Vermin

The attic of my brain is infested,
A legion of cerebral rats I fear,
Vile little vermin,
Perhaps my mind was ample carrion,
They gnawed on my memories,
My good times,
The smiles and beaches,
Seizing chunks in gory fashion,

With each nibble,
Images began to distort,
A stony tint overlaid the joy,
Stories took dramatic new turns,
I had to act,
I had to chase them out,
Club in hand,
A flood of rodents into the aether,

To avenge the elation already consumed,
To salvage what little remained,
To remember some joy.

Stolas

I met a prince last night,
Great prince Stolas of Hell,
An avian being on stilted legs,
A humble guise for royalty,

He flew,
Crown and all,
From the pages of the Ars Goetia,
The book of demons,

This was no bitter spirit though,
He meant no harm,
He brought not brimstone,
But knowledge and teaching,

He taught me of herbs and jewels,
Of the stars in the firmament,
Lessons spun in infernal tongue,
And then he was gone,

Like the rustles of charred pages.

Mosquitoes

If one is hunting demons,
Look no further than the filthy mosquito,
That most hated of creations,
They are vermin on buzzing wings,
Employing their odious bayonets,
Sucking the vitae from all,
Trading it for disease and malady,
A truly foul trade arrangement,
These winged hussars of ill health,
They never sleep,
While man overtly cracks the planet,
They are waging a secret war,
A war on all healthy life.

Enamel Butterflies

She was not an artist,
Not in the traditional sense,
But she hated the drab streets,
So she sang in earnest,
Straight from the soul,
Breathed life into them,
There was chroma upon her tongue,
Every colour on her lips,
To make the world beautiful,
Colourful,
She painted butterflies everywhere she went,
Monarchs and stained-glass,
Stencilled in every hue,

As she serenaded the grey,
The town came alive,
Dancing in vivid enamel,
Full of radiant flying insects,
Miniature priests and heroines,
Beautiful,
Colourful.

Siege

When they came,
Those sharks in uniform,
I climbed atop my household raft,
Fearing for my life,
They came bearing gifts,
Tokens of handcuffs and stingray barbs,

I see their blue skins and bluer lights,
Circling me,
Stalking me,
Smelling blood in the water,
The curtains are my shield,
With no oar I can only wield a house key,

They want me to give up,
To stop treading water,
They keep using big words like “surrender”,
Screaming “murderer” and “monster”,
But I see their barracuda teeth,
Truncheons and mace,

The front door caves in,
A flash,
The thrashing of water and 9mm rounds.

Scarab

That humble little beetle,
Oft regarded as vermin,
A shoveler of dung,
But it’s a talisman,
A pearlescent amulet,
The god Khepri on Earth,

An icon of regeneration,
Carved of stone or faience or jasper,
These creatures are the heavenly cycle,
Day to night to sunrise,
Life to death to rebirth,
The inescapable truth,

Indeed,
Even within your funerary casket,
You’ll still find a scarab,
Sewed on to your chest,
Wings splayed,
Waiting for your return in rolled dung.

Ouroboros

Daily life is a constant grind,
A never-ending rotation,
An ouroboros,
A snake chewing on its own tail,
Day after day,
Bleeding like venom into the next,
And just like a serpent,
It’s cold and relentless,
Already piercing the flesh of the next day,
A treadmill coated in ichor,
Seeping into our veins and hearts,
The days wear away at us,
And we succumb eventually,
Venom gets its way.

Fields Of Green

The sun is fervent,
And the fields of green surround us,
Nature in all its splendour,
And its authority,
A patchwork of reeds and moss,
Tarmac snaking betwixt,
Hay fever winds and manure vistas,
A million little legs within the grass confines,
Fur and feather and carapace,
The fields of green are all around,
Pulsing,
Encroaching.

Panther

Death is a panther,
You cannot spy it amongst the bush,
But you know it hunts you,
Hunts us all,

A killing machine to the bone,
Scythe-like fangs,
And eyes trained on your every breath,
Following your scent since birth,

Its claws rasp across grass and asphalt both,
Its hunt could take years,
Decades even,
But this feline always gets its meat,

Death is a panther,
It’s a grizzly or falcon or barracuda,
It’s an apex predator,
Not formed of flesh and blood,

But of solemn inevitability.

Mind Menagerie

My head is a menagerie of story ideas,
I lay and I feel it,
A flurry of beasts in flux,
Roiling flashes of fur and scale,
A flipbook without continuity,

Alligators built of angst nipping at the walls,
Wolves and bears enacting throes of action,
Swans of romance,
Nosferatu of horror,
And pudgy felines of political discourse,

These ideas scratch at my corneas,
Striving to fly free of this enclosure,
I have the keys at hand,
To release them one at a time,
Put in transit in swathes of ink.