nightmare
rats crawled underneath my eyes last night
I held my breath and listened to their rapid little rodent
feet scurrying around inside my head
they whispered
but I could not tell what it was they said to one another.
a song began to play on a scratched up old record
somewhere in my ear, not the right, just the left
and it played until I loathed the song and screamed
for the non existent deejay to turn it off but he would not
then the strangest thing: I saw the Night.
it became an entity to me, not a dark passage of time
and moon but a being, tall and opaque and endless
I asked it what it wanted and it just observed me quietly
it's ancient eyes, not shining, not glowing, not alive
but staring, cold, in it's horrible fearsome form
and feeling me with snake like fingers and hungry hands.
I tried to run but I couldn't move. I lay there like the residents
of graveyards, molding in perpetual decay and dying ever
deeper, yet so aware. yet so aware of human feet walking
over them, rushing to their picnics and Sunday School lessons
and circuses.
in desperation, I brought my hand up to my mouth and touched
my face to see if I was there but it went right through me
and disappeared into a maze of beasts and chains and undead things
taunting me like evil school children on a playground down in Hell
I could not get out or away. I could only watch as they shredded
me to ribbons and ate my soul with ghoulish lust and joy.
I died and died a thousand times. I fell to ashes and rose up like
the Phoenix flying over bombed out landscapes and burning cities
full of screams and unheard cries and motherless babies everywhere
the desolation was complete and unimaginable but real, so real
the realest thing I'd ever seen and ever felt and ever, ever, never
wanted to see.
I found a haven on a corner and crawled
beneath a crumbled shanty's remnants, huddling in the mud and
growing darkness, clutching my ragged clothes to me with
broken hands and despair laying on my heart like bricks of
cathedrals blown to bits and mingled with the wings of saints.
and there I lay and there I stayed without light. without hope
without friend in God or man or beast or thing. friendless
and just when I thought I could endure
and find peace there in the silence
the rats came back and crawled underneath my eyes.
©by Voo
July 29, 2005
midnight
