O as I watch, waiting, wondering. 
What has spawned this plague? 
The mephitic clouds rise, all day, 
joining the atmosphere. 
A disease unleashed,
let out of the cage. 
Allowed to frolic and rage, bringing thoughts to those already afraid. 
Spreading further into the outskirts of the desolate plains. 
Rapidly growing an apocalypse like a ****, unable to pull from the root. 
Only solution seem fit. 
To continue to change our ways, and never quit,
or allow ourselves to fall into another mesolithic age.

There are the two choices. Wicked, wheel-men curving towards that which I wear in the evening when I paint on my black suit. The pitter-patter of organic matter, the Metropolis ground fresh. You tell me raspberry, I tell you I am not impressed. And then from the inimical lips, those bards from distance, sand spots and hordes of watering holes I place fresh Republicans on- and they were stealing the magazines.

Jury on.

Four devils they figure some, four devils. A anthelmintic potion to square away the worms. The pink worm, who takes long-distance telephone calls on your roommates only moments before the red worm, his head shriveled and his limbs crying from ******, she the blue curly worm; she is what we've been looking out and everything about this evening has slipped in the pattern we expected. Red light in fact,

They used the concatenations of frog legs(this was the big deal since My Mother loved the chelura of some tropical varieties of frogs and funny-legged), banjax the first one before the weather catches the summary being the news. Going as far as the the ecstasy of officials leaving the scene. The species catching its last names of life- genus and family alike racing towards safety.

And so I build in the fly zone. I haggle for President, and make sacred the realms of figures; denaturalized are the entanglements of humans, even whatever the mephitic and bellicose shadows shend and fordo their greatest powers.

I lull  and lust, my pugnacious frazil, just like my recalcitrant logomachy that I ****** and slide angrily and profusely with m and everything I try to do. Just so long as you can see me usufruct and lobby forthright the message.

Mine. Hate. Anxiety.

The Industrial Evolution

I want the rain to wash away the grime
From this filthy living corpse.
Its dross filled pores
And a life cloaked in rust ridden slime.

Dumped grot covers me.
Exhaled from the mephitic breath
Of a thousand septic chimneys refusing to fast.
Spewing out ****
Drowning all us luckless souls in muck.

The inevitable residue of greed
Deposited by those with no belief in the End of time.

A planet of zombies
Wading through a mire of death.
Only waiting for the time
They reach the END.

(Gerry Aldridge)

Wickedness dances like a Chinese dragon
held high on poles by the grinning

It curls its tail and snakes around the minds
of admirers who see beauty in its gaping jaws

Flaccid and incapable, this billowing beast
intoxicates and seduces the frustrated and resentful

It dances in Kirachi, hoodwinks in Bradford,
and slips into the dark places in distracted minds

— this infernal idea more bilious and mephitic
than a komodo’s bite

It dances wildly in the confused thoughts of lost boys
who haven’t noticed its cunning wink

They sway and rock — utterly taken
far more mistaken — until stilled by the slap of death

The Bar At The End Of The Earth- in progress...
Still the faceless, formless shape of something behind the bar serves nothing to the man.
“You need not always chase a dream so far, Sometimes you need to let it come to you. It is not death I will pour you today. You still love your dream. Cherish it. Carry it around everywhere- it is proof you are alive.”
The stranger huffs indignantly.
“My dream has gone. I’ve already told you. My heart is broken, it just won’t stop beating. I shouldn’t be alive. Give me a double of death, make sure the job gets done. I implore you.”
The stranger holds up his glass defiantly.
“My dear Sir, hearts won’t stop if they still have more to do. And dreams do not get lost, they are always there just waiting to be found.”
“I am sure mine doesn’t exist anymore, if it ever did at all.”
Second excerpt- The Bar At The End of The Earth
It laughs from the shadows behind the bar at the end of the Earth.
“Your pain is attestation you are still alive. Without pain there is nothing you fear to lose and nothing you will ever really love."
“Is that so?” The man cries into the empty glass hoping only poison will drip from his putrid corpse, so that he may indeed drink himself - to death at last. He raises his glass again.
It sighs.
“Alas, you have truly lost your way. Death does not await you here.”
Weak from his will to die,
The man raises a hand to cover an eye.
Here sunlight still finds me. Go away!
Am I doomed to live
Another mephitic day?.
Silemce ensued.
Then, from behind the barren, bleak bar came a voice.
"You´ve found her, haven't you?"
Slurring, and dizzy from thinking about not thinking about not sleeping. Hating the thief, who is no longer a robber, but a kidnapper- Damning him,
"Found who?" He feigned an innocence lost some time before.
"Her."
The Bar At The End Of the Earth- Gerry Aldridge (2016)-work in progress,

someday,
after the bombs drop.
someday,
after the plagues wipe us out
someday,
after the leaders are gone.
someday,
after the whitehouse burns.
someday,
after the last shopping mall is abandoned.
the last cop dead, the last priest crucified, the last shots fired
the last person released from prison
the ground is scorched,
mephitic yellow clouds more beautiful than anything imaginable
block out the sun's rays,
casting a green glow on the earth's scorched crust.
torrential winds wipe any plant life from the surface
people still, somehow survive.
they fight on, steeling their hearts
against the pain they knew
hate evaporated.
they harvest mushrooms and algae
in caves,
catching the occasional
creature, stranger
than what we know these days
an alien landscape
on our collective home.
these people
they love
they live
they fight
they work together, their hearts swollen to bursting
sometimes the clouds migrate
and for a few moments they catch a glimpse
of a sky
infinite, old,
and an unbearable thought creeps into their heads
what would i do without you?
my friends?
my love?
i'm home.

From my childhood, I have been the child of
the sun. Without a sin, always livelihood. I
loved literature .. I mean I always read the
Amphisbaena
This was my tranquiliser, almost like an
anxiolytic Dulcinea.
I postulated it for depress,
Effusive as needed be I had to express.
Hilarious how at first it were words I used to
juxtapose..
Or I suppose I unintentionally juxtaposed both,
words and my books.. I can't recall exactly
how it all began. But I can tell how it looks. It
is a haphazard hazel-shelf, an acervunile.
This is a saga, but I will expatiate.
To escape from gloom I locked myself in the
room, and read books.
I had hallucinations, but I kept on reading
books. Full of hegemony imaginations, I forgot
how to tidy. Idyllic, I only knew how to study.
Slept with books in my bed, some were pillows
for my head. Acervunile was a name I gave to
my bedroom. I denied my friend into the
room, we loomed all the gossip over the
window pane
Gosh I did not need any imbroglio type of
scene
In the mornings I was always late for school,
some of my books were not seen.
They were not lost no, but hiding under my
acervunile bed.
I had books which are Ushers, they'd welcome
you the instant you entered the door,
Some are domates, you stamp on them before
you get on bed,
Some are stalkers, always peeping through the
window, it had seen that uncle who dated the
widow.
On my first collection I organised them A-Z,
but to my least expectation with lassitude I
sorted them into a mephitic Aevirtenal Zenith
Zoo
Even though these books untidy my bedroom,
it is because of them that I'm Xenodochial,
literacy-wise and intelligent! I love my
acervunile bedroom!!!
Siyanda

and now
i will sever the strings
that once tethered us together
with the pieces of me
that you shattered

i will forge a divide between us
deep enough to swallow
my hearts temptations
for i am eve
and you are my vice

i will tear apart continents
and demarcate the soil that stands between
our now sovereign feet
if it means the storms you contrive
will no longer wash away
the delicate foundations of myself

but
i am learning how
to escape the darkness
that once held me hostage

i am learning that
the deadened highs
from the mephitic lies
you breathed into my lungs
arent worth the crushing suffocation
that shadowed

i am learning to accept
that the loneliness that keeps me company
in your absence
is not evident of weakness
but the result of me instilling faith
back into my own two feet

and an assertion of the strength i have
to live on my own


x.

They are coming. The airborne winged bevy, the flock, the herd, the horde. Their hideous skin-wings, the revolting ***** of sinew. The cerci come for me, when I try to retire. My torpor perpetually interrupted, never completed. I have not slept in days.

The wicga want to lay their young in me. I’ve seen them do it! To the others!

The ****** spine-tailed hell spawn. I cannot sleep. I want to sleep. They will burrow in my flesh if I do not run. I need to run. I must run.

I hear the clouds, the living far-off black mist. I am warned by their distant revving, their humming. Warming their wings off in the distance. The far-off burn-up, thousands working as one. They are coming. They will find me.

Every night I am conscious at dusk; twilight sentience. I am chased every night until first light.

The swarm; my body their incubator. I am forced. I will sustain their young. The nymphs, the pupae. The larvae.

Ectoparisitoids.

I can hear them. Closer. I run.

Run, trip, run, Run. Run.

Run through this disgusting and hideous rotten silva.

Light fading.

The dark is here now. Murk, gloom, pestilence. This place; iniquity incarnate.

The miasma of decomposition.

The fetor.

This rotting place.

They are closer. The swarm. I do not want their brood!

I trip again. My ankle twists and shatters.

I drag myself, through the slime and decay.

I feel the stings. I am seized.

The burning. The buzzing. The biting.

The paralysis begins at my feet. Creeping through my legs, hips, and torso. I cannot move.

I feel new stings. Eggs injected now. Hundreds.

Pennate *******.

I feel them give me life. Their life. They fill my body with their offspring. My flesh will sustain their young.

Where the ectozoons will grow, consume. My body, a living nursery.

I shut my eyes tight. They force open my lids, many mandibles prying.

I feel the stings. I see them chewing. Everything blurs. I see them crawl in. They push through. They enter my oculi. I feel them fill to burst, their eggs many.

My world goes black.


= = = =


I awake. I feel the warmth of them all. The children in my derma. Hundreds.

Oviparity is nearly complete.

I can barely move, my dermis husked with them all. The young.
I feel my face. The sockets where my eyes used to be, a rind covering both. A stringy membrane tightly seals the unborn. I cannot see. My world is black.

I lie there trying to count, trying to fathom the number of nearly born within me. The many bumps and blisters covering me whole. Every orifice filled with oothecae.

Then I feel. I feel them kick, I feel them poke.

Birth!

I feel my belly split open with life.

They ooze out. My ears begin ringing with their pitter patter. Echoing. Thousands. My skin crawls. Pores sweat the fetid embryonic sap of life. Their life.

They wriggle and wiggle out; hundreds.

Every inch of my body bursts with birth.

My eyes hatch last. The pods split. I feel them. I help birth the spiked young, I pull them from the embryonic mephitic discharge.

The many legged, my anatomy their first meal.

My babies. My children. Eat ‘till you are strong.

My body is your communion.

Like glass bottles kiss the pavement,

The Kωκυτός (Cocytus) and
The Ἀχέρων (Acheron) broke
around the stone I stood upon.
A mephitic fog enveloped me as
I left, it urged me to forget myself.
I ran from the mists of oblivion and
afterwards I swore an oath on the Styx,

Reminding me to let life
get under my skin and run
through my cavernous veins,

today i feel everything and nothing all at once
broken memories collect themselves in the pit of my stomach
spilling out between the gaps in my ribcage
leaking through the spaces like morning light through shutters left wide open
today i feel distant
today i feel lost
today i feel like the ground pushes against my feet
hot summer concrete branding its heat into the calloused soles of my feet
my imaginary feet
for i am everywhere and nowhere all at once
i exist in places that don’t exist
my metaphysical body breaks itself into pieces and spreads itself across vast scapes of nothing
searching for thoughts that i cannot reach
my bones position themselves between pages within forgotten bookshelves
my nonexistent bones
i run out of air more times than my lungs can inflate and deflate like round balloons
i run out of words more often than my invisible body solidifies and melts again in the undoing of my defeated mind
beaten with sticks
disfigured by rocks
diminished by mephitic smoke
the malodorous devil
entering my mythical body through any empty space it finds
cutting me open and flaying my brain into two broken halves
the right holds my desolation while the left cradles my emptiness
and perhaps it is this split within my body that rejects my will for omnipotence
and offers me defeat in a package tied with string
perhaps it is that this will does not exist
my fabled body deminishing itself into ashes spread across the universe
perhaps it is that i am not everywhere
and i am not nowhere
i am here
and i do not feel a thing

It's been nearly seven years since we first met
Memories a jumbled blur of discontent

I've let the uglies swoop and swirl about
Preserving my calm, my silence more days than not
A toxic attempt for securing peace
With only a mere handful of drunken outbursts;
Alcohol the doorway to displeasure leaking
To melancholy creeping, precursors to the eruption of my hidden turmoils
Breaking free from their cage of suppression

Pretending not to notice as pebbles -
even boulders
Of mephitic waste began to dimple our bond
A connection already held by fragile, whispy strands
For convenience, I denied and ignored -
with such vehemence!
The growing weight of the unacknowledged stones
Unfortunate truths granted undisputed leave from my cognizance
Moments to days to this verge of seven years

This burden of ignorance has grown heavier than I can continue to bear
And fewer of the rocks can be hidden away
The truth of the sickness living amongst us;
The severity of the cancerous tumor
Spreading like wildfire,
Turning all that I am into blackened smears
of unsalvageable ash

Now after years of slowly fading away, and
Parts of who I was obliterated beyond repair
I stand in shock, and bundled in shame
Over how I've allowed you to treat me
The complete control my negligence (allowed?) You to take
And while I blame you for the bullets you used
To shoot down my self worth and vibrancy
I blame myself for the self loathing,
Already quite enough in the very beginning
To hand you every key you needed to
Unlock and dismantle me

I'm too tired to mine a shard of empathy from the darkened cave protecting my heart
And the time to repair the fractures has passed
Your words and accusations, throwing the blame on me, even as you beg me to stay
I'm sorry but this time I cannot stay
I have to salvage the remains of me before I'm entirely dust
And admit to everyone, but myself most of all,
That some things were just never meant to be saved.

Of the horns I am
Of the horns I remain
Slouching across fields
Of **** and ruin
Crouched beneath
The reeling sunwheel
Upon a mephitic breeze
My prayers go out
Like a harvest of rats.

Of the rusty rails I am
Of the rails I remain
Hobo shaman
Black-clad vagabond King
Black marketeer
Of a paradise misbegotten

Of the bottomless pit I am
And of the pit I remain
My lilting choirs of Armageddon
Sung on lyres strung with flesh and wire
Summoning my ******* sons and brute creations
Shat from feculent wombs of excrement
I stand insolently against Gabriel's hollow trumpet
And Michael's jaded blade
Soon to be bound in perpetual night
My assassins are on the wing

I inherit the earth
Upon the backs of the meek
I am legion
For I am many.

Of the horns I AM
And of the horns I remain
Slouching across fields
Of **** and ruin
Crouched beneath
The reeling sunwheel
Upon a mephitic breeze
My prayers go out
Like a harvest of rats

Or the rusty rails I AM
And of the rails I remain
Hobo shaman
Black-clad vagabond king
Black marketeer
Of a paradise misbegotten

Of the bottomless pit I AM
And of the pit I remain
My lilting choirs of Armageddon
Sung on lyres strung with flesh and wire
Summoning my ******* children and brute creations
Shat from feculent wombs of excrement
I stand insolently against Gabriel's hollow trumpet
And mock Michael's jaded blade
Soon to be bound in perpetual night
For my assassins are on the wing

I inherit the earth
Upon the bruised backs of the meek

I AM Legion
For I AM many.