When will this suffering end?

Will you finally see me

standing in your shadow?

Or will I have to stumble on

alone and wounded,

trying to find something real,

something I can cling to

to pull me out of this quicksand.

Or will I just keep sinking,

the world around me

turning black and closing in

until I suffocate,

trying to pull in air

but only breathing sand and rock

and gasping and gagging

until the end comes

like much needed rest.

aka the Party Mix

Lady Prose stepped into the tent as the Flame Lord continued his typing with the Clickety Clack. Clickety Clack. Clickety Clack. His eyes took on a mad gleam and his white teeth shone in an insanely evil grin.

”What’s he typing?” The Wolf Den asked.

putski looked over his shoulder to see the bizarre phrase repeated ad nauseam. “All work and no play makes the Flame Lord want to burn things. All work and no play makes the Flame Lord want to burn things.”

The tent flap lifted and MeeJong stepped out, but her body was covered with green scales, her eyes had become golden, her teeth sharp, and two massive wings extended from her back. She’d become a dragon.

The Wolf Den and her companions took several steps back as the Flame Lord stood beside MeeJong. His skin had also become scaly green and he also had huge dragon wings. Flames shot out of his eyes and mouth as he and MeeJong said in unison. “Come play with us. Come play with us. Forever and ever and ever…”

”Oh shit” Shells muttered.

The Wolf Den started to convulse. Long gray hair grew out of every inch of her body as her snout extended and sharp teeth grew. She howled at the moon as putski, the Pearl, and Shells also became werewolves. They showed their claws and prepared to pounce. “Oh we’d love to play with you” the Wolf Den said.

”Wait” MeeJong said. “I don’t think you understand what I meant when I said come play with us.” She produced two bottles of bourbon with a grin as the Flame Lord pulled out a huge joint and a lighter.

The Wolf Den smiled. “Now we’re talkin’”

And a black snake slithered towards them and in a puff of smoke, took the form of a beautiful woman. “Am I late to the party?” Mamba asked.

And the seven of them sat around the camp fire, drank and smoked, and talked about women with three nipples, midget clown porn, creative ways to commit suicide, and which arch villains they wanted to fuck. And the only things that were killed were six bottles of bourbon and an ounce of weed.

The End

Or is it?

Written for Zelda’s Inferno writing workshop: the exercise was to pick an object in the room and metaphorically tie it into your life in a poem.

Broken Mirror

I can’t remember when I broke this mirror.

Did the bad luck start three years ago

or is this already the seventh year?

How much more pain and heartache

will I have to slog through like swamp murk

before I finally see the clouds begin to part,

and that bright yellow sunlight

that only shows up after storms

and makes the world glow golden,

the trees sing with yellow green light,

the rainbows arch across the sky.

There’s a dark space between two rainbows

called Alexander’s Band

which my daughter tells me

is a portal to another realm

and you can’t leave

until two more rainbows appear

in that magical mystical place.

But it’s a place of darkness, of mystery

that could be a dark and dreary hell.

Am I trapped there?

In this alternate dimension

where nothing seems quite right.

Where love is always just out of reach,

where life is a dark shadow of its former self,

where dread and anger and hatred rule.

I’m hoping the seven years started

seven years before tomorrow,

or that maybe the end is a week

or even a month away.

I’ll be looking in the sky

for those double rainbows,

hoping this time

there’s a band of light between them

and that I can somehow find a way

to fly.

Today

so far

I don’t want to kill myself

or anybody else.

It’s a start, right?

Baby steps.

Each step I take

is a step away from the psych ward,

from the prison,

from a house stained with hatred,

from dirt and filth and mice,

from a gay wife

who uses my paychecks for sustenance,

from a million women who ignore me,

from a world of pain and suffering,

heartbreak and loss.

I’m not sure where I’m going

but it has to be better than here,

doesn’t it?

My soul is a black hole

sucking in all light,

all that is good.

I’ve become a festering wound

full of darkness and hatred.

Hatred for my ex,

for all the women who won’t fuck me,

for all the men who are fucking them.

I’m anger and hatred and bitterness

and there’s no relief, no solace,

not even a distraction.

Just me staring at the ceiling

lying on my couch,

listening to the mice

scurrying on the filthy floor,

screaming at the sky,

screaming at the world,

screaming at God.

Time goes by so slowly

when you’re down and out

like fingers on a chalkboard,

sandpaper on the skin

and I sit here staring at walls,

ceilings, the grass,

stuck in the prison of my own mind

as the walks close in

and the ceiling falls

and I feel my world

being crumpled like paper

to be discarded

in time’s waste bin.

I’ve seen it all,

done most drugs,

been with every type of woman

under the sun

on God’s fucking green earth,

been with strippers and bad girls

who taught me all the tricks,

showed me all the dark corners

and steamy rooms,

been with good Christian girls,

the no sex til marriage types,

been with junkies and alcoholics,

crazy girls and normal girls,

cheerleaders, models, goths, nerds,

boring girls and exciting

fire and lightning girls,

sex fiends and prudes.

I’ve seen them all,

had my heart broken and shattered,

been cheated on and dumped,

rejected a million times,

left out to dry,

been through ringers and washing machines.

I can take a beating with the best of them,

have four kids

and maybe more I don’t know about,

made mistakes and had heartbreaks,

been to heaven in ecstasy,

had orgasms the poets have written about,

those times when you climax together

and the sky opens,

ass slapping skin thumping,

easy and slow,

fast like a pile driver,

hands locked in passion.

I’ve seen it all.

I’ve done it all

and have the scars to prove it,

the burn marks to prove it.

So I’ll ask again.

What could you possibly show me

that I haven’t seen?

What is it you would do

to make an ice cold heart

fall in love with you?

Then the dragon fire would ignite,

an energetic fire,

an outlaw flame,

radiant and long lasting,

Orange and yellow and red,

blue and white,

and my flames have burned

for decades, facing wind and water,

and they’re persistent,

never giving up,

and they’re old and strengthened

in their billows of smoke;

they’ll do whatever it takes,

and we can burn down the world

and create a new one,

and we can burn down boredom

and we can burn down fear

and we can burn down loneliness.

We can dance the dragon’s dance,

moving deep into the gaping night,

and when we sleep,

we are sleeping dragons

and when we fly,

we can spread massive golden wings

and shoot into the sky

and to the stars.

So there’s only one more

question to be asked

and this one isn’t mine to ask.

Any chance I have

at finding something

that resembles happiness

seems to be drifting

farther and farther away

into the foggy haze

as my face begins to sag,

my hair begins to disappear,

my memory fades

along with memories of good days

that seem so long ago now

and pain and suffering

have aged me far beyond my years

like hurricanes and tidal waves

corroding and pummeling

a beach away to nothing

and I’m still standing barely

but I fear the end is coming faster

than my last chance at salvation.

Hot air hung heavy in the furnace of the bayou

as the traveler wandered, feet sloshing in mud,

his mind focusing through the thick darkness

like a train headlight cutting through a tunnel.

The traveler wore a curse over his heart,

a broken black cross of ash,

that had been there since his life’s love

had been wafted away from her sickbed.

To calm the empty storm

that filled his life in place of purpose,

he wandered the bayou in a cocoon of numbness

in search of a voodoo cure.

The traveler found a wooden shack

in the sweat of the deep green bayou.

The wooden walls held a soft yellow glow

like a lecher embracing a New Orleans prostitute.

He entered the creaky shack with thin ice feet

and found Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen,

with her dolls, skulls, and alligator skins.

She smiled like a snake through the fragrant smoke.

She was a Creole woman with light tan skin,

her head wrapped in coils of yellow cloth,

her body draped in a light flowered dress,

and her neck hung with voodoo charms and lockets.

She already knew his past, present, and future,

and warned him of the dangers of waking the dead.

She tried to give him a crucifix for protection,

but the traveler cringed with black widow fear.

Queen Laveau gave him a bag of grey dust

to sprinkle on the tomb of his lost love

whose memory was dissipating from his mind

like mist evaporating into the tarry bayou air.

The traveler left the shack’s eerie comfort

and sauntered out into the sinking bayou night,

as alligators watched hungrily from the heavy shadows

and bullfrogs grumped their low songs into the darkness.

He made his way to an elevated graveyard,

beyond a high levee lined with lazy weeping willows,

where his wife was buried in a small stone tomb,

a dark grey structure dripping with warm, damp death.

The graveyard was a city of the dead

with ornate tombs lining narrow walkways

like eternal homes lining city streets,

patrolled by swarms of hungry mosquitoes.

He trudged to his wife’s stark tomb

and sprinkled the dust over it in a hopeful dream.

A breeze brushed by and blew the dust haphazardly

across the city-like expanse of the graveyard.

The heavy stone slab creaked open.

His wife stared blankly, her white dress hanging in tatters,

her pale skin blotched with blue decay,

but he looked past her ghastliness and held her in his arms.

The other tombs stirred with phantom movement

and their slabs moved aside quietly

as scores of zombies emerged from the darkness

and filled the cobblestone walkways.

The traveler kissed his wife

one last cold kiss, trying to dream himself into the past,

as the zombies closed in with outstretched hands,

moaning with years of simmering boredom.

They pummeled the traveler with bony fists,

hard with the chill of necrotic jealousy.

The zombies clamped him down to the damp ground,

and he gasped for breath beneath the frigid bodies.

His wife carried his battered body into her tomb

to lay beside her to await eternity.

The slab slid shut bringing a tactile darkness

as the zombies returned to their tombs like a receding tide.