By: Hunter Christian
Facedown in a shallow grave I lay;
with nature\'s rot tugging on my body, my limbs, the fabric of my soul\'s construct,
wherein death fills the void that,
my murder vacated
A hole within a hole;
disparate, divergent, fragmented,
a patchwork quilt shorn at its seams;
where, threaded gruesomeness blanketed a cold charnel\'s finality
An imminent demise,
an aforethought reckoning,
The ghastlier reality of disturbed dreams;
dreamt within a tortured mind\'s disturbed beckoning
A wooded gravesite hurriedly shoddy;
the consequence of long held resentments,
My dismembered corpse lay exposed to harsh woodland elements,
Disembodied limbs,
A decapitated head,
Poorly hidden by,
a hastened concealment, hurriedly stashed away in a dark, dank, putrid muddy hole
I am five days dead
No lonesome bride who\'s heart aches with dread,
No sorrow as her dimly lit shadow bows her pretty diminutive head,
She sits alone in silence,
reciting scripture in muted lyrical sermons beneath her breath instead,
all the while she\'s contemplating humanity\'s want for bloodshed, vengeance, and violence
I am five days dead
Alone she prays away the day onward into night,
in melancholic vigil amidst the flickering glow of solemnity\'s impermanence,
Her delicate limbs shiver, her pouty lips quiver, a symptom of the staid words she sacredly delivers,
Whispering a simple rhyme from a simpler time, bound to change from present tense to past tense
It\'s only tense appropriate for rhyming words for the dead,
From the mouth, as from the ear, the present tense must be purged and cleansed,
Washed away so that all that remains, are the past\'s wretched stains,
Stained verbiage of a lesser kind, born the farthermost behind,
The divide of what\'s decent and indecent,
what\'s kind and what is unkind,
Where dirty little secrets are sown, and the latter is reaped as characteristics bred,
Inherited by curiously nosey townsfolk who spew indecency instead,
About the living, the dying, as well as the dead,
Gossipy busybodies who feed the grapevine
When folks discover that not all is well, good, nor fine
Just simple folks with simpler heads
Dishing dirt on an average, everyday, everyman who has been done wrong and who\'s –
Five days dead
Facedown rotting in his earthen deathbed
Five days dead
Just folksy filth and fodder for the townsfolk aforesaid
Just five days before
Erased from this putrid gore
Undrained pallor recoloring my skintone
Unsawed apart limbs, head, and bones
Whole again,
As raindrops pelted a rooftop made of worn asphalt shingles blanketed with sheets of tin,
Oh my, where to begin,
To speak of the step-by-step events that led to my death, to my last blood-gargling breath,
If only I had a premonition, an inkling, of the plan they hatched, what they had in store,
For me as I just lay coolly on my kitchen floor
Cooling off a hothead by the old rickety screen door
Five days before
A lovers spat about litter on the floor from her mangy cat
Led to stones thrown about this and that
From our lips the vitriolic venom poured and poured
Her hands choked up on my old aluminum bat
My head bashed in on the kitchen floor
Five days before
She called a supposedly distant and forgotten ex
As my blood coagulated and dried
The two perpetrators engaged in a tawdry fuck,
Save intimacy or simpler tales told of consensual sex,
The sickened gratuity immersed within latent harlotry,
Acted out in my wedding bed while I slowly died
Five days before
The aftermath of jealous rage
Jealously for an ex-convict and a promiscuous whore
I cannot unturn this life’s page
From five days before
She said proudly that she settled the score
Five days before
Five days gone
Dane she ask that may bygones be bygones
Someday henceforth a hiker sees a bone by a mossy stone
No amicable resolution is concluded foregone
Five days gone
A hacksaw and a pact
Disposal difficult with my body intact
Hacked into pieces large and small
Into a Hefty garbage bag the two neatly stacked
He dug the hole while she patronized the mall
Five days gone
The smell of death rose up to meet the dawn
Suspicious cops interrogate and snoop
Around the cul-de-sac and the nearby loop
Neighbors drop dime without remorse
They knew our marriage may take this course
They surmised it\'d be her instead, of course
Five days gone
Five days turned into five long, long years
Forgotten now
Not a single soul alive sheds a tear
Lost from history somehow
My fate is the fate I always feared
The irony strikes once more
For I was the one who killed that whore
Then I lived until a ripe old age of eight-four
At five days dead
My heart filled with dread
For judgment day before an angry jury
Would be my fate facing her family\'s fury
Five days dead
I confessed to offing her instead
I bashed in her pretty little head
I hacked her up as soon as she were dead
I hid her corpse under our second hand wedding bed
Under extreme duress
I came clean, I owned up, I fessed up
Damn it, I confess!
Five days dead
The jury passed its verdict to my judge
Even in death scorned folks carry a grudge
Up from my screwed-up youth those folks drudged
A moment in time
So long ago I had suppressed the crime
Five days dead
The judge and jury found me guilty as sin
The following day my punishment did begin
Again, and again, and again
Five days dead
At six days dead I began my sentence
Everyday henceforth ticks off a checklist of repentance
For one hundred years
And for one hundred days
I must relive her fears
I must die as she died for me to repay
I must cry as she cried
I must beg, and plead, get viciously beaten, and bleed as she bled
I must die as she died
Through her eyes I will beat myself until I\'m dead
Day after day
For one hundred years and one hundred days
For the killing I must pay and repay
This is my just comeuppance I do agree
And if I could travel back to age twenty-three
I\'d keep her safe from the younger me
I\'d ask for forgiveness
I would calm my youthful impulsiveness
I would face my demons within
For your demons will catch-up with you
You will answer for your sins
No matter how many or how few
Hasten to begin
A path away from sin
For you will relive your sins again
From the viewpoint of those you\'ve hurt
Death will not be the end my friend
For when your corpse lay in the dirt
A hundred fold hence you will make amends
Again, and again, and again…