Maladjusted

I slip out for a walk
when no one is looking
with my magic lasso
for company

It hums overhead
as I take aim
and let go with
rather unnecessary
brutality

I do not watch
as it snakes up
beyond the clouds
and the inconsequential
pretend-layers of the ionosphere

but kneel down to drive
a stake through
my leaden heart - a convenient
anchor for that rope in flight

As it finds its prey
I pull - with all my heart
and drag down the stars
one by one

to trample,
strangle them
quietly till their
dim lights shine
no more

I love the darkness
that drips on to the stake
and climbs up the rope

to swallow the world -
now free of those
annoying little stars

(Inspired by Sherman Alexie, but of course nowhere near as good)

plaque gothique

It was practically nothing - really, in the grand scheme of things these should be overlooked. But then that would be fair and we know that life is not very fair - so there, no more wishful thinking.

As I said, it was hardly anything - a little loss of sheen, perhaps a spot which did not gleam as much as the rest, a little breach in the wall - but they noticed - ever vigilant though deceptively quiet, they sensed that something was afoot - almost imperceptible, a little butterfly flapping its wings not knowing the tempest awakened halfway across the world.

So they stir and all of a sudden there were many where there were but a few, and like the cuddly Mogwai spawning Gremlins they turn feral, as they are caressed by tendrils of tenuous gossamer that wake them from slumber. In the blink of an eye the breach is swamped - for they are insatiable and they hunt in packs.

Their hungry calls summon the silent lumbering giants rumbling down slopes in slow motion - juggernauts of relentless destruction fuelled by gluttony, they heed the cries of their kin and in their haste smother many of them underfoot. In no time at all they are an amorphous mass of flesh and blood - mindless, brutal and yet - very, very effective.

It does not take long - all of this, hardly a matter of minutes  - not enough time for the stressed, overweight, middle aged man to reach for his phone and tell the voice at the other end that he was dying from a heart attack as those little platelets and those not so little monocytes plugged the breach in his ruptured plaque.