somber strangulation of thought
as I lay upon my back,
the shapes upon the thankless
heaven above.

Macaws,
yellow gold,
golden red.
Great winged angels
growing arms upon
a grey sky.
Boiling Seraphic monsters
Descending.

Rats wearing the skulls of men,
writhing in a twisted tornado
like a drowning whirlpool.
Blood red eyes,
unfathomable deep,
clawing upwards.
Escape!

The never ending stretch
of a birdhouse
suburbia.

lidless eyes staring
from shadowy doorholes
in the dusky foreground.

Bergman’s Death stands
at the end of a hallway,
perilously red,
with a single door behind him.
The door is shut.
The way is barred.

Jormungandr rises to feast;
not serpent-like,
but fleshy.
Pulsating
muscle.
He descends,
maw agape, hungry.

There is man there
in the dark.
Neither Adam nor Cain
but pure fear.

He stands alone,

beneath
cliff walls that climb

ever higher.

Saint Andrew’s Cross,
His body limp,
buried,
bisected,
in the black mud.

Shadows twist and
wheel about
above me.
In their formlessness
they are free.

I fear the twisting clouds,
and the face,
Deathlike,
Which they contort into,
becoming
Jabberwocky.

Another man,
hale and strong.

His features bend
and become
frog-like.

He wishes to consume
the naked fly
upon the blankets
below.

Jormungandr rises again
from his wide
cruel
smile.

The skinless soul
of the repentant
hungers for mercy;
his cries are that of death.

An armless cross burns gold
through grey clouds,
the razed earth below.
There is no pity in this light
nor yellow hellfire.

Octopine tendrils of night
caress my sleeping eyes,
clinging tightly
as ever shifting shapes,
shadows.
I feel not but
see all.

Listless,
like a ghostly diver
enshrined in white armor,
descending through the sea of stars,
staring cruelly
with
skeletal eyes.

Eyes unblinking
I arise
from my rest.

Epiales Song

by Thomas Layman