To Hades, To Shakespeare, To My Personal Heaven

Sinking, sinking, sinking
Into the boredom of philippic being delivered
Outside, snowflakes swirled against the dark
Of the Chicago landscape
Sinking through a pile of ripped pillows
I had become a troglodyte of the third-degree
My friends had all left me
Left me to think of the M82
Left me to take a lifelong hiatus
From the world
Fresh pineapple among stacks of books
The ice ready to fall and shatter the mirror
My life was disappearing fast
Everything I held dear was vanishing into the dust
Vanishing into the Book of Hate in my brain
Nature was deceiving me
It was all one mass of lies
Lies, lies, lies!
For an instant I was on a safari
Where lions ruled the plains
But with a fleeting glimpse,
It disappeared.
Everything swirled and faded away
My spirit and body began to separate
Thunder roared through the valleys.
It tore things apart,
It flung things asunder,
It flung the remaining pieces of my life far and wide,
Never to be found again.
Blurred white clouds of Salem,
Of witches, of wizards, of warlocks,
Images of vampires,
Actual vampires, not the sorry excuse of Twilight
Blurred white clouds of warriors of horseback
Spun through my fast blurring vision
Ghosts floated through, reaching to embrace me,
To return me to Hades, to Shakespeare, to my personal heaven
Through my spirit, my vision returned
Someone entered, screamed,
A mug of vanilla-caramel swirl coffee splashed to the tile flooring
My spirit disappeared into necrotic death.

Memories

Screaming bloody murder
The place is still haunted by the people who died here.
The people who were tortured to death or insanity
About things they may not have even known.
That is my collection
My collection of memories.
Memories of trips all over the world
From the sunny Mediterranean of Italy
To the burning cold passion of England
To cold, icy Montreal
To cool, breezy California
To the frigid water of Maine.
The days of seeing the places I’ve read about
And written about
And longed to see for years.
Where people were murdered for all the wrong reasons
And all the right reasons as well.
The traitors who were never really traitors at all
But she had to get them out of the way.
The ones who threatened to take her crown
And give it to her half-sister, Elizabeth.
The screams can still be heard even after four hundred years
The screams of the tortured and the dying
The laughter as heretics died at the stake
The priest’s words floating over the smoke, over the whole courtyard
It was sadness, but not happiness
That grew in these walls
It was happiness that grew beyond them in the general city
The laughter that soared out of the playhouses and across the Thames
It was every emotion rolled into one
The shadows of them still haunt these places.
The grace of churches, but not of my religion
Cold water, but still somehow soothing
The frigid Montreal cold, but uncaring
The warmth of California, so relaxingly amazing.
***
Not bitterness, but destruction
Not my memories, but things that really happened
Not what really happened, but what should’ve been
Not just destruction, but killing whether it be in reality or on the stage
Not going back on decisions, but keep forcing through
But somehow still pulling unawares to a place
Where people screamed bloody murder at all hours
Be it day or be it night