Page 52 - Contrast1988Spring

Hell for a Home

The dream time of death is over
and now I lie back on bony elbows.
Through the snarled locks that hang in my face
I look down on my naked body,
a horrible thing, burned and beaten.
I am now a citizen of Dystopia
The air we breathe, my fellow citizens and I,
is a stagnant steam
that leaves my throat coughing dust.
there is only one smell to fill our noses,
a vile blend of singed hair and seared flesh.

But let it be known
that there is no lack of sound here.
Wailing cries come as regularly as the seconds of a minute;
each minute marked by the scream of an Apache witch doctor,
like the scream of some tabby flung by its tail.
And through it all there is one sound which never stops,
the sound of a bubbling boil,
like the red cauldron of the Earth's core.

And there they are.
Those pathetic souls with whom I live,
once proud creatures.
Robespierre has forgotten his glorious Red Terror
as he now sucks a white-hot stone for water.
McCarthy's gone mad. Next to him
are his friends Jim Jones and Al Capone.
And there is der FUhrer.
Though he was born eighty years before me
I now stare the Saxon face to face.
the once great leader now stands
naked, burned and beaten like myself.
Those once-entrancing eyes
are now filled with tears
as he cries like a lost child.

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Contrast Spring 1988