The gods let this baby be born
As a thing they could reclaim
One day with cruel delay
Boils from black plague desecrated her skin
Right before her second birthday
A lesson on how a life can be stolen
Shortly after it begins
Or how we're without hope to the whims
Of the bored gods before us

To save the last of his kin
The father implored the science
Of the village sage and physicians
He was turned down at every door
Their medicine was not meant
To save the poor nor destitute
  
Resolute in his faith
there were good gods who gave grace
Unto children without sin
He next beseeched healing power
from varied institutions of the miracle men
Preyed over by priests, rabbis, and sheikhs
He sacrificed and spent
every cent he had saved
And their churches took his tithes
But did not take her pain away

Grief striken, defeated, with no recourse
Liquid sedated in a pub,he feels remorse
" our child will join you soon,
my dearest departed wife"
a pubhand overhears him saying,
"you can still save your daughter's life!"

"listen as I entail
The hidden trail you must trek
before the antelucan hour strikes
Her magiks are only ripe
in the dead of the night
Nestled within that loury forest
Her cabin obscured from mortal sight
Resides an occultist of such cunning:
A bog witch named Blight"

The pubhand helped him to more mead for free
Unprompted he then proceeds to lead
The father through that place he now seeks
-claiming his shift had come to an end
As they drew closer to the cabin
Something happened most curious and queer
The pubhand turned into a black cat,
Scurried off into the brush- to dissappear

Influenced by fermented spirits in his blood
He pays heed to their whisper
-Her cabin door is ajar
And they beckon he enter

Now in Blight's place of power with his offspring.

"oh hapless father when you sing,
How the gods do smile
You worshipped the very ones
who wish to **** your only child
they're vile and malcontent
All they know are delinquent tendencies
They'll torture her spirit for sport,
When she dies you see
But by my incantation
That needn't come be"

"drain the blood of a bat
with deviant intent
Recant the name of your gods;
You now resent  
The blood will brew all the while
-in my elixir
When the little girl drinks:
it will fix her
It will turn her pale white
You will fear she has perished
She will stalk this earth
Forever parched with ravenous thirst
And a stark aversion to sunlight
NOW YOU MUST CHOOSE:
A dead child!
...or a creature of the night?"

The father did as directed
He did not second guess
Unaware of the sorceresses subtle gesticulations
-Were creating a hex
He's blind to machinations set in motion long ago
The wiccan pours her will into a binding circle
As the child drinks the concoction slow

His daughter's vitality returns
The plague is receding
Fangs sprang forth
as she bites into her father's neck
Blood trickles down in specks
The girl keeps feeding
And feeding

all gods once assembled to fight Blight
The powerful mad goddess would direct
her sadistic debauchery at their human subjects
-human praise appealed to the god's vanity-
Her godhood sealed by the Parthenon
in a prison comprised of flesh
Divinity bound;
betrayed by other gods
There were too many for her to resist
A former god trapped in mortal form
Blight's punishment was to simply exist

For 300 years Blight had waited for a night like this
An ancient curse she could wield
As revenge for imprisonment
Finally obtaining the last two ingredients:
A child that was pure
And a father's consent

A direct strike of lightning sets Blight's cabin ablaze  
still in her binding circle, she's indifferent
And unphased
From threats of fearful deities who see
She's about to set her nocturnal creations free
Undeterred by their show of force
she releases her two vamps
with a flick of her wrist and no remorse

Iightning strikes within an inch of Blight
She leers at the heavens
Much defiance and mirth
In the distance a village screams
As her fiends burn it down to the dirt

The Parthenon replies:
Bellowing cumulonimbus clouds
decries her decision
Such chaos;
now her scheming REALLY has their attention
The.Ones.Who.Watch. Above

See all.

Throughout panoptic thrones they peer
pained fury for this village culling:
Blight jeers
Sanctimonius thunderstorm brings fervent rain
Their vain,pious tears-
The skies can not contain

The gods cry.

"Oh, how i wonder what will worship gods then,
When humanity dies?"

Luminous surges of lightning bolts strike
Tries to smite this emboldened bog witch
...Yet, in spite of their wish,
she somehow stays unhurt...

Blight smirks.

You ensnared me like a dog in its cage
Locked me down in your cellar
drove to my estate
told my son it would be okay
Massacred my family with my face
And made sure to replay it for me everyday:
recorded the depravity so I could see it on tv
-Said to me:
"I know your heart is bleeding.
I will set you free when you watch,
Without shedding a single tear."
-I remained locked up for close to a year
I needed to know why you would trap me here
just to let me walk away
when you finally released me at gunpoint;
I learned to keep my tears at bay
Your response when I pressed for a reason:
        
               "...its just a game I play."

You set lives on fire then set us free
How many suicides have you kept as trophies?
Does it tingle like a wet tongue on your neck,
When you rip a life apart?
Presenting to us the imploded pieces
Like a perverted work of art?

You psychotic shapeshifter you sicken me
You serial-stealer of sacred space
You think the human race is a plague
So you became, "The Locust-Eater"
Playing out macabre fantasies
With such swift shifts of physical features
You delight in deriving such clever machinations
To deceive us ...
...but can you deceive yourself?
Underneath the bone and sinew
- you are still just YOU
...even though you masquerade as everybody else

How can I spot a chameleon in a kaleidoscope?
Belay your false colors.
Show me your true shade.

I studied you
Created a secret space- like you
Where I could stash you safe
Poured through claims of being kidnapped
By a being who could change its shape
Corroborated their claims-by the dates
Of misdeeds they were framed for
-And when they took their own life
In my research I found a smoking gun
-In your case your kryptonite
You must regress to your real skin
         once every month
So i set out ...
picked just the right target...
...and started to hunt

To lure out the chameleon...
I captured something...
      
        That I think you might love.

You wore Anessa's life like a glove
Was she to be your masterpiece?
You committed a crime so brazen- as her
it went viral within a week
you stole her child in the darkness of night,
Anessa's husband- that child's father
Must have been filled with such awful fright
He called authorities, you fabricated stories
you turned the victim into a suspect
Over a single fortnight
Not long after he was killed
in a drunken bar fight

As Anessa you were spotted months after
Ignoring a green light of a busy intersection
Parked in the middle of the road
Placed their child on that busy street
Then sped off in the other direction

Anessa was blindsided when you finally
let her go
Oh, i bet you waited with bated breath
For her self-removal from the world?
You ensured she would never again
Get to hold her baby girl
But Anessa never gave in
Did her steadfast resolve
feel like I rash upon your skin?
Where it festered forming feelings foreign
to a fiend such as you?

You scratched that itch
Began by sending her anonymous gifts
Even started shifting into her too
Stalked her waking moments
by engaging her as a stranger:
all the while unaware your sick infatuation:
Had put her in danger

I'm counting down the clock
I kidnapped maybe her or You
I left my address at Anessa's house
A note saying, " this is a game I play now too."
Soon now: a month will have passed
And it all comes crashing to A head:
at last.

So shed your skin
Prepare to fight
This vendetta ends here:

Tonight.

There is a lighter
          
           Just

waiting to ignite.

A knocking at my door
A knot in my stomach
Anessa...( or is it You)
bound beneath my floorboards?
I peer in the peephole then pull You (Or Anessa) out of that hidden hole
I drench us both( for every second You stole)
I  pour it all over
( my life will never be whole)  
I douse everything in here in gasoline
Confess your sins
(before the fire finds them out)
Its time to come CLEAN!!!

And it seems:
I will be dipping my hands in red tonight.
This will all end in the worst way.

I open the door
let Anessa( or You) In
She runs to my captive saying,
"Where do I begin?"

"I made something of my life
after it let me go
At first, it caused the Locust-Eater misery
You see it toys with humans:
ones it knows are weak
I was so meek and feeble before we met...
Yet,I'm the one person it failed to defeat
Its game gave me strength i never knew...
... resolve had always,somehow,eluded me
I do believe its games are vile...but,
They are necessary?
Please,**** me instead
"...but let the Locust-Eater free"

the captive Anessa(or You)
begins thrashing their feet
I yell," which one of you killed my family?!"
They both calmy respond:

" Me."

The lighter flicks in my hand
I'm unable to speak

A month has passed
Which one is the one I seek?
They both insist I let the other go
And you should know:
it slips from my hand
The lighter(like my grip of reality)
falling faster with exposed flame
adhering to the clear rules of gravity

The two Anessa's embrace.
They both begin to burn.

False colors from the chameleon fade out.
Hungry flames swallow me whole.
I am( am I?)...
seeing the Locust-Eater's true shade:

This is how I take control.

-

It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen.
I was murdered 100 years ago on Halloween.
A man accused me of vandalizing his house but I didn't do it.
I told him that I was innocent but sadly, I could not prove it.
He grabbed his double-barreled shotgun and I was shot.
He threw my corpse down his well and there it would rot.
When I was killed, I became a ghost.
Revenge was what I wanted the most.
And I got exactly what I wanted.
That man committed suicide after being haunted.
I haunted him for months and he couldn't take it anymore.
He shot himself in the head and his corpse fell to the floor.
I haunt that man's house on Halloween, I haunt it once a year.
If you come to this house on Halloween, you will experience fear.
That man murdered me and when he died, he went straight to Hell.
Stay away from this house on Halloween or I will haunt you as well.

The car is broken:

garage sentence. After that --


it is free to ride.

The devil is knockin'
cracking up whilst you're talking
all your words are gettin' slurred
too bad your pleas of mercy shall not be heard

You'll pay for all the hurt
you'll sink down in the dirt

"Curse you devil!"

down with you
down to the herd
of all the other evils hell bears

You don’t get to say
You were always there
You don’t get to pretend
You saved me
You don’t get to share my story
With you as a hero
When your villainy
Set me on a dangerous path of destruction
You warped my mind
And sent me into the darkness
Ill equipped to handle
What would be waiting for me.

I don’t understand what you expected
I don’t see how you thought you’d be anything more
Than a bad guy in this.

How dare you share my growth as your personal success
When all you did was throw me to the wolves
And the  act surprised when I was almost devoured
Or maybe I’m wrong
Maybe you were surprised.
This little lamb
Wasn’t ready to be sacrificed
And bit back,
Took down the wolves,
Escaped the pen and ran free.
Maybe I wasn’t supposed to survive.

I was helped along the way
By those who stayed by my side
Who heard me cry
And held me high
As I rebuilt
And now
Now I’ve come a long way
You want to pretend it was all to help me?

This little lamb knows the truth
I’m stronger not because, but in spite of you.

Rancor,
Swashbuckling with a sawtooth grin and sacrilegious shouts, selcouth with an unsound mind, the commonness of uniqueness, the commonness of opinionated onions cutting their teeth on life and crying, again, and ready to saw off the limbs of the opposition out of revenge!
Rancor, relax, you're not a Twitter matador, I wish you were because I’d love to watch the show.
We cuddle with exotic nylon fibers and squeal about our weight and status and how someone insulted us and how terrible it is to be alive while sipping on easily accessibly high fructose corn syrup! Life has never been this sweet, but I guess we’re getting sick of honey.
I complain about the complaints, I am the anti-complaining complaint club president.
I am a writer, an iPhone thumb tapper.
Hear me
These mental gymnastics will somersault and summerset you right, child,
Don’t listen to Rancor,
That man’ll grab your gaze and stir your attention into a cocktail while winking at you from behind the bar
he’ll leave your brain a little woozy from a life that used to be sweet until you left it out in the sun a few years too long,
I wonder if some of the dead watch us from the corners of our bedroom or the trees along the freeway, waiting for greatness to unfurl.
I’ll bet they do and I’ll bet you’re a glitch, I’ll bet a little piece of another galaxy hit you in the head and made your finger twitch.
How many hot car hours have been spent in a parking lot,
the skin dries, the phone dies,
the spirit once lifted towards the outlines of the mountain peak now seeks memes, transcendent in their own right.