Cacti & Paper Airplanes

Beast Below

I hear that there's a beast below

Which follows you where'er you go.

Watching your steps.

Counting your beats.

Haunting the night.

Stalking your dreams.

Men on voyages great did sow tales

Of fierce and gigantic whales.

But they too feared more than the depths:

The beast watching while they slept.

Eying your flesh.

Counting your breaths.

Prowling the dark.

Hunting to death.

Mother always told me of goblins

Which did roam the forest heart

But she would never dare speak

Of the beast just breaths apart.

Waiting for weakness.

Spreading disease.

Delivering pain.

And shaking knees.

Many a man has dis'ppeared

The womenfolk gone too.

All this blood and violence not by men

But the beast's infernal black goo.

Pustules dancing

Blood from breath

Its infernal curse

Has never lost depth.

For I'd be as healthy as an ox

On my regiment of mercury.

But having escaped its pox

The beast now wants me.

None shall escape

Its watchful eye.

No man's inoculations

Nor tinctures will purify.

And here I sit in a sorry state.

For its bloody cough

Has o'ertook my shakes,

Like my beloved of late.

Pus, blood, or war.

Prey always felled.

Will I join the others

In the coffin'd Hell?

I do not know if my fate is so

But I know that there's a beast below.