stray musk
The floor sighs,
viscous, tremulous, beneath your weight
a gelatinous dirge
that cannot, will not abate
The walls exhale, undulate, breathe, then convulse
their hollows filled with whispers of absent pulse
You step, though your feet are no longer your own
each tendon, each ligament dissolving to bone
The ceiling drips obsidian, molten, malevolent
fractured eyes blinking
in rhythms belligerent
A thousand voices scrape inside your auditory cortex
clawing, gnawing at cognition
with mordant perplex
Their timbre tastes of copper, decay, and flame
each syllable a serrated echo of your name
Mirrors bloom like virulent flowers of glass
reflections liquefy, your features fracture and pass
Your own visage twists, folds, bifurcates
smiles at you with malice, insinuates, manipulates
A hand, your own, yet unclaimed, slides through your sternum
coiling, pressing, unraveling marrow in delirium
Your pulse staggers, arrhythmia of dread and dismay
breath coalesces into shadow, exhales into clay
Children, innumerable, crawl and proliferate
velvet masks hiding their predatory gait
They press their fingers against your temporal lobe
murmuring truths that bleed from your soul’s robe
The ceiling fractures, the floor crescendos, ascends
up and down annihilated
spatial logic suspends
The air thickens, tangibly acrid, viscous with sound
your senses unmoored
each inhale unsound
Time disintegrates into an ouroboric spiral
a self-consuming coil of terror and denial
Corridors fold back upon themselves
devouring every whisper, every scream that delves
The voice you hear is the marrow of your being
it bends your tongue, ossifies your seeing
It hums of love, it hums of shame
folds your consciousness into its claim
Shadows slither, insinuate beneath your epidermis
caressing sinew, dissolving your verisimilitudes
They taste your tears, they consume your hope
they hum in polyphonic harrowing, unropeable scope
Mirrors bleed, liquids bloom in iridescent grotesquery
hands of glass, fingers bifurcated, teeth in jeopardy
Your reflection proliferates, fractals of despair
each one gnawing, leering, gnashing where you stare
Children hum in cantillations of shattered bone
their laughter a ligature, a gnawing monotone
They press, they fold, they gnash, they lick
each pulse a malediction, each blink a crucifix
Your body distends, contracts, divides
your shadow hums, duplicates, derides
The air is molten, then crystalline, then void
your sinews unravel, your neurons destroyed
Time bleeds, folds, coagulates, fractures
your cognition reels in obfuscatory raptures
A shadow presses through the vestibule of your mind
coaxing, caressing, reshaping the sinews it finds
A thousand children, faceless, crawl and leer
their voices hymnal, their intent austere
They taste your marrow, they hum your shame
they fold existence into their acrid claim
Mirrors fold like tectonic plates of flesh
walls pulsate, insinuate, convulse afresh
You attempt to wake, yet wake is dissolved
your essence folded, mangled, and wholly absolved
The nightmare coils, fractals inside your cortex
its velvet hands consuming, molding, complex
Your breath is shadow, your pulse is a drum
each heartbeat an elegy for what’s to come
Figures loom, stretch, bifurcate and consume
their velvet fingers etch your neurons like runes
They hum of love, they hum of dread
folding eternity into the emptiness in your head
You are both victim, vessel, and predator
a cathedral of horror in psychotropic specter
The ceiling is liquid, the floor is a scream
every shadow the incarnation of a fractured dream
Time coils inward, outward, a Möbius of despair
your eyes, your tongue, your hair dissolve in the air
The children hum, the shadows hum
and everything folds into the infinite drum
You are the nightmare, the nightmare is you
your chest coils, your mind distills, your soul accrues
The floor is molten, the ceiling bleeds
and air hums in polyphonous, infinite needs
signal finch
rigid karma
prisma epoch
distant dirge
shrewd vessel
quaint nacelle
modest wave
brisk patrol
slow pulsar
valid star
drifting tangle