Horror Box

Rambly free verse unedited as yet

The horror box


I put my hand into the narrow
Circle of the hole
Grabbed by the writhing tentacles
of a demented squid
my arm is flayed in a frenzy of suckered hooks
My fingers crack between the jaws
Of the dull scissored beak
Crushed and severed digits fall
From one hand to the other
A hapless juggler in a circus of distress.

I put my nose up to the puckered hole
Slaughterhouse smells of blood, shit and rot
Marsh gas from intestinal swamps
Mingles with the lurking underwaft of
Stale piss, rotting nylon and sickly
Sweet pine of cheap air-freshener.
Olfactory meltdown,mucus streams
The sense of smell is replaced by
A dull ache and a caught breath

Involuntary reluctantly I taste the thing
Chitinous crawling creatures leave acid trails
Across my tongue the ripples of filth
wash Rancid milk and Bilious meat
a sandwich of mouldy bread
stuffed with the gag of fur and taint of metal.

Holding it before me it shrieks
A writhing mass of venomous metal
with scrabbling legs and glutinous slime
It stabs and slashes its way free
Repulsed and plunging to the floor
It skitters to the corner
A stain spreading in the gloom
Tendrils worming to the wardrobe
Poisons seep into my pores becoming part of me
Its remnants multiply within. Dividing,
Subdividing in a honeycomb
Of cryptic chaos and
Putrid birthing cells
Today’s shame is
Tomorrow’s horror.