Dark Carnival

Don’t make me go
not down there
where tacks rule the floor
donkey

carcasses everywhere

Not now. Not yet.
haven’t finished my last punishment
yet. Still plucking each hair off my
body. For carnal sin,

for decadence

Please no. So dark.
So lonely. I imagine scuttling crabs
all around me. Cockroaches, crickets
death smolders about me

the flame.

The flame of solitude.
Licks its way in through the nostril
coalesces in the grey cells, in
the coral mucosal tissue.

who hasn’t imagined

The chance to eat oneself alive
difference is, I’ve completed it
with each separate dive down, down
I’m my own mime, a

bridal horror clown

I terrify children. I eat the heads off rats.
I breathe in carbon, I pollute all of you:

my minions

Once you’ve been to the hole
there is no chance of coming back

As normal

There is no
silver sky

No monkey bicycle
no friend with which

To cry
over all the spilt

Peanuts.

 

 

“P1030408”by stadtcowboy1 is licensed under CC0 1.0

Written by 

Elisabeth Horan is a poet mother student lover of kind people and animals, homesteading in Vermont with her tolerant partner and two young sons. She writes to survive and survives to write - We are all battling something. Let's support each other. Elisabeth enjoys riding horses and caring for her cats, chickens, goats and children (not necessarily in that order). She teaches at River Valley Community College in New Hampshire.

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