Lethe

Black drips on black
in the Romanesque rain that seethed down through cracked pavement
at nightfall of the end of Light
and so we followed shadows
since they were indicative
of where one could find a lantern or a torch to hold for glow and warmth
and all we had
were scraps of some foreign shipped tobacco
half a deck of playing cards
maybe an old musty bottle of wine
and some sort of wit about us
that refused to accept stupidity
because in the tunnels under the dead city
there were still signs of where moss had been,
promising pale green lichen above the sewer grates
and away from a corpse that had been fowled up
on fabric shreds at a cruel gate.

Oh lore of forgetfulness
should I cram my mouth with dark grapes
and let the juice drip down the edges of my mouth
when I don't know whether to laugh or scream or cry out in victory
echoing the revelry of the end of Grendal
that creature and his family
that followed murderers through viking halls
and tracked their armored foot steps
to the edge of oblivion.

To place a diamond needle
on the thin pink vinyl of an old 33
and listen to the mellow static
before the chimes of guitar resound like brief bells
in a gold room lit by old official linoleum
would be enough
to know that this murder is done with
the stain that plagued the hallowed books
with the depravity of men and women
hunting after gold and flesh.

I should have taken a few photographs
by Canoga Park, to show the grimy portraiture
of the freeway exit
as it lent to a hurtling violence
for groups of gnarled families patterning speech
after famous monsters for a rush of speed
but the jokes of cruelty and schadenfruede
were lost on me
when I found old sacraments
such as glistening stars in fragments of triangular pieces of white glass
leaning next to discarded motes of famous pieces of electronic transistors
which I would place a green penny on
as some sort of small alter to Order
in a way that the hurtling semi trucks
couldn't handle as their metals shrieked in old groans of death stress
when it seemed that the edge of the city
could be caving into some boiling center
where other people went mining for insanity.

Old stories, cannibals, ya know
mechanical dolls eating mechanical doll flesh
and wooden strangers painted with sickly shades of make up
to mask old surgical scars that tried to tighten their faces into permanant masks
in apartment towers as dirty as the unmentionable and unforgotten.

And so I ask you plainly
if it is not apparent
do you bathe in the Lethe
it's torrents of dried black effluvia mixed with gore and vomit
or was your only sin amid murderers
being clean with hands aglow from white colored magic
when old voodoos plied at the dead meadow
where the graves had been placed out back

well we should have planted orange flames of flower petals
not this gnarled dead shrub
to stick in bare feet and ankles

and do you look into other people's closets
to find out how they do not dress
or do you accept thin stews on the premise
that cabbage is a treat with its lack of color
and promise of demise
when you could have smelled parsnips
flowing from the high towers of Purgatory
which guarded heaven
but only with banners that were sewn in scarlet, pink, red, and white?