Prison Cloaca

Yesterday: the first day of death.
My life felt fallen into this fetid maze
where bile flows beneath
the best of demons and worst saints

Putrid lines drawn of many colors
but are only tapped of ebon souls --
just as oil gleams rainbows in day
the filth shows them in opaque night

My septic prison:
a labyrinth, holding hostage the few,
mocking palatial grandeur
through grotesque decadence.
Our sludge minotaur is merely inches underfoot --
out of reach – but omnipresent in stench, and waiting.

Perdition and Purgatory hold hands here
hateful, halfheartedly so,
is this infinite waiting, wandering

My corpse is cloacal gatherings
horrifically composed and piled high
-– in bulk and stock --
where only I lie mindful (or so I assure myself)

Tunnel walls fester and bloom with pus and scabs
which burst in false flash of light
and though no prisoner could confuse with second life --
one often hopes.

Little life remains trapped in this gaunt frame,
tangled in my defiled bones,
though escape from the minotaur
requires little life.