layers

Swathed in a splash of crimson
and little else
the duo and one carried him
deceased, hoist to the brink
of their nude dripping
shoulders.
Stop drop and roll
the mantra I learned
kept me at a safe pleasure's view
out of a maelstrom
of laser beam
piercing eye infarction.
I preferred it that way,
better dead than red
bloody rolled and badly eaten.
To the maestro
a guru under a rock
I sojourned
and I learned
the secret to seeing oneself
from behind one's own eyes.
A lifetime spent in mere
mortal's moments
my hardship earned
in tortuous years yet seconds
to you or the grocer
or his priest or his mother
who lies prone now
at my behest,
the price I paid
a pittance
a ploy that will haunt
infinite moments of my hereafter.
Stop—
technique to slow the present
Drop—
to position oneself for further actions
Roll—
the catalyst to propel into the recesses
of one's inner turmoil,
a jungle maze from which to
extricate
a puzzle to unriddle and emerge
triumphant
behind the tinted lens of forethought.
That's my way in
and easy compared to some
some that involve pain
and a bloody mirthlessness
eschewed at the perennial cost
of mundane worthlessness.
The game I solved
by plucking the nails
from a frothing sloth creature
a burping squirming fur of tongues
and feeding its castings
to my gun,
wormed out of a
warm inguin, heated
and cajoled from hiding
by love and lovemaking,
and I sprayed the offending vermin
and won my way
into my eyelids
for a peek
from my own eyes.
So I was taught
and so I learned
so the master says.
Now the Sirens
bathed in a blood
a crimson tide
that flows unceasingly
from heel to lung,
drips from cutis
saturated vesicle and pore,
they sense but cannot see.
They carry the dead
and search for more
to call home
to follow them home
to dine on flesh
and eat
to sate
to cure the lesions
the sores they fear
will eat them from
outside in
and stay the march of death
their master commands
if for no reasons other than
his own
twisted
and forgotten.
I have seen it
and now fear
the end.
Alas.

after I wrote this, the first thing I thought of was--this needs an all ways 11 photograph. thanks to Robert for picking one out. If you haven't already, check his work out...it's pretty darned magnificent.