Mephisto's Circus
by Joseph Armstead
Let the calliope play...
All is well in The Pit.
It is a circus without humor,
an infinite stage upon which
the entertainments of
The Damned
play inside rings of
crackling flames.
It is the last stop
on the road to
Nothingness.
The corridors of Hell
are scented
with the perfumes of
Despair,
Slaughter, Lust and
Degradation,
a heady mix that
steals the breath
from the quivering throats
of the newest inductees,
novitiates
into the priesthood of
Hopelessness,
shamans of licentiousness
and of torture,
newly graduated from the fires
of the eternal furnace,
they are fresh meat
burnt the same shade of black
as their withered souls.
The Father of Lies,
Lord of the Abattoir,
surveys his vast, dark
kingdom
with the eye of the most
discerning critic,
always looking towards
the future, always ready
to make improvements,
always aware
of the sins that
decorate the flesh
of the dictators, liars,
murderers, whores,
berserkers, madmen,
perverts and heretics
doomed to forever
play out the enactments
of their greatest,
most egregious affronts
to God and Nature.
It is a circus where
all the clowns bleed
from self-inflicted wounds
and where laughter
sounds much like screaming.
As Below, So Above,
this empire to Misery
mirrors a world where
babies starve,
where war is an art,
where children are prey,
where liars are
rewarded,
and where greed is a
virtue
and virtue
a vice.
He is the Lord
of the Dance Infernal
and he is the conductor
of the Orchestra
of Endless Horror
and he surveys his
kingdom
with the satisfied gaze
of a guardian angel
protecting
his chosen ones.
All is well in The Pit.
Let the calliope play...
--- fini ---
This poem and related concepts are copyright © Joseph Armstead 2004, and may not be reproduced in part or in whole without the author's express permission.
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The Hangman's Confession
by Joseph Armstead
Who cries for me?
The wind hums in my ears
and I am thankful because
it carries away the
mutterings,
curses,
and mourning of the
crowd, an audience
enticed and hypnotized
by the drama of vindictive
Justice and arrival of
The Reaper's Messenger.
I do only what I do.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
I pretend I am not
a pariah,
an object of fear,
dread, shame,
revulsion and rumor.
I am the final arbiter
of Judgment,
but I hold no claim
to Divinity.
I do only what I do.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
It is always better
when they wear the hood,
better I cannot
look them in the eyes,
cannot drink of their regret
and frustration,
their rage and misery,
the tragedy of their misspent lives
is hidden from me
during these last moments.
It is better when I
cannot see myself
reflected in their gaze.
The wind dances around me,
plucking at the edges of my coat,
the legs of my pants,
fanning coolly across my face,
which I hold as stone less
the crowd and the
condemned
see the pain that rolls from
off my flesh like the frost
from ice.
It is always Winter
in my soul.
I do only what I do.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
Who cries for me?
Adjust the noose
one last time, wait for
the priest to finish his
empty prayer
to a vengeful God,
Press the lever,
and watch the body drop,
plummeting so short
a distance into Eternity,
drop, snap, jerk, tremble,
swing heavy, like a sack.
Hear the crowd sing
their music of shocked dread.
I pretend I am not weeping inside.
There is no poetry in this.
Tomorrow the sun
will rise on a new day
made dark by yet
another appointment
with Punishment
and Retribution,
and I will do what I do.
Who cries for me?
--- fini ---
This poem and related concepts are copyright © Joseph Armstead 2004, and may not be reproduced in part or in whole without the author's express permission.
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Sharing The Moment, (Bloodied Time)
by Joseph Armstead
They were on the bridge
where they'd shared their
first kiss
a lifetime of tortures ago.
(How did it come to this?
Why did they fall so far
from Fortune's embrace?
He realized he could no longer
remember how it had begun.
He only knew the pain
of Now, this moment,
and it was like he'd
swallowed
a dying star.)
He didn't want to talk.
She really didn't care
if he listened.
The Thing that lay
writhing
on the frosty ground
between them
mewled and wriggled,
frightened and subdued
by the burlap bag
that was its prison.
He wanted to pretend
he could not see it,
so he stared out into the night,
looking at the far lights
of The City, watching the
neon streaks from the lights
of cars on the highway as they
poured into the darkened
jumbled mound of concrete
under the City's skyline.
He watched and squinted
against the hot wind
that buffeted the bridge,
that made its suspension cables
vibrate and thrum in a
metallic baritone.
He did not look down
at the Thing in the bag.
(It shouldn't have happened.
No one had planned it.
Neither of them had
even considered it a risk,
yet here they were ---
and here It was, with them,
of them, yet not
a welcome part of their world.
It wasn't fair, it wasn't right,
and it wasn't pleasant.
It was horrific, a nightmare
that would not fade.
She couldn't stop crying.)
She, so beautiful and proud,
all legs and full lips and a wild mane
of auburn hair thick as spun sable,
paced angrily, tears falling,
and she ranted at him, railed against him,
cursed and villified him,
begged and coaxed him,
anything to get a response,
anything to break through
the wall of icy decisiveness
he'd erected around himself.
She stood on the bridge
looking up at a night sky
that seemed to swallow
her hopes for a better life.
The stars that looked
back down on her
were pinprick holes
in a wall around a Heaven
that refused her entry.
She looked down at
The Thing in the bag
and her heart lodged
in her constricted throat.
When she fell silent,
they looked at one another
and they executed the decision
they had already
wordlessly
made
with
broken
hearts.
The splash
when the bag hit the water
wasn't nearly as bad
as the silence
as it sank beneath the waters
of the river.
When they drove away,
they held each other close,
but it couldn't collapse
the distance between them.
From the waters under the bridge,
an invisible star rose
from out a burlap bag
and into the night sky.
--- fini ---
This poem and related concepts are copyright © Joseph Armstead 2004, and may not be reproduced in part or in whole without the author's express permission.
