Chidher Grun

Children of the Living Dead


These gray buildings have all been painted
To match the sky above
The emaciated bodies that wander between them
Flitting from building to building
Match the color-scheme perfectly
As they seek out liquid sustenance
Listen to the harsh whispers in the night
As they drift towards the starry skies
At one time, they were full of hope
But the colors have been sapped by the flight
Leaving them more like the color of smoke
And just as dreary

Can you smell the broken dreams
The reek of dirty children
Growing up with no future
As they trudge through snowy streets
Ragged, loose-fitting jackets
With dirty, woolen lapels
Tracing the lines between the candy-colored bricks.
They wipe muddy ashes
From their teary, downcast eyes
Leading them not to Hell
But to a darker fate
I hear the thunder of their marching feet
Our marching feet

Wake up to that thunder in my head
Signs of a struggle
Wandering the streets
Fragments of memories
Listening to the mirthful screams
Of the blissfully ignorant,
Of the hopeless.
The wind is blowing hard
I can feel it in my chin and ears
My jacket's pulled tight and my hands
Are jammed in my pockets
People are yelling from open car windows
As I pass under a
Broken yellow street lamp
I linger for a moment
Because it doesn’t seem there is anything left
It’s just another wasted night.
It was warm today,
And brought everything out of the woodwork
Prowling the streets.
Girls wearing far too little for this weather
Stagger and lurch between date rape fantasies
Not sure where they will wake up.
Higher education.
Sculpted little boys in big bodies
One thought circling their brains
Smiling between each other
Knowing they win, but
they will be the real victim.
Future of America

The rain beats down
Cold on my face
And the lightning rips across the sky
Illuminating the darkness
A hard rain is going to fall
Acid rain
I’m melting like the Wicked Witch
From the inside out
Look at this bleak existence
Look at it until the strain starts to burn your eyes
We roam about
Us children of the living dead
Some not even eighteen years of age
With suicide as the only option
To escape this lingering death
And glorified abuse
Oh, Doom City
How are we supposed to go on?
Let’s talk about our ugly,
Factory-cog futures
Assemble and Weld
Assemble and Weld
And every night,
Drink to forget
Repeat steps A, B, and C
To infinity

Doom City, Parlor City
More taverns than any other town.
Something to be proud of.
Something to believe in.
Alcoholic by culture
You can see the pride in the stagger
And the empty, lifeless eyes
The pale skin
A skeleton in the flesh
Shambling somewhere that is no place at all

Chidher Grün

Cold, iron fuck machine
Illumination on the throned head of the Serpent
Overlay of obsidian waves of chaos
Obsidian waves
Rotten worm, oh, you decayed maggot
Rotten-tooth face of the Savior
On the thorned head
Shrouded thorned head of the Serpent
Illumination on her face as she lays prone
The iron girder crucifix of the Serpent
Burning in the obsidian waves of chaos
A landscape too blasted and cold
To accept the blood from her weakened
Broken body
Only the flicking tongue of the Serpent
Son of Man
Twisted grin of a cold, iron fuck machine
Bedecked with hooked chains and grief
No sun no Son no sun
Only the obsidian waves of chaos
Illumination on the face of the Serpent
That black-toothed rotted worm
Face of the Savior
Flesh raised with boils and grief
Iron girders
The cold, iron fuck machine.

Momma’s Little Monster

There is a small boy
Broken on the rocks
Staring up at the sky
The only word on his lips is innocence
But he forgot the meaning
The moment he learned about death
His eyes were torn away by birds
Years before he passed
But already there was enough mirrored in them
To make the act welcome

There is an adolescent youth
His heart was pulled from his chest
And the word “IDEALS”
Has been branded on his forehead
Tears still drip from his closed eyes
Even in death
He holds his balled fists
To the sky
Even though the fingers
Have all been broken with wands
His last words play in a loop
From rusty and corroded speakers
That hang from wires
Above the crude cruciform
He has been draped over
“You’ll never change me!”
Screams his voice
Choking around the blood that filled his mouth
Which now flakes off in a brown crust
From the split rim of his lips
“And you’ll never take me alive!”
His words could not have been more prophetic
For moments later,
He was strapped across the heart-attack machine
Which installed visions in his head
Of what the world would be
If it listened to him
How it would split and crack
And fall off into space
The images replayed themselves
Until he chewed out his own heart
Just so he couldn’t hear
The shadowy echo
Of his own screaming

Momma’s little monster walks past him
The tail of his long black coat
Brushing against the warning notice
That served as a tombstone
Breaking a shard of glass from his liquor bottle
Clutching it over the pulsing black vein in his arm
Listening to it sing as it begged for him to make it dance
He smiled a deliberate smile
Spitting blood through his cracked lips
And tossed the shard at the
Mockup cruciform
“You can never change me,”
He whispered
Taking a drink
“And you’ll never take me alive,”
He pleaded to the ominous sky
Spreading his arms
To accept the only answer he knew could be true
But it never came

And it’s absence slashed him deeper than any blade
He laughed
And hurled the bottle on
The aborted fetus of an old man
Whose body was pristine
Save for the scars over his eyes
“Your name is Question,”
Whispered Momma’s little monster to the corpse
“And your deeds are shrouded in failure”
“Because if you ever pleased a soul,”
“You could never please yourself”

He turned away from the corpse
And the pedestal it lay upon
Pulling his coat tight
To ward off the savage chill of the wind
That picked up
And screamed through the husks of the trees
That once bloomed in the graveyard
“I’ll gladly drown another day,”
He whispered,

Continuing on,
Searching for a gate
That never seemed to appear
Though he could see hope
In the two massive orbs
That hung on the horizon
The shadow of children danced around him
Begging to know if they would ever be born
He chuckled and told them
For their sake, he hoped not
As they started to cry
He pushed past them
And headed for the swamp of desire
Hoping to find some comfort
In the withered remnants of his lost hopes.

Momma’s Little Monster is all grown up now
Are you proud?
Because he’s not sure if he should be
He’s walking through the graveyard of his head
Looking at all the twisted nightmares
Of his own fantasies
Walking over the bodies of this
Creature to end all comforts,
A creature of habit,
Whose only habit is to constantly change.