Wax on the Altar - Three - Dead Wounds Opened

I find it difficult
To wring the truth
From my dry and blistered tongue.

You tell me the answers.
You tell me you are right there
In front of me,
But I can not see.

My eyes swell,
Bruised by the light.
The dust in the air
Forms pulsing constellations
Where the sunlight filters through it.

The discord on the floor,
Illuminated in patches,
Reminds me
I was trying to crawl to a corner,
To shake in peace.

I seek comfort
In my personal hell,
And the concrete
Seems to understand.
I feel we share something,
The concrete floor and I.
We are both so cold,
So unforgiving.

The humor reaches me
There,
Not far from my own stench,
Not far from
The place where I removed my guts
And spread them out
For everyone to see.

Funny
I can not even remember
What it is I am not forgiving,
Only that it is not forgiven.

When you come by
You tell me
That once I had all the answers
And now there is only filth,
Putridity.
I remember
Why I don’t want to remember
Anything.

You,
Oh,
The avenging angel
Sent to purge the fallen from the ranks,
You
The voice of God’s purity,
The messenger from
The dream
Of decency
That spiraled out of ancient masculine hegemony,
A wet dream
Of masculine control,
A dream of
A religion fit to rule,
Fit to put the women on their knees
Where they can properly worship
With hands clasped.

I am done with
Your dream.
I can only guess
The look of horror on your face,
The revulsion in your words,
The contempt
Must spring from hatred,
And so I am happy
Because I
A mere mortal
Have earned the hatred of God’s pristine messenger,
I have taken the step
That leads to total condemnation.
On my knees
Slave to sensory pleasure
I want only more.

A single wish by the damned
Would be wasted.
I would wish only for a stronger body
So that I could torture it longer,
Fool my mind into thinking
That I have what I always wanted,
Only to laugh when
The warm glow vanishes.
It leaves me here.

So I know
Why you have come,
Arbiter from society’s cruel clutches,
You have come to mock me.
What I have left
Feels only pain at the sight of you,
So perfect,
Once so beloved.

When I look into your eyes
I see only myself
Trapped in a puddle of excretions.

If only the shakes would stop
I could speak
I could try to change
The evil things I think,
But it is too late.
You are leaving.

Outside the wind blows,
But the windows are closed
And here there is only
The smell of my skin
Scaling onto the ground.

If only I could turn back.

I realize the only way to move,
The only way to stop the shakes
Is to do it one more time.

As I reach for the syringe,
For what precious little I have left,
I think only of spitting
In my executioners face
When I see him again.

Beyond comprehension
The needle finds the vein,
And I plunge the fluid home.
It’s all gone now,
Everything.

The image of the room
Crashes to the floor
And shatters.
The memory
Of what I could have had
Lingers in the air before me a moment
Before it falls to the floor
And shatters as well.

I crawl through the slivers of my life
Heaving,
Blood on my festering lips.
In the farthest corner
The creature I became
Comes to rest
And moves no more.

I know not what happens next
For I have gone.
I have been painted into a picture
For a grim and gory fairy tale
To nurture the offspring
That will choke the world
In the time when the rivers run black.

*-*-*

The extreme imagery of Wax on the Altar resulted in an attack on the two locations of, at the time, the only surviving copy of the work other than the handwritten original. A line was inserted into the manuscript, one of true blasphemy. After the event took place the vandal successfully changed the password to one of the sites. I could have removed the line from the site I still had access to, but that would not have fixed the overall problem. There was, and is no address, to send a letter to about it, as near as I have been able to determine. I would not correct the copy at this point. I never put vulgarity beside the name of Christianity's messiah, but to prevent someone else from going through the experience of being judged for having done so I will leave it stand as though I did. Both sites have been cracked and passwords changed now, so I can't access any of it. I can only comment from a distance, not change the writing (which I never did, anyway).

The compilation exudes very graphic overtones, which I have dubbed the "My name is Renfield effect." The silent terror only escapes detection at the level of human hearing. On the mental level it is vaster than the depths of space.