.
The jersey devil took me away,
The ***** promises sounding like a horse’s bray.
I laid in his arms on the way to his lair,
Stepped with him into his hole,
Ready to forget the dreaded lighted air.
He preyed on me, A parasite to a catamite,
My eyes drooped,
A lonely boy sacrificed to a woeful rite.
                                                           ­                   -*Firefly