NGRI

  

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!