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Daniel Handschuh Oct 2015
A bird glides gracefully whilst the discolored leaves are aflutter
   In the wind that rocks the cold rotted wood of the window's shutter;
   All while the obstructive trees cause the wind’s speech to stutter.
   Yet she still howls with an intense pressure on me chest; I can barely utter
   My feelings toward this heavy air of eeriness about me—
   Nearly as heavy as the insignificance in the noose of the tree—
   A decomposed mutilation of all that is good, hung for all to see—
   A shriveled neck and half-dissolved eyes that still long to be free—
   The blood long lost, the body now pale—why does it stress?
   Why is life in its eyes, why does it shrug off Death’s caress?
   And as the sun is fully blotted by the black clouds, unfatigued,
   A hot stench like the enhancement of rotten fruit—yet I am intrigued—
   Descends upon me with the force of a vise equipped with knives—
   ‘Tis the horror of what only the spirits of the dead can contrive.
  
   And visions—horrible visions!—overwhelm me and present terrors:—!
   Rain steadily falls and patters incessantly upon an accursed Earth;
   Surrounding the hanging man are graves—and so begins the second birth:—!
   The tombstones crack and crumble into hundreds of jagged stones;
   An earthquake manifests quickly, and violently rattled my bones
   And remorselessly disembowels the Earth of the trees’ roots;
   Suddenly far more prominent is the awful stench of the fruits;
   An unsettling revelation is brought to my undivided attention:
   The tombstones’ collapse and the earthquake are not in relation,
   But the earthquake is a result of monsters unleashing their power.
   And the tombstones—but what of the tombstones’ fall?
   Startled, I see that replacing the hanging man is a voodoo doll,
   Dancing with its tiny limbs and smiling nonstop, locking its black eyes
   On my horrified self; I cringe and tremble in this demonic guise.
   A screeching note erupts from its unmoving mouth; it hovers in the air
   While I am frightfully dehumanized by the doll’s inexorable stare.
   While the screech lingers, the wet soil of the graves shifts quietly,
   The noise of splitting, wet dirt drowned out by the screech of cruelty.
   As it becomes clear the voodoo doll’s dance is one of conjuring,
   ’Tis revealed to me that the tombstones fell because of remembering:
   The dead do not believe they should be remembered, reflected upon...
   The second birth’s process is agonizingly long as I become wan.
   But before I nearly faint—and leave the visions—I receive an unwanted help:
   The doll’s gesticulations are directed toward me; even so, she raises Hell.
   My mind is frightfully clear to see all before me, and the dizziness has left.
   Oh, why these visions? Why with this horrible curse I am blessed?
  
   I am met with the most terrifying sight of all; my heart quickens.
   As the rain falls harder and begins to puddle, my blood thickens
   And very nearly ceases to flow as I watch the dead come to life.
   Gnarled fingers, some broken and some missing, ignore Death’s inflicted strife.
   Fingers—disjointed, protruding in random directions, treelike;
   Grime under the fingernails—fingernails, chipped or long spikes;
   Hardly any flesh on the old, ***** bones; muscles dripping off.
   Bodies, mutilated by natural decomposition, burst with raging coughs
   From the eviscerated Earth, black with age, red with dried blood.
   The dead, limping and holding what organs they still have, slip in the mud,
   Fall, fill their empty ribcages with it, and scream as limbs are torn away;
   Scream, as they are free from the grave, the path that led them astray.
  
   Oh, the feelings of dread that are eroding my scarred mind!
   What awful horrors have I stumbled upon, what did I find?
   One undead woman is staring at me with unfortunately soulless eyes;
   A few long hairs messily fall from her shriveled head, infested with flies,
   And her eyes—oh, her eyes!—are as small as raisins, wrinkly and white;
   They hover in her sockets, the skull only half-covered—pure fright!—
   With dead skin. Why is her toothless skull grinning mischievously?
   Is she enjoying my terror that leaves my trembling grievously?
   Abruptly, the still, deformed grotesquerie releases a sickening gurgle
   And violently shakes, as if under some overwhelming mental struggle.
   Her jaw falls open, unattended from the necessary muscles’ absence,
   And screaming laughter flows out of her agape mouth; malevolence
   Seeps from it in the form of pitchy black smoke and tightens the air.
   And all the while is still her unfailing, gut-wrenching stare!
   Her chest, dilapidated from the Earth's engulfment of her, explodes—
   A black skeletal hand, emerging from the body that was its abode—
   A demon, a black skeleton, blood gushing from its mouth, fire in its eyes—
   And tattered wings spread as the screamer takes to the hellish skies.
   It hovers around the dancing voodoo doll, circling her,
   Worshipping the smiling thing that was sewn with maleficence and fear.
  
   “But what are these things?” I ask as the undead congregate.
   “Is this how horrible life will be beyond Hell’s gates?”
   But it is made revealed to me that the people are eternal
   Inhabitants of Hell—Hell inside me; the spiritual realm is internal.
   “Why do they gather around the doll and bow in submission?”
   But, to my dismay, there is no answer to this deathly war of attrition.
  
   “Vultures!” I hear, a thunderous, wicked voice from up above.
   “You do not know what you are to believe, or what to love!”
   The dead dance in slow, uncoordinated movements, circling
   The doll. Even the shadows ominously flicker, no longer lurking.
   The black demon floats and gestures to the moaning dead,
   Beckoning them to rise from their permanent deathbeds
   To chant and flail their measly arms in worship of the voodoo.
   What have I done to be cast into this dangerous world askew?
   “You are a vulture, searching helplessly for something to feast
   “When the desperate hunger is turning you into the demons’ beast.
   “And when the food is gone, you search for your next dying idol.
   “For you, the inevitable conquest for falsities will never be final.”
  
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
  
   The room of a once peaceful dwelling is a victim of an apocalypse:—
   ‘Tis as if it has mutated into the imagery of a drug’s dangerous trip:—
   The walls are bent in, threatening to collapse under the pressure;
   Books are shredded, shelves are upturned, and obliterated is the dresser;
   Blood drips from numerous cracks in the ceiling and paints the walls.
   ‘Tis many moments of being awestruck before I realize the mirror calls.
   Vision is blurry, a hollow ringing sings, and my surroundings fade.
   My legs of jelly drag my heavy body into the dark hall’s shade.
  
   I yell at the sight in the cracked mirror, but my voice is painfully missing.
   It appears as if my entire face is losing its grip and is slowly slipping.
   Gravity’s grappling hooks have taken a strong hold and are pulling.
   The entirety of my eyes is almost visible from the disturbing lack of coverage.
   My jaw refuses to rise back up, as if the muscles have lost their leverage.
   It adds to the terror—how unsightly I am! How revolting!
   I am no longer human but an otherworldly, disgusting being!
   A scream that is not my own bursts from my agape mouth and shatters the mirror.
   It deafens my ears like a knife; I feel the fiery tearing of my vocal cords.
   “Vulture,” I vaguely hear but clearly curl my dry, thin lips to.
   “Go, find your food, find your idol, bathe in what you think is true.”
   Violently, desperately, crashing into walls with wild, uncontrollable limbs,
   I purposelessly search for the spirit that will welcome my immovable sins.
Yes, it's gory and has some disturbing elements in it, but I use these to instill certain emotions into the readers. On other forums, I'm known for how frankly I put my words, so if you enjoyed this, expect me to post more without being afraid to say anything.
J B Moore Nov 2016
Tonight is the night, be it All Hallows' Eve
One filled with fright most refuse to believe,
For deep amongst the shadows, silently lurking,
'Tis a terrifying creature, his jagged teeth smirking.

Thou hast all heard of demons, and hast battled thine ghouls
Whilst this terrible beast watcheth with hunger and drools.
It's spittle, like acid, can burn through thine flesh
Making thee so much easier to digest.

No name shalt be found for a creature so foul
That gobbles up goblins, and ogres disembowels.
Dost thou think that thine lanterns shall frighten it hence?
Oh foolish man, it shall consume the light thence.

It standeth hunched over, twelve feet in height;
Stalking thou, watching thou, waiting for night.
It cometh from deep within the forest, as the moon wanes
His fur smelleth of death, his claws favouring pain.

He shan't be stopped ere his hunt is over
Yet he only hunts the thirty-first of October
Take ye heed, then, and hear the warning of the raven
For this beast is coming, and from him there is but one haven.

He preyeth upon the weakest, and the one full of fear
So stand fast, take courage and in another likeness appear
Put on a mask, as treacherous as can be
Conceal what layeth within, do not let him see

Or else you shall be taken, beaten and devoured
For this beast prefers to torture just to see thee cower.
So please, take heed to this warning and believe;
Thou art only safe if thee wearest a mask on All Hallows' Eve.

11/3/16
I have met a stranger
hanging from the point of nothing
where no wretched parochial fashion
disembowels,
no fellated Pop,
the prop of some, is angled in, exquisite –
no,

the dilation of his eyes
met me on a disc of white -
the hands of mine
spinning the entire weight,

hurtling from a place
of  uncontrolled proportions
of nothingness
and patience.

I fear this place
of limitation –
it survives on an originality
slowly disappearing from grace.
Madds Aug 2012
Insomnia attacks you front on,
rips back your eyelids
and devours the human sleep mechanism.

Depression disembowels you
and you feel sick to your stomach
every ******* second.

Scars forming on one limb
turn into bruies on another
and then into deep red scabs on the next.

Headaches throb and throb
and bash and throb
inside your head for weeks.

Extensive cold showers
do not suffice as an escape
And fail at making you clean enough.

There is only so much a pill can do.
Maria Imran Jan 2017
You can't not miss them, it's not written in your fate
Your fate's an unlucky champ, got pain scribbled on its skin
So yearn - yearn for the moment that is never coming again
For a sense of togetherness which is now uncountable fragments
And hurt yourself, feel the flow... from your heart to your scalp, your nails, your intestines
Wait until it disarms you, disembowels you, and finally drinks you whole.
don't forget to write poetry though
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2021
i've never cooked crocodile flesh before...
but i've seen what happens when
you buy raw herrings...
you're not going to cook the herrings...
after all: herrings are the Baltic sushi...
but you can't just eat them raw...
you need to curate them to some brine...
i.e. soaking them in salty water...
phenomenal... a fish swims all this time
in salty waters... as a whole...
but when you turn it into a schematic of
edibility...
you have to... ha ha... pluck all that's liver
all that heart... intestines...
to get to the flesh: edible flesh... proper...
you have to throw it back into salty water:
it's obvious that the flesh of the fish
never experienced... what could make
it edible...
apparently crocodile meat is the same:
it's lean... although... herring flesh
is also high in fat...
to brine something involves the thing
sitting in its own juices:
for the "other" thing: the protein about
to be eaten is left curated:
salt... in terms of what's edible and what's
not... weighs as much as gold...
if not more...
          but you can bypass this whole
chemical experiment with mushrooms!
you don't need fish: which have to be brined...
or with meats which have to be cured...
with mushrooms it's much more simple...
you start off frying a batch in some unsalted butter...
they fry... and fry... getting all golden...
you start choking them with a lid above
the frying pan... that sort of helps...
but... doesn't... it's only until you sprinkle some salt...
and: but especially in terms of fungus...
salt: the great drawer of water...
you put the lid back on... or whatever...
to get the mushroom: you need to cook it with
some salt...
it's like... the most organic magnet...
salt is a magnet... for water...
salt is what allowed such great bodies
of water as the Atlantic and the Pacific to stay
intact... even when the rivers and the lakes
dry up... the seas will never dry up:
salt is a magnet... for water...
water, water everywhere: but not a drop
to drink... that line stands eternal:
from the rime of the ancient mariner...
esp. with fungus...
you sprinkle from salt on them while frying
them off in butter... and hey presto!
you tempt the water encompassed
in the mushrooms come flooding out...
you end up cooking them in their own juices...
the texture of the mushroom is arrived at...
but there's also the essences of the taste of
mushroom...
salt: magnet... sieve!
- but that's not brining... unless it's...
brining done... exponentially quick... which it is...
meat takes time... fungus is neither
meat nor... salad...
but salt! salt is light!
        how it draw out the remaining water
from a thing... and allows the thing
to be cooked in its own storage of water...
which it wasn't expecting to be cooked in...
you might add some more water:
depending how much you're cooking...
some excess of fat also helps...
but i've never cooked crocodile meat...
watched how someone failed to cook it on
Australian MasterChef...
          if crocodile behaves like a herring...
even though one is a lizard get-go...
while the other is... fritz...
           i expect a crocodile tartar steak of sort
could have aided the contestant...
because i can't actually imagine
eating a cooked herring...
later soaked in some spirit vinegar with
onions... a lay leaf... all-spice... mustard seeds
crescent moons of garlic... onions...
and oil...
but cooking a herring seems as much a bad
idea as cooking a salmon: rather than
not smoking it...
still: quickened brining process...
no water involved... since we're dealing with
mushrooms... fungus...
you start cooking they're browning beautifully
like it's some post-racial but still nationalistic
Brazilian utopia (since they have
a ******* football team that tells others...
you're not us... blah blah)
   but it's only when you add the salt
that the mushrooms give in...
to the "torture" of being:
less the telepathic busy-bodies attached
to the moon-key-brain they latched themselves
onto... i wish they were hallucinogenic prone
types... sometimes:
but then... all these supposed colours
and no clarity in writing in b & w...
i couldn't stomach it...
with herrings about to be turned into pickled
flesh i expected the slow-brining process
is expected: fish is not fungus...
all that excess water storage in the flesh
is what gives man a brain...
i hope... then again: i hope not...
that's why i drink: to be borderline dehydrated...
quickened brining: frying off some mushrooms
in butter then sprinkling some salt on
the frying process... immediately a mushroom
stock arrives "out of nowhere" on the canvas
on the frying pan...
the mushroom is to be then: essentially eaten...
the flesh of the mushroom: isn't mush...
it resembles something from the annals of
seafood... but the juice is... earthy...
beguiling the humanoid to harvest these
forest pleasures...
       salt is ought to be: ought have to been
more treasured than gold...
there should have been salt coins...
how there should be painting of one army
riding horses... another... riding bulls...
salmon ought first to be smoked
then... decided upon: cooking salmon ought
to be considered: haram: forbidden...
i don't want to see that orange flesh of the waters
turned into an anaemic pink...
dried out: not once... not ever!
it's one "thing" to butcher an animal once...
it's another "THing" to butcher
the animal twice upon the altar of cooking it
poorly!

i'll pretend hunchback posing as a crow:
the crow will disagree:
i'm standing up-right! you're the one who's
hunched! hitchhiker: boring son
of a dozen: that's came from elsewhere...
elsewhere... "elsewhere":
even in the now apparently arrived at now:
i see no familiar face...
i see... too many rivers...
of people... that hardly make up
a sea to froth... to boil up...

people are dying in their minds...
this rot is yet to be made popularly promiscuously:
tempting... enticing... but i fear it already is that...
people are dying in their minds
while their bodies... if agitated...
if alive... are spewing nothing but
fictions! pick-me-ups!

i'm hopeful... this period will pass...
there will be a time of fathoming a relief from this
intermission...
how all empires crumble...
but how "things" have changed...
we're all pretty much educated to recognise
phonetic encoding "biases"...
even if some of us scribble on
walls in giraffe graffiti... so be it...
TAGS...
            let people have what's immediately
available to their imagination's content...
don't let them suffer the constraints of
some ruling... ha! who's ruling in 100 years
from now?!
who's most envy prone to dictate
the peacocking workaround for social:
hierarchical-stratification?
all will pass: in a blink of an eye!
even if no eye is looking:
or to be looked at...

        i've become accustomed to cherish
this onslaught of pulverising subjectivity:
i seem to not have had a welcome escape...
pickling brain: Brian syndrome does that
to one... the sensation of being subjected
to so much... yet objecting to so little...
oh but i'm objecting to as much as i'm being
subjected to...

            i am subjected to gravity:
but i object to it... as a falling "thing" from
the top of a building...
how's that?

          i need language to somehow comes
across a... "2 + 2 = 4"...
       no?i need a sensation of: arable:
with a trill of the R: that's so... desperately
missing in the -ing-leash zunge...
i'm about to call Kaiser Wilhelm and implore
him: more zeppelins! more zeppelins!

tread past the thought that was originally cast:
lay the thread bare...
come as you were... come: less arrived at...
all this will sooner or later be:
gobbled up by the certainty of time...
which competes over space...
minding our progress...
if time is the tongue...
then space is mouth what
yawns at as: welcoming... eager for more sacrifices
at the altar...

curry is great! at a meal...
as a meal one has for... supposing it's 5pm
in Lahore...
but at 9am in France...
where there are no eggs...
poached? scrambled? fried?
  what's on offer?!
*******... CARRY... CURRY...
CRY-WE..
i can't make my stomach churn out appreciation
for a ******* broth in the morning...

it's scented ****-***: overt-**** ***
insatiability in the morning requiring English
pubescent northern girls:
sorry... they "are"...
        "my"... girls?!
i speak the language... last time i heard...
there was a lacking in brick-work...
the people most associated
with keeping food production in line...
the truckers... all gone...
well.. if the Englishman want's
an Empire implosion...
save all the Pakis... he'll get all the ******* Uber
he desires...
"my" people will just leave...
for whatever the brain-drain that arrived...
that will stay...
but the rest of it...

who needs England... when England
is all the more better off for X-factor: people need
to be entertained!
no?!
by even the more ******* sort of...
entertainment!
i'm entertained by the moon...
by a brick wall...
"my" people... came to these shores...
and were quickly told to... *******...
thank you!
let all the Pakis take over!
*******... Ing-Leash... brats!

i have an inherent animosity with these people
that has not schematic to a past
so formidable as to have a past worth
questioning: here lies...
the atomised man...

- but while speaking this... zunge...
i reach out to an elder...
i am seeking compensation:
for the tiredness i'm forever to experience...
in English i have no...
certainty: i have only an objectification
of history: not being subjected to it...
i live in a country with a past:
but not history...
anaemic hybrid...
     i'm the barbarian knocking
on the door... with a message:
let me out! let me out!
              
whoever read too much of "journalism"
but not enough of Horace...
                  
      the sanctity of salt:
                      sal de sanctitas....
backwards to forwards...
how time disembowels grammar.
It is not paint that his lifeless creature wears.
It is the make-up smears that animate its features.
It scares me not consciously, but with a deep sticky dread
hiding in the shadows of my mind.
Its face parades in color and shade, in light and dark,
but I know its face to be hollow.
I know its fingers to be as the roots of a tree
that feed on you at the slightest touch
and you dare not let it ***** you
love you
or all you will know is hate.
It withers down the soul of a man
so that he will never love a woman;
she will appear to be a siren
and he will run in shame from his flaccid courage.
It disembowels the soul of a woman
until she thinks her entrails more impressive
than any pecker;
she stumbles around like a blunt fork
never holding on to what she needs.
It enrages the soul of a lover
until he cannot bear to witness love endure without a scream.
All the while, its hollow face feeds
upon what glimmers in the sun and glows in the night,
a vacuum never sated,
never feeling peace's respite.
I've kissed this face and I'll never kiss again,
not until God and I can uproot the devil's sin.
I wrote this back in January of 2017 and discovered it while my girlfriend and I were reading old poetry notes to one another.
We've both been hurt in love and both had dark poems to share.
In reading this, I felt the weight of all the shame and fear I believe dwelled within me when I wrote this.
It was refreshing to share this with her, as, indeed, I had not chosen to never kiss again. Whatever the devil's sin was, I now view my relationship with it differently.
I've learned to forgive myself for whatever plagued me in the past.
I know myself to have deep veins of emotion, with high ups and low lows, so all the better to keep the peace.
Anyway, I hope you found something in this poem for yourself.

Enjoy!

DEW
Ky Alexander Aug 2015
What I bring is darkness and death nothing but, and all I see is life Broken and centered into light but around me there is destuctionThe very bound soul take what I have sowed and I can't yet see my realityWhat is it I have lived for, what I breath for, what I am to this illusion of life this pressured insanity drawn from out very night maresThat cuts the the sanity, rips tears and disembowels us I look back and take eye upon the truthThat it was only my reflection, only my dream That I lay there and know I will only hurt, not heal.

— The End —