Idiot's Attic

H.R. Giger

I’m running these numbers
For the pharmaceutical gods
For the children of the fog
And the depression dealers
With manic concessions
Oppressed between pages
And comedic impressions

I’m asking all these questions
Of my hair-shirt headstone
Of your left-hand life-line
Whose tooth-marks are these?
Pocking vampire moon sorrows
With Frankenstein craters
And werewolf tomorrows

I’m sweeping this pathway
For the time-traveller’s hushpuppies
For the pink-gummed piranhas
and ragged-tooth hippies
Arriving in warm ignorance
At the academy of lies

And the carnivores advance
In the shade of Mount Venus
Where they prey on the meek
Where they drown in the fountain
Of love’s fevered reprieve
Or entwine in the stitches
Of a heart-encrusted sleeve

I’m taking these steps
For the counting of paces
For the wolf at the door
Through streets yellow leaf-littered
Where un-drowned litters of orange cats stray
Mew at the gates of plastic institutions
Where the manufacturers of truth hold sway

I’m pulling out a chair
At the breakfast of horrors
At the pages of lies where the ink never dries
But I gag on the meal
Force-fed without ethics
Paranoid fantasies
Dead minds for the hack
Morning doorways cluttered
Outlined and arrayed
...in a 100 shades of black