Who came up with the word slaughter?
did they think killing things was funny?

Run away, child,
Don't let me in,
I'm a demon,
I'm a devil,
I'll teach you how to sin.

Run away, little son,
Don't look into my eyes,
They are black-blue, they are deadly,
And full of dangerous lies.

Run away, little daughter,
Before your mind I will slaughter,
My existence knows no love,
I was expelled from above.

You can never run away,
Your mind is my slave,
I will haunt you until you die,
Never to leave your side.

Run away, child.
While you're still alive.

My veins thrum with
The thrill of death and blood
My eyes alight with life
As I stride through the mud

Dead men all around
Most felled by my hand
They gave their all to die
And still alive I stand

I am invincible
Too angry to die
The battle rage fills me
As I roar at the sky

My thirst is never sated
I always yearn for more
More killing, more blood
More bodies for my sword

Two silhouettes muttered through cigarette smoke next to the tall, black double doors at the head of the corridor
unfazed by the white rectangles flickering above us. The doors parted
next thing I knew, I was in
a black box of four tall black walls, and a clammy black floor
made of the same padded fabric as the entrance doors.
Riotous bass pummelled through the room like a tortured bull.
There were hundreds of people here; maybe more
but they were all lying docile, faceless and still
against each other.

They were all young. I picked up an inconsistent rhythm of chests rising and falling
like ripples ushered across the sea by a gentle breeze.
Yet it was the overwhelming sense of flesh here that
lit a snarling viciousness within me. How it excited me and how
I feared it.
I was a butcher, afraid of what he could do.

I saw someone I recognised – her brown hair was tied back, her eyelashes
twitched in her slumber. I stepped over and sat behind her. She pulled herself closer to me
and kissed my cheek. I buried my face in her neck and placed my palm on her bare stomach
took my index finger, and ran a circle around her navel.

I can’t remember what happened after that.  Images slip through like
water in cupped hands.
But I remember the raw beat, and the gentle ripple of chests
and how it reminded me of the sleeping new-borns in a maternal ward.

With manic laughter
He kills and slaughters
Reason, he doesn't need
Bloodthirst, is all he feeds

Raging, through the streets
Killing, whomever he meets
Inhumane, are his deeds
Merciless bloodthirst, he feeds

Once again the moon is covered with shade of blood
Now is his period, the one named Jason Mud
Again, he's out to ****
Quenching eternal bloodthirst, yes he will


|AB|

I am bothered by the slaughter
That her hands had cost her.

"I swear this time
Is the last time."

The scent of death
lingers for years
in a place

lodges in the soil
rots
and slowly compresses

composting down
deep down
in dirt

earth turns
seasons pass
time and space and silence

until the coiling roots
draw back again
and all that grows

from baby's tears
to blood red poppies
oaks and elms

bear testimony
to the forgotten
dead.

© M.L.Emmett