The summer storm thought out-a-loud
as the inward feelings of the people
were illuminated by lightning.
The ground was cooking under the heavy storm,
hail pounding down like the sins of a debased nation.
People bright and frightened moved like heavens between
Cathedrals and Crypts – nodding, “yes, yes, yes”.
Scrambling and screaming to escape
the mayhem of the unleashed night.
Disorderly elderly warbled like cursed tomes
of ancient memories, calling Armageddon past the shores
and into the very heart of this terminal realm;
preaching that the end was nigh because day had been eaten by night.
This thought was upheld by facts like: mothers aborting and finding no respite,
and they had no false teeth to shake at dirty nurses anymore.
I last saw the elderly bursting with blood-wings
as Valkyries buzzed, blitzed and sang with the storm.
I knew Hell awaited me as I plodded my sordid and sodden feet,
step by sucking step,
towards the drain that had a gaping, open-cut mouth like an enraged orphan.
With my sopping, wrinkled, swollen hands I pulled away the grate covering the truth and I left some skin behind for the vultures.
I’m not kind – just careless.
Lurching heavily down into the sewer I bit my lip and gouged my eyes,
the blood gurgled out like a broken tap
and wet my cheeks, chin and chest
as I adjusted to the true darkness.
Moving slowly now,
each leg almost cracking under my weight like a glass bottle ready to break,
I left suburbia behind as I groaned into the shambling darkness; no lightning forked down in these depths but I knew another sort of heat existed here, a heat far more illuminating.

I wandered over worlds that night.
Like a tortoise holding up a universe
I crushed bugs and bills below my feet
as I stamped and stormed further into the craggy cobble-stoned core of creation.

Devils slinked through shadow and drew glances,
irises filled with alpha-pent up fear and hatred.
Apart from their hurricanes of terrible verse that burnt small holes in my ears,
they said nothing to me. Gears clunked in my damp brain and I concluded that they did not see me.

Another clunk, another conclusion. I knew they bred unnatural thoughts like storms in these hellish places because the tearing words keep the warm blood flowing in their insatiable gullets. I turned a corner for the third of the third of the third time and I pierced my sole on a rusted fish hook. The metal gouged and dug and burrowed like a festering inverse-birth into my body. I knew I was close to the end because the hook quickly ripped and tore into me deeper, as if pulled by a demon-beast! It caught my bone, cracking two of my toes into a distorted symbol, and this whole motion meant that my future-carcass was being dragged viciously into the slurping Cimmerian gloom.

I thought I heard a bizarre crack of laughter or lightning as my thoughts blundered over the final edge into something like a crowning aberration.