WHORE OF BABYLON

The room smelled of something wicked; something bled out and left to die.

She lay upon the bed like an open grave, awaiting their heavy corpses, 

that will  be alive enough to recognize their own descent into the abyss;

       that deep swollen hole...

                  that will swallow them whole.

                                                                 The screams are silenced in the darkness there.

Soon it will be my turn, 

               I can feel the life running out of me and onto the floor.

                      

      She has not summoned me to her yet, and I am growing weak with desire.

I hear my name and realize this is the way every man dies, a slow death composed of many little deaths until the heavy breathing, and  all the heaving,                                                        

 until his final breath...

And, another takes his place within, as she wipes the blood from her chin,              leaving the flesh to hang from the fangs of her Cheshire grin.

When she is full and sated with the souls of the innocent, that become the ghouls of the maleficent, and their poison fills her with such an illness that even she cannot contain their toxic remains,

      she will regurgitate their bones out, upon the floor;

            her work is finished here, and her services aren't needed anymore.

Just one more look as she turns toward the door.

The tomb of forbidden pleasures, she is...

           and everything a man does treasure, 

                                          is lost within Babylon's whore.

M Teresa Clayton