The Insect Clerks of Neiman Marcus

 

Lo!  The Gods and Goddesses of the new mythology.

The Goddesses are crocodiles in communion dresses!

They wear Adolf of Dachau designer jeans!

They wear necklaces of bird skeletons!

The Gods wear shrouds of petroleum jelly!

They brilliantine their hair.

They turn their mild, Belsen eyes on you

"May I help you sir?"  O do not stare!

At secret luncheons they devour larks’ hearts.

They devour the intestines of mummys.

They prefer larks three to one.

Three to one.

They have never murdered a baby

Who didn't deserve it.

 

Listen… Oh! listen!

Hear the twitching of their delicate attennae!

Haie!  They come!  They come!

Dragging their long

and swelling abdomens!

 

The insect clerks of Neiman Marcus!

The insect clerks of Neiman Marcus!

The insect clerks of Neiman Marcus!

 

Beware their dread ovipositors!

Beware their dread ovipositors!

Beware their dread ovipositors!

 

The insect clerks have come.

 

There are trapdoors in Cosmetics!

There are trapdoors in Lingerie!

There are trapdoors in Men's Accessories!

There is a secret button in the elevator.

 

Nightly they descend into vast catacombs.

Buffy!  Meagan!  Tom!  Wesley!

They hang upside down!

They copulate like bats!

They whisper to each other in the languages

Of prehistoric fungi!

And, like Gods everywhere,

They are always hungry.

 

O Holy Mother!

The store is closing!

They know who you are!

Run! O RUN!

 

There is a trapdoor in Customer Service.

 

Down you go

   down

    down

     down

They carry you effortlessly through the tunnels.

 

They carry you past rooms.

Rooms where small blue clouds weep!

Rooms full of angel guts!

Rooms full of bearded foetuses in bronze caskets.

Rooms where your wife makes love to eels!

(Your wife has a certain eel sex appeal)

Rooms where sores run naked on chandeliers!

Rooms where sewage rats read poetry

In pink peignoirs!

 

O what is this big room?

It is the Mad Queen's chamber.

It is the throneroom of hearts.

It looks.  It looks…

Like the inside of your brain.

 

The indifferent mandibles let you drop

To the marble floor.

 

 

They quietly suck out your eyes.

And then

h! Then!

The Mad Queen comes.

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

 

The dread ovipositer.

 

You lay paralyzed.

 

You look out into the "Crevices of Night."

 

After 80,000 years

Your tears

turn to pearls.

 

Oh, those were pearls that were his eyes.

Nothing of him but doth suffer…