~ menu fixe for Chez Revanche

Anxious Anaconda Antipasto.
Mega Shark Soup.
Grinning Crocodile Fillets.
Prodigious Python Pie.

All served up like revenge,
appropriately cold.

Presentation is everything.

Tuck in, before they do.

   _ mce

Our tendrils have parted the cracks in the stars
as we slip through the space in-between
Cacophony echoes through the dark of the sky
and the air starts to split at the seams
The hunger is growing as the swarm is amassed
we're compelled to the prey we've caught

We are a sea of gnashing jaws and slashing claws
We are conclusion, we are the maw!
You are the chosen, gathered livestock
Marching solemnly to the gates of the slaughter inside out walls

On the first day when I lost my mind to the cosmos.
I found myself in the body of a pig. With other happy fat hairy pigs around me.
Being naked felt natural. I did not feel the need to clothe myself.
I layed in the mud all day long, letting it harden on my skin; god did it feel good, like a spa treatment except I didn't need to pay a penny. I would come out of my mud hole during meal time, when food was dumped into the feeder. I did not care what it was, hell, it didn't smell that good, but I ate it all up anyway. It could have been **** for all I know. I was content with this simple life, until the farmer threw a rope around my neck, pulling me into a freaky looking house with sharp objects hanging from the ceiling.
He tied me to a pole, making me feel nice a comfortable, treating me like a family member, only then to shoot me by surprise. To him I was just a big fat sack of meat.

I awoke from my life as a pig and found myself sitting on a couch. I was drenched in sweat, mouth gaping like an open ******* from what I saw.
My friend tried to talk to me, but I did not understand nor know how to speak the language of humans anymore. All I could do was squeal and oink.
I stripped naked, got down on all fours and started rolling around in the garden's soil just outside my house.
I ate the flowers that stemmed out of the soil, as well as the weeds growing around them.
The neighbors reported me for public ******, so I was sent to a mental institute, where I was taught how to speak like a human again and act like one too.

I gained a new perspective that day.
I vowed to all the animals that I would never eat them again,
and begun my journey into only eating plant based foods.

Vegan food makes my poo hard!
It is so good for me!
This is the benefit of living a plant based life.
If only you wanted your poo to be hard too.

On the second day when I lost my mind to the cosmos.
I was a carrot, and I had a family of carrots.
We were all buried underground, we never saw eachother, but we felt eachother, they were all around me.
I didn't need to breathe, I didn't need to move, I just needed to sit there, absorbing the solar rays that shone upon my green leaves protruding from the earth's crust. All I saw was darkness, but all I felt was warmth. I spent a thousand happy years as a carrot, but that changed when the havesters came.
They plucked us from our homes, tore us from our families and siezed the children!
They then proceeded to chop us up into bite sized pieces and boiled us in sizziling hot water, causing our skins to peal. We would then be served to the hungry mouths of the harvester’s wife and children, crying out for mercy, but our pleas were not heard, for they only heard with their ears, not with their feelings, like us carrots.

I awoke and found myself sitting on the couch again. Suddenly I was choking. I put my hands around my neck. I had forgotten how to breathe. Spending a thousand years as a carrot would do that to you, because you don't need to breathe as a carrot. My friend rushed into the room, and showed me how to breathe again, showing me how to **** in and blow out, which I did.
I had also forgotten how to talk, and needed to go to school once again to learn, because apparently talking with feelings is not a language.

I gained a new perspective that day,
I pledged to all my carrot brethern that I would never eat another vegetable again.
From now on I would stave myself so I could return to the earth,
feeding all the plants and animals.
My body is their salvation.

By cutting that carrot you are cutting yourself.
By eating that pig you are eating yourself.
You may not look the same,
but what you all feel is the same.

---

To you this is ******, but to me this is salvation.
In order to survive, I must feed.
The life that is strongest feeds on the weakest to survive, it is how we stay alive.
Nobody says a snake is a murderer when it swallows up a mouse.
Nobody says a venus fly trap is a murderer when it devourers a fly.
So why am I labelled a murderer when I eat meat and plant life?
Life needs to eat life,
It is how we stay alive.
Life needs to eat life,
It is how we survive.

---

I passed through the knot in the infinite line of things. I passed through the biological mapping of the knot, escaping my limitations, becoming limitless.
It was here where I saw myself in the carrot and in the pig. I saw myself in everything, and I saw everything in myself.

So still she lies
Sleeping.
A cold room
Cold thoughts.  
Under cover of cotton and linen.        

A cold lonely wind
Cries outside
Longing to find solace
In the warmth of our home
But finding only that it devourers
By its own devices
What it so desperately desires.

Pain in my brow
Forged with hers.
Sharing breaks
Up the pain--
Comfort of depression's transitory end.

Why do you hurt the ones you love
When you want only peace?
A lover of the land?
Must plough the earth for yield
Break the ground in fury
To prepare it for seed.

This pain awaits our company
Like a bottle to the drunkard          
Or a needle to the ******.

Comfort is pain
Pain is comfort

In this violent serenity
As the calm peaceful sea
?Can in one moment  
Turn into a tumultuous gale.

Is love for the using
Can a person justify
Putting lines of age on the face
And gray hairs on the head
Of the one they love?

So many carry this burden.
Love shares common ground--
Seasons for ploughing and planting
And harvest,
The season of closure.?

So still she lies beside me.?
A cold room
Warmer thoughts.?
Under cover of cotton and linen.

Under cover of compassion
And understanding.

Snoring gangling giant,
Slumbering away on a snowy
      night.
Spoil of war unprotected,
Opening ways for ingress of
      worrisome infiltrated
      interlopers.
Remember the lord of Philistine
      Samusini,
Who returned not from the
      seductive antics of his
      mistress,
Perished in the furnace fire of
      frustration,
And drowned in the Laguna of
     no return

Slumbering hindered the move
      of the water.
Howling of devourers enclosed
      your shack.
Heterocercal caudal fins of
      sharks prevented the sailing
      of ships.
Wolfished wailing of tidal waves
      consumed the anchorage
      ground.
And the apparition of foes
      lurked-up in darkness like
      the foehn on the Alps.

Awake before the devastating
      night owl.
Awake from the abyss of deep
      slumber.
Awake before the cockcrow,
When darkness of defeats
Controls the reigns of night.
Snoring gangling giant,
Awake unto light.

‘How much more can one bear?’
Her words almost emerged from the rain
And echoed in the droplets’ din on the soil,
‘How much and how much more?’
Her voice rose above the thunder.
She was looking weird in the lightning’s flash.
‘The first man in my life left before I was a woman,
Let woe befall him I don’t remember his face.
He left me for the feasting vultures and wolves
And the devourers spared nothing but my bones.
God, I’ve no faith in him, played a greater devil,
From that lust of rain, a drop planted in me a seed
That birthed in this debauched heart a seed of greed
Of hope, of life, of a love of my flesh and blood,
One that I could bring and nurture with pride.
But my womb infested with the rivers of poison
Couldn’t ripen it enough to drop on earth
And there I was alone on the rough wild sea
With no land on sight, no shore to anchor,
Floating aimlessly where no light would ever shine’.

‘You write so much about loneliness and suffering,
Make it up having seen so little of the real face of it.
But I’ve lived them, each day sinking evermore
Into pits from where my agony’s cry couldn’t be heard.
How much more can one bear, how much more I still have to?’
Her words fell like thunder as the rain lashed the earth.

I knew the vainness of all the pictures I painted!

The sound again
No the lack of
You can't hear anything
You try snapping
Nothing.
Yelling full force
Nothing.
You know you're not deaf
The world around you returns to normal sound
But it isn't right the shadows
Their deeper almost pit like
The oddity of the day pushes you
Now in a cryptic room
Cobwebs and silence
Scattered bones catch the eyes
The sound leaves again
The shadows deepen
Sound still missing you hear a sound
A something a nothing
A scratching sound
They
Scamper
Crawl
Slither
Ooze
Lurch
into the room
The darkness now trivial
These beast
No not beasts creations
Imagination run wild
The monstrosities of sleep
The monsters of fear
Death shrinks away
God flinches away
Jesus prays for your swift demise
The devil pleads for your quick end
These are long forget nightmares
The monsters that haunt man
What lives under your bed
What little toys man actually is
These are the devourers
They follow you home
The live silently
Until you notice them
The monstrosities wait
Don't try
Run and never stop
They still watch you

Fingers seeking,
lips quivering,
eyes blank.

I've know you to not be there.
Fatigue and sorrow are old friends.

The clouds dance in a rythm,
mourning, the blood overflows and spills,
spills,
spills,
till my face devourers it whole.

I laugh at the rain, pattering down my neck;
You don't even know me.
You mean sorrow but I feel discomfort.
This wretched pain, my stomachs knows you too well.

Stop, throw it out,
better yet,
feed it to the rain, put on a show.

Those blue eyes are the light,
breath before you die.
Death? Perhaps you were already cold and a corpse.
But your beating hearts tells me otherwise.

I've become a victim of the night

the predators they howl my name.

Heads raised up with their pride,

a haunting silence in their taunting stride,

waiting for me to come their way.

Once the dark night hides the sun,

the greatest devourers have temporarily won.

For within the depths of my mind they stay.

All at once, they swarm, they stalk.

Overwhelming me, encircling me,

as I start to fall.

I'm caving in and I want to break

to protect myself I ease into a mindless escape.

Then, as the dark night slowly turns to day,

they leave me to be left in this vacant state.

When I arise from my wake,

a foolish relief to find,

there's a short absence from their taunting stride.

But, once the dark night hides the sun,

again I hear the predators ignite their cry,

and I've become a victim of the night.

Sitting, picking at split ends,
fishing for volition in the deep end.
Twitching, itching skin past spent;
the Tinkerer's turning pen tips into trenches.
**** twigs, spit bricks til the crypt filled.
Sheer skill, no fill, spare me the semantics.
Hit the bench, kid, kick off the cool kicks.
These royal blue vans be too fierce.
Long live the worms, the devourers of dirt.
Here's to the ones molding the curve.

Your overlord's back, now pass me the torch.
Kick a door down like It's a word I'm after.
Craftier than those rats of Madagascar,
but I'd ditch the laughter, poetaster.
After all, you bow to a master.
Dig deep, DeadBeat's unleashed.
Good grief! His technique is Hulk green.
Guaranteed to knock you off your two left feet.
Whats wrong? Last I checked, talk was cheap.

sharpie bats lit against knotted wormy water in the fugue reservoir

wings caught and pinned on lonely patches of grass

her nightly squirming huffed and inked into jittery night critters

swarming her thighs

a bearded moth dazes off over the Gordian whitewash

pipes pumping a current of his brothers bodies

wet wings and carcasses, the lure of consequence

the bearded moth did not get too lost, sensitive to

the drawings of his furry devourers from the girl beside him

she says insects have never touched her blood

from the ether he thinks startling wing twitches,

punk echolocation, apologies learned not to be given,

touching water, even distribution of limbs

dripping disintegrating becoming the age of the earth

but the bearded moth

plays it cool and dries in the shape

of a man that looks apologetic. maybe honest.

she’s satisfied and sends a thousand

paper bats to rip apart the reservoir and

pull the grass closer together.

this is no one’s chance.

Destroyers
By Steven L Herring

From foreign shores
came the dragons fire
Hordes of killers and devourers
Wake
******
****
Strip
Take everything
Never sleep
Carriers of plague
Brimming with contempt

Their hearts hard and burnt
like the land around them
Subjugated
Subdued
Subclass
They would burn their own kind
Children's screams to pay no mind
Day in
Day out
With or without
a stare of indifference

A dragon's breath
makes his words worthless
Paper mache fire
Wearing a wire
in the precinct
Burning question after question
Minds on fire want to know though
:
Who's the dragons?

I had a dream that I lost my job not too long ago
The subject matter itself isn’t what bothered me
More like the fact that it felt like a kick in the teeth in my sleep
A reminder that I can’t seem to stop misplacing things
I’m just so tired of thinking I know where my love and trust should be placed
Only for things to be turned around on me and somehow I’m always left
Wondering where it was that I left my glasses and hoping that after a second look it might make more sense
They always reveal themselves as devourers sooner or later
Hungry for whatever I have to give consuming time they have no purpose for
I told you too many times how I feel useless and helpless to the fact that I’m losing
And this is how you comfort me by taking more until I’ve grown pale and numb
So I’m lost and wandering again I want to say I’m hoping for something but I’ve done this a few too many times
Hope starts to feel like a cheat there is no relationship there just a few meaningless nights when she gets lonely
I probably misplaced my path too and I’m trying to find it I’m trying to hear you telling me where I’m supposed to be
There’s too many echos and it’s hard to tell if it’s saying you deserved this or something entirely different
On top of that I’m starting to care less about if it makes a difference anyway
If I had the choice to run away from everything I’m sure I would
And somehow I think you would find me there
Lost and trying to find everything I’ve misplaced
~W.C.

I am hunted and trapped and I can never find rest from these devourers.

He looks at me with white-blind eyes, “Your beauty is your jagged edges;
Your screams ***** pearls,
and the nightmares in your mind are works of art.”

I shake my head.
I am prey.

He doesn’t hear or see me.
He licks his lips,
“You’re perfect.”

Those who thought it best to
swallow the traces of their roots and
float above so called ‘primitive’ gestures
found that the growth of those fibrous
nerves didn’t end in the guts of their
devourers. Soon enough they would reveal themselves once again as a reminder
and a revealer of what truly is.

With my eyes,
I look up to the clouds,
my heart seeking for redemption,
wondering if it will ever be for me

I gaze endlessly at the heavens,
searching for God's salvation;
raising my voice so he would hear me,
and save me from the hands of devourers out to destroy!

To him I go crying,
my voice ringing bitterly as I call out to him,
with my knees kissing the bare ground!

From his heavenly throne,
He looks down to me,
watching every step I take,
and hearing every word that eludes my lips;
My heart is searched,
and buried within,
lies an ocean of sin
But yet true remorse is found,
and I be purged with hyssop,
and made a new creation

~Ciara