Sex and Murder Magazine

By Joseph M. Gant

Serving time inside this
Vacant hall of cells alone -
Far outside love's jurisdiction.

Convicted in absentia
For savageries unleashed
Upon the frailty of Mind itself,
All prejudice withheld, unrepentant.
I recount my charges well:

Flayed my tortured nerves exposed
With instruments of terror, battered
Hard with rocks and pipes the brain of matter gray;
It cried and so into it poured my vengeance well,
And with the cold wretched hand of molestation, on
My senses laid until so twisted hid their faces
Shamed into submission's blank facade of tainted glances.
To all of this I have confessed; in Here -
No echoes for my absolution; none for which I seek.

In Here I rot without
Decay: that promise made from flesh
To men that even through morbidity
Anguish too must take its leave
And putrid blossoms make of us
Whose torments wring our skulls of sweat,
More so than the fears of hell,
Lies of heaven sold in trust.

Limpid so I wander down
This corridor of time, to
Settle firm inside my cell
Erected, raised for these alone,
My sins, nay crimes contained;
Within these coldest walls conceived.

Night falls without notice. Day and dark
Alike withheld. My eyes no longer
Strain, so conditioned to my present state.
I turn the glass to count the hours, watch
The moments pile, one upon the other;
Grains of empty time betray my passing and
I long to touch them, feel the slip,
Know that I am really Here.

Resigned, I pull the blanket of phantasmal
Weave to sleep as I once did before to dream,
But consciousness alone there is. These
Cells will never let it go. I walk these halls
In memory's chains, chains of time unbroken.