The Beldam of the Bedlam - Atrox

A young man astride a rocking horse.

His petticoats bristling.

His eyes closed

with pleasure enjoying the euphony of his fork scraping his plate.

Facing him sits a filthy oldie shaking his dentures like castanets.

Whistling through his nostrils, giggling with tears in his eyes.

The clattering of my teeth.

Sometimes a coff, sometimes an achoo.

Heard a cry for help, but didn’t pay attention.

Thought it was only myself as usual — the beldam of the bedlam.

A toothless hag moving eyeball-beads in an abacus.

They stare so,

they stare so on her rope of pearls: A row of Lilliputian skulls on a string.

The oldie chants the alphabet in an order he has fixed himself.

Once he strode

down the aisle with a wedding gown on an arm’s length.

His bride-not-to-be (anymore) in the soil right outside.

The youngster tells about how he once lay in a bathtub barely conscious in rusty-bloody-red water.

The bathtub tiptoed on lionpaws to the landing, tipped over and flung him down

the stairs on a rusty-bloody-red runner.

I’d like to tell them about a dragon with hiccups.

Hiccuping fire in headwind,

burning itself.

But I’d better not…