Devils' Market

A timid drifter hears a voice,
A smooth rapturous tone.
Winged hollow masked faces ensure
A world to call his home.
 
The myth market of underground
Beseeches and entreaties
Weak hearted folk to come within
To taste necrotic sweets.
 
Corrosive glares and greed-fuelled fears
And mold rotting concrete.
A vial of tears for all who near
The maze of slaughtered sheep.
 
The drifter trips into a shop,
A canopy of flesh.
The skin-stitcher asks for a hand,
The drifter fells his breath.
 
Outside a sickened stranger falls,
The drifter stops to help.
The stranger gives a horrid shriek
And then proceeds to melt.
 
The drifter twitches down the streets
Disturbed at every turn,
The sorry fool faces the fact:
He may never return.
 
A soot black smoke pollutes the lungs,
The drifter chokes on lies.
The merchants all peddle despair
Disguised to human eyes.
 
A slender suited gentleman
Implores the drifter to
Gaze upon a mystic mirror
That makes a dream come true.
 
The drifter stares in reflection,
Temptation takes its hold.
The drifter fills with brief delight
As his blood converts to coal.
 
The drifter finds pleasures unknown
To mortals’ blunted sense,
An otherworldly orgasm
Removed from all contexts.
 
His heartbeat fights against a rib-
cage lock that cracks within.
His nerves evaporate to air
As absinth spilled on skin.
 
The vision fades, revealing truth,
A withered wheezing shell.
The drifter wails inside the frame
Trapped in mineral hell.
 
The soul shatters as fragile glass
To shards of agony.
The suited fiend carries the husk
Away for all to see.
 
He hurls the corpse into the square,
The horrors stop to watch
The mask-maker prepare plaster
And skin-stitcher to notch.
 
He sows the living mold to bone,
A gruesome dance of thread.
The demons howl in black fanfare:
A brother has been bred.