After Life: To Hell, Not Back

The Bodies are mangles of waxy bone and tendon.
Sinew drapes from them in bloody lines:
From the shoulders and yellowed knee-caps like meaty web;
And extend into the walls like shackles.

Through sewers squeaking, clicking, chomping
With rats- more sallow gashes than prickly hairs-
Scampering on the pipes that line, and gnawing sparks from
metal.

You notice first that this is large enough
For freaks on stilts to stand on brother's shoulders.

Twirled cotton- coating rolls of stiff carny papers-
Scrapes tongue like the roughest sandpapers and you drool,
like a toothless alky, dribbles of bloody sugar clumps for a
Candy taste
That tantalizes from the air.

The Bodies leer with eyes that quiver like Halloween Jell-o
In chipped eye sockets, revealed by skin dipping and
Stretched, pinned behind the ears.
Their skewed jaws ratchet from side to side
Like tambourines.

You avert your lucid eyes, though smile dazed,
And lift your nose for the Carmel-painted Popcorn, Red
Licorice, and Greases that oil every joint and disjoint of a
Ferris wheel.

You find that rumbling hunger can't be soothed
By the stench of sewer slop.

You walk past it all, skirting the slicks
Of rotted skin that puddle on the ground.
You want to see the golden sun
Crowning the edge of the distance.

Your fingers curl, messy with sweat.
Muscles wrench to lift yourself into the blue above; instead
You find peeling nails and lumpy shavings of burning tallow
And scream yourself back into the deep muck of sewer.