In conversation,
I find it rather easy to choke,
On words,
On phrases,
My oesophagus is awash in letters,
Chunks of language undigested,
Like fat in a drain,
Well and truly clogged,
I cough and splutter,
Unable to get the locutions out,
Talking in tongues,
Gurgling in gibberish,
Growing more blue with each failed gasp,
The paragraphs scratch my throat like nails,
I’m destined to be choked by the words,
And no friendly Heimlich will help.
She withdrew her blade,
Her brand made of wedding silver,
And fled the scene,
The wound she left grew septic,
Bereft of warm feelings,
Gangrenous,
A pus-filled hole in my chest,
Where my killing jar once lay,
My insectoid heart,
It left me in septic shock,
Dying on the bed in tears and bile,
Her leaving may instigate my passing,
This wound is infected,
And no new fair hand has granted me antiseptic,
Nor sewn my heart together anew.
When ravaged by all manner of malady,
And gored by the tusks of the world,
We stop off at the pharmacy,
Domain of chemical wizards,
A sweet shop of legion chemicals,
This sterile witches den,
It glows white and smells of detergent,
It’s aisles an amalgamation of lab and herbalist,
Shelves of names unpronounceable by the uninitiated,
Cures for any ill,
They have a variety of incantations to imbibe,
Pink liquid to make the bile stop rising,
Chews to calm the nipper,
Ivory opals to make the voices stop,
A little blue drop to revive a marriage,
Manifesting modern sorcery,
A candy shop of a different kind,
Replete with sweets of bizarre names,
The world will try to railroad you there,
So be sure to take your medicine.
I am afflicted,
Diseased,
Infested,
Privy to rigor mortis of the lungs I fear,
A piece of me turned renegade,
Blackened internally like rot,
Respiring becomes a feat of heroics,
My torso doubling over like a crushed can,
Hailed by naught but wheezing,
Breaths like razor blades scrape at my lungs,
Each compression a cut deeper,
Superheated talons across flesh,
To speak of it is blood specks on a napkin,
To hear of it is a death knell,
To an ensemble of splutter and hacking.
Down those hospital stairs,
That chilly room is a sterile graveyard,
Clad in cold iron doors,
In place of stone markers,
Names replaced by codes on little tags,
Souls preserved just past the point of death,
Their stories will never rot though,
Even entropy can’t rewrite time,
This body here was a tyrant among tyrants,
This one has saved orphans abroad,
Over here we have an artist to succeed Picasso,
This one here was a master thief,
The lights behind their eyes are dark,
But these husks are still receptacles of stories,
People reduced to their bodily memories,
Held in iron caskets,
To be burned to ashes,
Or rusted away by time.
After trying these new sweets,
Compliments of the white coats,
I find my thoughts lying in a swamp,
Those little candies turn my mind to slop,
A marsh under kaleidoscopic skies,
But it’s for the best they say,
It’s for the best,
I sit in this swamp in my mind,
Unaffected by the brisk swill,
My eyes rolling in slow motion,
Rolling slightly to the sides,
A curious blur over my eyes like plastic,
I feel no remorse,
No misery,
Nothing,
But it’s for the best.
An unknown contagion afflicts me,
Interests no longer interest me,
Voids are appearing in my brain,
Areas of interest fading to nothing,
Neurons stashing away my will,
Like my own brain in open rebellion,
Lining up my blindfolded diversions,
Against a blood-strewn wall,
And snuffing them out one by one,
The inside of my skull,
I don’t recognise it,
It’s a wasteland,
The voids spread,
Making me a hollow man,
I begin to consider surrender,
Too far gone.
I am a broken jaw,
A smashed nose,
I am a fetid wound,
An injury of a being,
I require correction,
Surgery of the self,
Something has gone wrong,
An unknown contagion has rendered me inhuman,
Put me under,
Gas to kill the monster,
These doctors in their gory aprons,
They will fix my inhumanity,
Scalpels to the various pieces of my soul,
Incisions and psychiatry,
When next my eyes reflect light,
Will I awaken as a man?
Ofttimes we confer our lives to men of medicine,
Hippocratic Samaritans,
Truly worthy of our trust,
Yet once this trust was broken,
Reduced to residue in a syringe,
By a foul miscreation of fate,
On the island kingdom he resided,
A creature with eyeglasses and a kindly gaze,
This monster in a white coat,
Human anthrax,
Where he practiced,
The neediest of us fell,
Where he called,
Toxins invaded innocent bloodstreams,
Grandads and grandmas,
Taken by foul chemical artifice,
They needed him,
And yet he slaughtered them,
Casually he spoke in the sound of needles,
Smiled kindly with venom behind teeth,
Aged though these victims were,
They could still have had decades,
But with him they had minutes.
Bacteria abound,
Pestilence in microscopic fashion,
So grab that bottle,
That shield of pharmaceutical design,
And lather your hands,
Prepare those viscous defences,
Build up the barricade,
Bacteria abound,
They are fiends to be sure,
And you don’t want to let the wrong ones in,
So it puts the lotion on its skin,
Or else it gets the virus again.
WorldofHarley 