stronger than a bulletproof vest.
The time of the King is over,
the hem is full;
Josh swallows the last chip
and explodes in a hail of flesh—
a real show, better than the gas chamber—
The cop with the star on the collar
grabs the flying head of the boy.
It seems like a cannonball
shot from an old, rotten brig,
adrift.
THE GARDEN
The garden is closer
than you think.
It’s not hidden in Mesopotamia
under that big slice of yellow ground
where the Shatt al-Arab melts—
fine sand, water, and angels’ piss.
The garden is everywhere,
two blocks from your house
where you pass without knowing it,
riding in your haste.
The garden has only two trees,
many green benches,
a dry fountain with red fish fossils,
and an iron gate, padlocked,
open only on Sundays.
You call it the asylum
because that’s what they taught you,
but inside, in the garden,
there are survivors of the Great Flood,
unkempt men and women
wearing white pajamas
walking around a piece of the Ark,
their rotten wood totem.
The inhabitants of the garden
look around with their hawk eyes,
look out, look at us:
we are their ghosts,
faceless, meaningless.
We are hallucinations with legs and arms
that they have to insult,
to strangle at the earliest opportunity,
before the next shock fries
their memories of Eden.
DAMES DE VOYAGE
Flora, my oldest doll,
has latex skin and glass eyes.
She started my Eden,
teaching the craft to the others.
Flora is the favorite
of my inanimate harem.
She always wears the red velvet dress,
the same as Puccini’s Floria Tosca,
the same as Callas at the Covent Garden,
with precious trim
along the breast.
Béatrice, who sleeps in bed with me
on Thursdays,
looks like a real woman,
with her silicone flesh,
the articulated joints, and the PVC skeleton.
I love watching her mouth half open,
the rain of her red hair on the pillow.
Béatrice knows how to cry and laugh.
Her artificial sweat
smells of sunflowers.
Doriane, my latest purchase—
$12,000—
is installed on all fours
in my living room, over the Persian carpet.
She is a custom doll,
a replica of a fat teenager
with slits smaller than those of the others.
Many other dolls live in my Eden,
cold and warm flowers,
eyes fixed on the ceiling
or on the oval windows
from which you can see the roofs of Paris,
the maze and confusion of reality.
Ants running on the roads
are nothing but restless souls,
disordered, shaped by chaos.
But all this shit
remains behind the door,
outside of my Eden.
Wednesday.
It would be Lise’s turn.
Her adjustable tits and long fingers,
light and flexible
as the spears of the Macedonian cavalry.
But I can’t wait another day
for Béatrice, for her scent of sunflowers—
I change the rules—
The battery is switched on. Her eyes open.
I move her on the bed.
I tighten a leather collar
around her slender white neck.
I push myself between her thighs,
bending her mechanical knees.
My back burns, hit by cold flames.
I look back. I see her . . .
Flora wielding a knife,
my blood dripping from her hands.
Above the plastic diamond necklace
appears a wicked smile
that has never been created for her.
Then she pierces her tits,
letting her white love
bleed on the marble floor.
ELECTRIC MONKEYS
A building scratched by green
phosphorescent moisture;
the laboratory inside,
where shouts are sealed—
The Cage—
A monkey running
inside, with its jaded paws
along the perimeter of a few-inch world,
its steel-bar forest,
where plastic bowls and silicone branches bloom.
The rectangles of stars, their blue neon
always lit—
fake constellations, too many ceilings
inside.
On the right, a companion with its belly open—
ripped—
lying on a table, its tongue out,
surrounded by human butchers
sticking their faces, their lights, into him.
“What are they looking for?”
To the left, the head of its brother
immersed in a plastic tub
with a label full of numbers (4587…)
around its neck.
That head, the monkey knows,
has never been able to swim
or breathe underwater.
The man in the white coat
comes back to The Cage,
holding a magical syringe in one hand,
leather ropes in the other.
The bastard is smiling,
the ivory house of his rattlesnake tongue—
while his red-haired friend
drags the electric machine
from which poisonous suckers,
tentacles, and burned monkey hairs
stick out, and upon it
crazy LEDs light up
forming curves of red-dot tides.
Someone turns on the music.
The violas of the first movement
of Mahler’s Resurrection
vibrate, languishing for a few seconds,
followed by horns, violins,
and hard-skinned percussions;
all the instruments play together
to overpower the cries
of the electric monkey.
THE TENTH CIRCLE
Lucifer, the Beast,
shows the man the rooms of Hell;
the swollen corridors,
the chandeliers made of bone and onyx,
the black bulbs,
screwed cancers,
ten per group,
ten per room.
The metastases of the bottom of the Earth
lit by darkness.
The man looks around,
checks the moisture stains
on the walls.
The basilisks’ purple nests
pulse in the corners.
He leans out from the terraces,
from the iron gratings of the windows,
enjoying the view
of the tenth circle attic;
the tallest, the most expensive.
Lucifer stops
in front of a large wall of eyes
that blink open and shut,
forced to constantly watch
the first cascade of the Styx,
the hydrochloric acid river
that melts the souls recently arrived.
The visit ends;
the man gives the Beast
a check with many zeros,
a handshake.
The elevator goes fast.
The cables run for hundreds of feet,
covered by the voices of elsewhere,
by the sudden tympanum
of Mozart’s Lacrimosa
which fills the cabin.
Then, after the sound of pistons
of arcane gear,
the man arrives at his floor,
lifts the manhole,
and comes out.
Here, where money buys everything,
even a piece of five-star Hell
and a requiem that never ends.
ALMOST TO THE END
The hooker flips a switch
and turns on the lights of Eden—
red, purple, orange.
The road twists like a spine
trying to rid itself of too many quills,
then stretches and becomes infinite.
looks like monuments—
statues of the moment—
remaining intact for only a few minutes
before being gnawed
by rats,
by winged insects,
by the lights of reality.
It’s cold. January knows no half measures.
Eden is frozen.
The hooker is carved between tongues of ice.
You may confuse her
for a Renaissance fountain,
with small groups of heretic frogs at its feet
inflating their latex bodies.
Your car turns right,
as the sign says—
Eden is here—
pieces of flesh reflecting on the windows,
disappearing behind the last curve,
three hundred feet
of hedges of ribs, mosaics of tits,
and then you see her, your Eden,
the broken-down spaceship of your imagination,
towed by an old yellow truck
that slides
to the right and left.
Only the glue of your obsession
remains on the road,
mosquitoes trapped inside it,
and other hookers all around
asking too much money
for getting strangled,
almost to the end,
can’t stay balanced
on the blade’s edge.
THE END?
Not if you come and take a look at Crystal Lake Publishing’s other titles.
www.crystallakepub.com/books
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alessandro Manzettiis a horror, science fiction, weird fiction and dark poetry writer. His published work in Italian includes novels, long fiction, short story and dark poem collections, as well as many short stories that have appeared in anthologies. English publications include The Massacre of the Mermaids, The Shaman and Other Shadows, Venus Intervention with Corrine De Winter as co-author, Dark Gates with Paolo Di Orazio as co-author, and stories and poems that have appeared in both print and online USA and UK magazines and anthologies, such as Dark Moon Digest, The Horror Zine Magazine, Disturbed Digest, Bones III and others.
His poetry collection Venus Intervention was nominated for the Bram Stoker Awards 2014 and for the Elgin Award 2015, his poem The Man Who Saw The World was nominated for the Rhysling Awards 2015 and his poem Interiora was awarded with the Sinister Poetry Award 2014.
He can be found online at www.alessandromanzetti.net
CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR:
Website: www.alessandromanzetti.net
Facebook: www.facebook.com/alessandro.manzetti.5
Twitter: www.twitter.com/amanzetti
Email: a.manzetti@hotmail.it
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