The sign nailed to the front gate says
Welcome, all those who enter.
The ante-chamber’s lit by the pale eyes
of dead souls with no way out or
in: attendants with nothing to give
but themselves, which is nothing.
The library shelves the most extensive collection
of old scholars who trudge
the circular road of academia.
Their lungs are wracked with God knows
& thru the tight hole that exits the throat,
they discourse. For no reason.
The lounge is stuffed with men stuck
in armchairs; whole families
& televisions set on blasted adverts
& melodramas which are like
& nothing like their lives.
The kitchens are hot
with bad-tempered cocks,
domestics. There is no rest.
The stairs are crammed with guests
with no-one to talk to
& nothing to say. They came
& never left.
In the back room
lovers consider ultimate solitude
& boredom.
In the bedrooms lie a multitude
of couples who say nothing but know
it’s over.
Thru the bathroom windows
you can see the silhouettes
of lonesome men washing their hands
in the cold porcelain; feel
the blunt steel of razor blade.
In the garden at the back,
in the sheds, are high beams
lined for miles with necks
at the end of ropes
about to break, caught
in that moment.
& children
wandering the halls
don’t understand the silence.
thanks Dean. Had to look that up. I’m guessing you weren’t talking power tools, which in the wrong hands, however…
Like Dante’s Hell, it has a sign on the gate, a sort of ante-chamber (for those rejected by both sides), plus the 9 parts (circles). So, i just had some fun with that
some Bosch-macabre stuff there; the freeze-frame of suicides particularly