__\::_screaming_for_mikey_:://["october"]

There were black lines bursting

from their exposed chests

in place of the white flashes

I had previously imagined

black lines from between

small beautiful breasts

so black

the blackness that

precedes existence

black lines that appeared first

in dreams before

death followed

the children the first to see them

until the black lines

soon surrounded the town

and penetrated its workings

so it would scarcely

resemble the town

it had been

to burst from between

small beautiful breasts

as unmoved as I

for often the children

were the first to bear witness

to such matters of note

solely because they did not seek to,

and as though by design

or collusion

numerous children offered dream-accounts

relating to the essence

of the black lines

an essence unclear but almost certainly

– they said –

malevolent

and did so in synchrony though without

– they insisted –  

prior consultation with the

peers and associated children who

appeared privy to

a mass experience that

like some foul larvae

had reared from the depths

of a supposedly shared genetic fundament

encoded into the ancient neural structures

as though to mark the

commencement of an unknown

cycle of violence and degradation

dream-accounts that would

forego detail for instead

a broad sense of emotional discomfort

by way of allusion, lyric expression

the single commonality being

the black lines themselves

bursting from between

small beautiful breasts

webs of norm and ritual like

grim tendrils tearing

through the heart of the machine

the people of this world

had become plasticised

become mannequins to me

only insentient husks

the silent conduits of

my private arousal.