An Excellent Servant but a Terrible Master
The subway tunnels sigh Damp air rushing up through oiled grates Drawn from phlegmy pools That fester beneath the streets Avert your eyes and grit your teeth This too shall pass The gutters are packed with strangled souls This too shall pass The steel is melting, the mortar is crumbling This too shall pass My voice will fade and these pages will rot This too shall pass My fingers trace tile walls And caress the crass graffitos That fill the pits and cracks Like eczema crusting a scar Avert your eyes and grit your teeth This too shall pass The gutters are packed with strangled souls This too shall pass The steel is melting, the mortar is crumbling This too shall pass My voice will fade and these pages will rot This too shall pass Above, the world buzzes Wires, fridges, flickering fixtures Commercial jingles and radio chatter Blaring klaxons and whispering mendicants The city has fallen ill Its foundations sink into muck Avert your eyes and grit your teeth This too shall pass The gutters are packed with strangled souls This too shall pass And I crawl the streets Gobbling its corrupted flesh Even as it sickens me Oh, how the angels kiss my senses And how the fear shrouds my mind As the beast dies all around me I could not feel more alive
Submitted by Pestilence — Apr 25, 2025
I’ve invented new words For the work that we’ve done together Painful neologisms Carved in your warm flesh Scrawled in your torn flesh Read deep into my nonsense And I hope you fucking choke On all it doesn’t say My voice has become toxic Weaponized vowels Acid gibberish Snake, you coil in my home And among my clothes I’ve done all that I can To drive you away This is the last resort Of a cornered animal I know it’s wrong Like fists full of barbed wire I know it’s wrong Like nightstick abortions But I must vent this poison Before it kills me This is not justice But that doesn’t make a bit of difference to me Blood will always out And you deserve the worst
Submitted by Nargaroth — Apr 25, 2025
We find ourselves lost In a maze of our own design The signposts have all burned down And we fade by the day When the wind blows, I shed dried-up morals Like leaves in autumn Or dead skin cells, Desiccated by years of misuse, And left to fill the guts of mites And muffle spiders’ footfalls Oh, that we could forget And turn our eyes from the floodwaters But even a liar like me Knows that we must drown Show me that the things that you value Have value since you value them We can feel meaningful Because it means we have meaning Let’s hoard grains of sand And worship junk data Let’s build a palace of static And lose ourselves inside Let’s march around and around and around again All the debased logic The spent, weathered values And the ashes of intentions Bear their witness against me I can hear them every hour I can hear them every day Ten billion orphans Screaming in the abyss
Submitted by Morgoth — Apr 25, 2025
When the bombs fell We were in the hospital Receiving the good news The test results burst into flames In the doctor’s hands Glass perforated your healing skin Overpressure broke our embrace Shrapnel amputated your smile And I learned what silence means When the bombs fell All the confusion fell away And the earth was made simple again When I awoke I tasted blood and cinders Like lubricants of change A dying orderly told me It was quick and painless for you As his ribs broke through his skin It was not quick or painless for him Is it wrong to feel relieved? Maybe this was for the best Someone told me there was a plan They’re making this world a better place One mess at a time
Submitted by Dahmers Fridge — Apr 25, 2025
The men gave me back my papers Because they cannot not harm me anymore They said I could read the words But would not understand them “Corpses without fingerprints Locked doors and black helicopters Searchlights from the sky Human traffic in cargo containers Cities drowning in tar Deserts crisscrossed by cyclone fences A constant low buzzing And somebody laughing from far away “My walls have all grown eyes And my steps are fettered by wires “And then it appears The final, grand absurdity A great, silent heart Sprouting vein-trees and capillary branches Rendered obsolete And spinning lonely through the ice” The men took their needles and entered my mind And they sutured up the bad thoughts They say that it was for the best But I know that part of me is missing now
Submitted by Nargaroth — Apr 25, 2025
I built a man With a clockwork heart and gravel hands He sees no color and hears no music I let tumors clog a throat that leads To a Moebius stomach Castrated and engorged Priapism of the mind A victim of circumstance I built a woman With bathroom-floor skin and spittlestrand hair Her breasts yield up poison And I filled her skull with sobs and tears Her womb is ripe with future She waits and whispers My hands shake Stained, calloused hands They know my guilt and my pride They wait with her for grandchildren With their clockwork hearts And gravel hands With bathroom-floor skin And spittlestrand hair They curse their maker And sharpen their knives The best of intentions Spawn the foulest beasts I deserve what’s coming for me It will be a relief
Submitted by Pestilence — Apr 25, 2025
Two-way mirrors and guard towers Behind every pair of eyes The prison is there Whether or not you can see it And we’re each locked down alone With the sound of our nerves fraying The lightbulbs are cameras, and the keyholes are cameras Even the bricks are cameras With cataracts in their lenses And morons watching their screens Which is worse: Always being watched Or never being seen? An anonymous god in his cell Begins to fear drowning in his own filth Calling out for deaf guards, Battering the prison walls With bloody fists and blistered feet With pleasure and pain Joy and sorrow and indifference. Which is worse: Always being watched Or never being seen? Neurotransmitters shut down And drops of serotonin blur his vision As he despairs of finding a way out
Submitted by Grave666 — Apr 25, 2025
I can’t ever seem to sleep And the TVs leer as they parody me Their chatter sucks the air from whole rooms No matter how many I turn off Is this really how the world sees me? Is the screen the lens of the mind’s eye? I can feel myself shrink as the wilderness grows And the microchips chirp in mocking conspiracy The dying newspapers boil over with rumors And no one can hear the bombs bursting from here The charlatan experts prey on our fear And the doctors prescribe palliative insecticides For cancers they planted themselves at your birth And the books are bound up with third-hand hearsay But who can be trusted to pick out the liars? I’d do to them what they’re doing to me I can feel myself shrink as the wilderness grows And the microchips chirp in mocking conspiracy ‘Round here Ninety million tons of concrete Press down On their tired eyes and soft frames ‘Round here Their brains collapse before their bodies White noise Clogging every orifice like glue I haven’t slept in weeks A lifetime has passed and I don’t know a thing And I don’t give a fuck what happens to me All I want is to go to sleep
Submitted by Nargaroth — Apr 25, 2025