x

…You will pay Alan your last respects. The date conflicts

With a meet proposed by a flirt. Two desires are thus at war

And their dispute wrenches you apart, surges like the current

In a battery being charged beneath the ground. Inexorably

The vortex drags you down, down into infernal regions.

x

Women’s voices there sound instructive but they interrupt each other.

One of them pronounces Manor House ‘Manna House.’

It’s bright for once, the manna scattered, spilling as if it were light;

The fiery pillars blazing overhead as the underground

Lurches through the underworld where all the blackness

Of night in the background shapes itself into grimaces.

It’s Christmas every day down here, or rather Christmas Eve,

x

And packed with Father Christmases feeling up your bits.

Christmas Eve herself has naked hips. Her nipples spout

Red Bull. The tube becomes her snake, while the Stations

Of the Cross remain closed because of planned engineering work.

However, there are plenty of others at which to disembark,

Their escalators only going down. There is no “up”. You rub

Shoulders with pickpockets, ogle those exquisite girls

x

Who lend new meaning to ‘untouchable’. The underworld

Is full, all the rush-hours of a life spent commuting

Happening at once. How are you to find your mother here,

Your lost daughter, your love? An ancestor asks you

To join the dead fathers’ brigade. Baron Samedi and his sidekick

Are chopping up pricks to feed to the zombies. They ask for yours,

But you seem to have lost it along with your freedom pass.

x

Are you already a zombie? The stink of long dead rat

Suggests that you are not. After all, you can still smell it.

One day, one day you will ascend, and, roseate, throw off

The pall to emerge a girl in a choir, utterly above it all

In some pre-Raphaelite shoal. This girl is obviously your soul.

That’s why you needed that bath, back by the snake-infested shore,

For now you are cleansed, and cleaner than you ever were before.

x

From THE RUNIAD Book 6 – Loki