MATMOS

The skyline of Gotham, a lost era,    
held captive from a slime underground,      
a living dead thing; it’s hard to tell.      
The skies fill, darkened with endless      
flocks of flying monkeys, screeching    
like the locusts of biblical times.    
     
Sycophants: their alarming numbers,      
armies of them that grow daily.      
They roam the deserted streets with      
the sonic scream of those diseased,    
manic-eyed monkeys, sniffing the      
gutters in the frenzied hunt for      
vulnerable ones, of men and women.    
Fresh meat; new arrivals like I had      
been when I was dispatched by the      
ore that they knew would lay me low.    
     
I’ll never forget the echoes of their      
sniveling muzzles working the cracks    
of concrete and slab breaks in the      
sidewalks where weeds never thrive.    
     
Some of us, hot off the ships a few      
miles from the visitors’ docks, and      
once the cruisers dropped anchor,      
and lowered the gangplanks to    
 disgorge their unwary cargo, would      
fall prey to the toxic low tech parasites.      
     
I didn’t let myself be run off, though    
thoughts had crossed my mind, and      
others stayed in steerage when the      
foreboding immigrant ships returned    
to distant harbors. Gaunt faces with    
glazed eyes without hope when they    
had seen others returning to where so    
little was left. We knew well of them,    
and who, like us, had not spoken up.      
     
No adult or child would trade the ones      
waiting, to drag them underground    
 into slavery, than to go back to the    
soot of the satellites; good ones,      
who perished with their remaining    
kith and kin. Nothing survived. Not      
even the burned out husks of their      
faith, as carts were pulled by hand,    
filled with crippled & elderly, along      
rutted roads, passing one smoldering      
ruin, in slow motion, after another.    
     
But yet to stay, to turn away as one    
body from the empty docks on a day    
whose morning was graying over, was      
to walk straight into the lesser counter    
point of small vermin, and tottering    
laser-eyed robotic babies, with shark    
teeth bared, diminutive in stature.      
Hardly blips on the radar;      
blood creatures in the largeness of    
the underpond. This radioscape in      
increments, swallowing horizons whole.    
     
Lesser carrion, that laid their eggs in      
one’s flesh to hatch and leech, subtle      
intrusion, while the victim was unable    
to realize until it’s too late: they were    
being groomed for the Matmos.      
     
At that moment, I might find I was truly    
free, to do away with the tyranny, this      
abuse making its entrance, because      
it knows. Leering pornographically, to    
slither unnoticed from its underworld      
lair unchallenged, till a clear moment    
would draw near. To communicate my    
will to those who would listen without      
scathing claws of mindless retribution,      
recoiled, to strike and disembowel me    
in mid-sentence, because it always knows.      
     
Even its stench, counting heartbeats,    
till the time tolls, and the next follower    
du jour is trussed and devoured      
like a microwave snack. A production    
before the bloated, beady-eyed,    
jaundiced blight of flatulence, shape-    
shifting from under sewer forces that    
creeps with great effort among the    
good citizenry of this lesser realm.      
Wisely industrious, even serene, under    
the beetle-browed scrutiny of the    
aforementioned & constantly growing    
tumor of bloat that oozes lactose-    
intolerant regurgitation, not fit for      
human consumption or castration.    
     
But how am I able to enter anything    
built using even a small amount of    
kryptonite, to plead my case for the    
good of all? There hasn’t been one    
public phone booth seen, available    
anywhere for many decades, for me      
to transform into the hero that the      
present living generations have    
heard about, and they’ve waited for.      
     
I therefore declare myself, Clark Kent,      
as Watcher of the Matmos, Lowness of    
the Underworld shallows ‘neath its skin    
from whence it crawled, dragging with      
it, all foul vermin, not worthy to show      
itself in the light from every galactic sun.    
     
Let it here be known by all boroughs    
throughout the Realm, that the Matmos    
 misbegotten, is hereby banished. To    
return from whence it came. Where      
knowledge of it is forever wiped from      
the people’s collective memory. That    
only I will remember it ever existed,    
and for a short balance, continue to    
 breathe, or whatever it does, to watch    
and protect the future from its fate.    
Never the Matmos to resurface again.      
     
The waste, its excrement, to turn in    
on itself, through every pore, hole,      
and cranny. To poison the elixir only    
it is privy to imbibe. While I too banish      
myself, no need for me to access the    
buildings of Gotham. Honored to    
make it my lifelong task to assure      
that the bile has nowhere else to go.    
     
I wonder if Lois still has her cell phone?    
     
     
     
     
Three worlds intersect in this short story, from:  Superman, Barbarella, and The Wizard of Oz.