Death Sting by Alexander Tennant - HTML preview

Desperation

Oh My God, oh my God

My mind in pieces shattered glass on the ground

Half formed words fall from my mouth

The flow is tangled pointless of no sense

My breathing laboured, my heart thumping in my chest

No gas no power in my home,

I have not eaten for days,

I look wasted face drawn and pale

Hair matted all my joints on fire.

My home filthy bed unmade clothes stinking

Dust everywhere an inch thick

Piles of red letters threatening financial ruin

The bailiffs Christ the bailiffs what do I do

No one can help me the state charitable institutions the family, my wife my children

I am abandoned alone.

I can’t take it anymore I beg to be delivered from this hell

I rush out the door crying with nowhere to go

The hunt is on

I the prey with my mind in ruins my heart cannot stand the strain

Time has run its course

I tumble to the pavement dead

Released from my agony

Another statistic of the economic ruin

That is the after effects of the crash of 2008.

City money trader crash of 2021 AD

Deathly silence holds sway on the trading floor

Screens glow a sickly green with masses of red figures moving at supersonic speed

From various cubicles sobs can be heard from traders who have lost everything.

This is not 2008, no promise of bailouts from fairy godmother governments

In the Darwinian jungle of investment finance no prisoners are taken

The vulture rival firms circle this dying investment house ready to strike

Virtually all the traders have been playing for high stakes

Knowing that there is now no safety net to cushion the fall

The partners rush onto the trading floor

With tears in their eyes restlessly pacing the trading floor

Too late too late to do anything

Surely something will come up

The answer so they think is in the curve of the latest Gaussian stats

Dream on you deluded ones

And so it goes on and on.

The sense of utter futility clutching at anything plausible

To save their over - valued skins

It is all to no avail

Most now face complete ruin

No homes to go back to

No political stability democracy and its institutions suspended

All hope now gone the only option left?

In silent single file irrespective of position

Walk slowly towards the casement widows

And oblivion the pursuit by angry investors over.

Male and female hurling themselves straight from the 20^th floor

Escaping from the economic black hole of selfish capitalism’s own making

To face judgment for their actions

Now they are dead

Cursed for all eternity by the investors they betrayed.

2^nd Anglo Boer War Concentration Camp 1901 AD

Farms burning cattle and sheep taken by the British forces

Nothing left menfolk away fighting

Total destitution children and their sisters’ aunts and mothers roaming the veldt

No food, no shelter no hope

Forlorn and in tears facing starvation many just give up and die.

Some go to the concentration camps to exist

The conditions are pitiless, barely any food, no medicines

Boer families starving children dressed in rags their bodies emaciated

Adults are unwashed distressed diseased ridden and angry.

Resentment against their captors the British is high

This hell is too much to bear

Then a young English woman Emily Hobhouse appears

An English angel who champions their cause

A dust storm of shock and public outrage result

Thanks to Emily a petition is put together demanding better treatment of the captive Boers

At last it succeeds and with reluctance the British authorities relent

And through Emily they are saved and those that can

Live again to bear testament to the undying love and self sacrifice

With those that live owing their lives to her

Living on in their hearts for evermore.

Dagger

The family are downstairs awaiting him

Dinner is on the table and everything is sweet content

But he knows different

He has been hiding the true state of things

A deal went sour in the city

He had mortgaged his home up to the hilt

Including all his other assets

There is nothing left their home will be taken off them by the bank

In his hopeful arrogance he forged his wife Anne’s signature

The bank was fooled unwitting partners in this folly.

Soon to be exposed

The game is up and the dice of chance are against him

In his study with the door locked he takes out the dagger

It is there on the desk before him

He faces bankruptcy total ruin

To decide his fate he takes out a coin

Heads I live tails I die

He flicks the coin it comes up tails.

Relief floods his being

He decides to do the deed

His wife and three children must manage without him

Then he stands and utters a short prayer to God

Then rams in the blade

It feels icy as it tears his delicate flesh

At the sudden intense pain the failed tycoon roars out loud

Crashes to the floor the family hear from below

As his anxious wife bangs loudly on the door

Unaware that he has cheated her through death

Damning his family his three sons and wife to a life of poverty

Destitution and ruin.

The Savage Sea 1799

The square stemmed ship with poop forecastle decks

Bravely with its rigged three masts

Boldly trying to outwit the desire of the sea to capture her prize

Valiantly struggling to hove-to as the relentless lashing from the wind

Continues without cease

The crew, captain, boatswain, coxswain with might and main did struggle

To keep her steady.

Hard a lee shouted the captain, now close haul her or we’re all doomed

Still the relentless fury of the wind without mercy persisted

Pull on the yard arm with all your might roared the captain

His men tried with all their might but the mountainous waves thundered down

The stays now broken with the pressure.

Brace aback cried the coxswain

But alas too late too late

Down below decks cannons and balls of shot wildly roll

Young deckhands litter the deck with bodies smashed by the force of the dislodged cannon

Now the sea floods the hold

The brave frigate has lost the fight

In an instant the mainsail no longer can be reefed

The rolling waves and howling wind cannot be subjugated anymore

The brave man oh war keels over by the power of the waves and wind

All hands on deck and below are lost

Doomed for all eternity to lie in silent sleep at the bottom

Of a cruel and unforgiving sea.

I lay myself down to Die

I stumble I fall I am lying on the ground

Body becomes rigid in shock

All sensation is absent my breath becomes shallow

Faces of my comrades in arms look down with pity on me

The roar of the cannon, and screams of the injured wash over me.

My own internal screams of my blood as it rushes with lightening speed

Towards the walls of my fragile heart threatening to overwhelm

And extinguish the inner light within

As I damaged shell that I am attempt

Desperately to cling on to the evaporating cloud that is my spirit.

The life essence that is me now vanishing into the air

The vision of the outer world so long a constant fixture in my life

Along with all noise fading receding to nothingness

Then it is complete my life is ended I am no more

At one with the grasses of the field that covers me.

Burned Alive

I am trapped frozen inside this body my consciousness alive but my body rigid unmoving

My heart beating so slow, I barely notice as stone like I hear and see shapes of faces I know looking down at me – oblivious to the fact that I am alive

If only they knew my secret that I am here amongst them all

And yet and yet the world has forgotten me

My relevance to those around me of less importance than the lacquer on the grooves of the coffin lid.

I tried to move my mouth to speak – nothing

No sound emanates my voice is lifeless

And I am in darkness so total and final

I make an attempt to draw attention to myself but am powerless

It is too late I am done for my life draining away into the earth

Dimly do I hear the dull drone of singing along with meaningless platitudes

Mouthed by demons of envy and hate going through this fake ritual of sorrow at my departure

I cry out inwardly to my God for liberation of my spirit.

Then the call is answered I in my wooden uterus am moving,

Moving oh so finally towards the flames

It becomes hotter sweat pours from my body,

I scream inwardly no one hears my pain my agony,

The sides of the wood scald my flesh imprinting me with their mark

In their vice like grip I feel the radiation of their power

The glow of red my skin burning my eyeballs melting my eardrums now exploding

Now my lungs and heart are dissolving I am drowning in my own body fluid

Nerves all over my body now on fire

Coffin and body shell now being licked by the passionate flames

In my extreme agony imprisoned by the walls of the burning oven

A tunnel of light sucks me straight out of the fires of hell

And I am reborn as a newborn babe into the light

Deep peace surrounds my shattered spirit

As I at one with the eternal force of life

Free in eternities’ loving arms again.

Street Man

I lie there head pounding

Rain needle like piercing my flesh

A thousand cuts penetrate my skin

I am spread out on the stone slabs close to the foot of the bridge

My blood more crack than plasma

I feel the radiations of sharp pain gripping my back

Holding me fast in its grip

Mind frozen not registering any sensation

I am hit by a storm of human spit raining down upon me

Competing with the rain

Then I feel boots raining down greetings on my stomach and thighs

In between I become subjected to jeering voices

Hooded faces peer at me

Sneering twisted screwed distorted beast like

Expletives vomiting a waterfall of filth suffocating my mind

Then with no warning I become lifted up by a mass of tangled arms

And my broken body and foaming mouth are tossed into the waiting arms of the river

Who gratefully accepts me in as one of its own

As my lungs swell with the water

My life essence is gone

And I join the chain of life

To feed the river’s appetite.

Coma

He lies there motionless

Tubes attached to machines to feed remove human waste and keep alive

A body that is lifeless serving no purpose

With the occupant within now long gone.

Hordes of medical bodies buzz in and out of his room

Making notes with charts poised to check vital signs

A pointless exercise as life such as it is has ceased to be

Without the machines to sustain he would be no more.

Except he is alive purely to feed the whims of the life controllers

Obsessed with dominion over all things

Who in their arrogance have pushed aside a higher power

So that only they can become the sole deciders

As to whether his life lingers another day

Or ultimately reverts to dust and final oblivion.

Tragic Suicide

My heart beats beats beats

My thoughts race

Body in shock

Mind a picture of forgetfulness

Nothing is real

I float through time and space

Wrapped in a veil of silence

The cold steel of the track

Against my skin

I feel a quick vibration coming down the track

Eyes are open for an instant

And then I see it

Looming closer and closer

The air dances around me

As the engine of steel instantly connects

My flesh obliterated

I am gone

My life no more.

Choking

Smiling faces beaming happiness

Mouths open at the ready

Conversation in full swing

Foods of many varieties slide down throats

In grateful expectation of the experience

Its effect on both special satisfying

Bodies swell and enlarge to accommodate

Ever increasing volumes of food fuel

Cascade from throat to stomach

And then first one then another

Around the dinner table

Feel the obstruction and gasping faces turning blood red

Faces becoming ever blacker in colour

Lungs and hearts can stand no more

As the fight for life

Becomes a foregone conclusion

And six diners become four

Before the final course

Except in dreams about what could have been.

Death Dream

I chase a dream cloud nightly

In it I see my reflection

My reflection is lustreless flat and faded

Lifeless rigid without motion

Caring not for the sorrow of this world

Expressionless marble have I become

Emotions dry as dust

I bathe in its ghastly majesty

Powerless to resist the dream

Conquering daily life

As I surrender to its obsessional draw

Awaiting the time when both realities

Give birth to a new state

Where oblivion is master and mistress

And my restless spirit is filled with sublime bliss

As the dream allows the spirit within

To experience the dark void

Of unreality

That only the death dream

Can bring.

Ecstasy

Dance music on full volume

The DJ mouths the sacred words

Feel the love

The love penetrates every atom of your being

As you pop another pill

Down it slides

Dissolving into the blood

Then you feel another high

Music loud your spirit floating

In love with everybody

All sadness gone

The love pill has seen to that

The lights the sound the movement of bodies whirring in motion

All merge together

Then in a state of bliss

Your body heart and soul so bombed

By sweet love

Joy overload pulses full on into your system

Then wave of ecstasy hits

You burst within

And in that union

Of sound and feeling

Drained and lifeless

To the floor you go

Stone dead.

Perfumes of Mortality

I inhale around me swirling vapours of perfumes

My head giddy with it all

My stomach lazily subdued quiet and uncomplaining

Weird shapes nebulous and unclear invade my mind

I am a vacant blank.

Nothing registers nothing competes with skunk

It is the master and mistress of my heart and soul

With it I climb the heights of the sublime plateau

And can see for miles and miles.

The view is overwhelming

As my consciousness takes flight

Drawn by the chariot of desire

To its final resting place

Covered by a perfumed blanket of sweet smelling mist

All expression of earthly consciousness erased

All pain soothed and conquered

By its loving embrace

Too good to resist.

Police Cell

Damp graffiti ridden walls

Hard cold floor

Camera eye coldly observing all below

Lifeless form semi naked covered by a blanket

No sound or sign of a heart beat.

The hard boys had given him a solid working over

The aggression beaten out of him

Flung initially onto the concrete floor

Then placed into a bed

The uniforms blind and uncaring not noticing the wound to his head

A sour heap of alcohol soiled clothes and blood

As nothing can be done to question and investigate.

No check had been taken as to a pulse or heart still beating

Chest rising and falling

The blue uniformed hard boys had seen it all before

Nothing unusual nothing they could not handle

Except this time the form on the bed was dead

With the force of the impact to quieten him down

His skull smashed egg like

With the blue hard boys too busy to notice or care.

Shoot – Out

Hey dudes lets bust the joint

Guns at the ready

Bullets ready to fizz

We’re looking strong in our hoods and tights

Feel the love in overdrive

Adrenaline pumping the energy into muscles

Screaming with desire we blaze a wave of bullets

Through the human parasites coz we are the ones

To make it happen

Invincible ready to reach our destiny to finally take what’s ours.

The erotic thrust of bullets and muscle power working in perfect harmony

We clear a path to the cashiers till

Bodily throwing humans against the wall,

My heart pounds as I crave the force of violence.

Before the safe is raided and money taken

A roar of fire is heard behind us