By P. Francis
And the cradle rocks underneath the tendril cobweb
A prenatal breath blowing a blood scab in the ebb
Wooden bars rot, a stained velure crib on a floor
Diseased, wroth rats eating spore ergot in the foyer
Cracked glass is strewn on the dank termite planks
As a mother-in-waiting gave thanks to oxygen tanks
Where window crosspieces rust away in the wind
Glare of specious dust debris recites forgot sins
Down halls, light hides and courts a dark armoire
As debrided dolls cry morts, scarred and charred
No screams carry through the trees of slit wrists
As the asylum whispers in the dusk a nice tryst
Suns rise and shine in the cycles of winter frosts
Whether an asylum or clinic draped in black moss
If nobody's seen alive with babies who maybe died
There's no remorse in a ward or morgue gutted inside
Who screams louder, doctors or uncounted thralls
If no one breathes within the red, bleeding walls?
Paint chips float on through the blue womb rooms
While the pin light hides gone eidolons in tombs
Chairs missing legs crumble into whittled pegs
As outlines of dregs fade in the putrid old beds
Weeping deep at the corridor's dank, blank end
Fillies spank the pretend headless doll friends
Fangs of the shrews sharpened like razors in twos
Guarding the black staircase to the basement and loos
Love and sometimes hate spurned a late night date
As some bane aides and profane insane became mates
Nurses surrounded in gowns down in the jail cells
A gestating, waiting lady and baby to quell
Knives and scalpels raise in swift slicing cadence
Ceilings pouring purple drippings of the decedents'
Then comes a drumbeat drip, from the rafters, to bowel
As the death knells of the dispelled whewl and howl
Dirt and rain water pool in a quagmire of fools
In the flooded sick bay of a failed medical school
Revenants soak in the silty filth, loving the blood bath
No reprieve or ever to leave an asylum's shrieve wrath
Happy Halloween!
