I
We are beset by monsters,
And images of monsters.
They live in our heads,
And on the lips of our accusers.
They seduce us softly
With teratogenous bodies;
And taunt us nightly
With diabolical capacities.
We fear them,
We desire them,
We are them.
Dead undead,
Inhuman humans,
Androgyne abominations,
Ill angels only,
The sin made flesh.
We are prodigies
Of a bastard world.
II
We are monstrous in our own eyes:
We are unfinished and mutilated,
Sallow and scissor-fingered
Revenants stitched together
By mad doctors,
Auto-Frankensteins
Who dream of strange births,
Or shudder at the thought
Of alien infiltrations.
We are bodies without organs;
Rubbery appendages
And soft slippery matter.
We pull the dusty drape
From the mirror and see
Our dead twin
Staring back at us.
We uncover truths on hidden websites
That drive us insane.
We are dreamers
In a simulation of hell
Waking up into our true flesh
And screaming.
III
We are monstrous in the eyes
Of the voyeur, the prurient columnist
And the bourgeois novelist.
Chained to a pop-star’s radiator,
We writhe silently
In illegal pornography;
Offering our hits for free
We tempt the good children
With bottles of Mexican pills.
Half-people, we inhabit a half-world.
We are the crime lords of Weimar
And the children of Midian.
Clad in leather and latex,
We are vampires in a nightclub,
Strange faces hissing
Under strobe lights
As we menace from neon shadows
We are pierced and scarred,
Pursued by Charles Bronson
With a scoped revolver
Through litter-strewn
Cities of decay.
IV
We are the monsters of the institutions,
Objects of the speculum
And the mirror.
We defy categories and forms,
We break the spreadsheets;
We have special files
That only the initiated may read.
Our records are all lacunae
And palimpsests;
Logic loops that crash the system.
Incurable, awkward, embarrassing
Screaming oaths from the attic
We are locked away
In strange corners of the hospitals;
The prison guards look the other way
As we are violated.
V
We are monstrous in the eyes
Of our abusers.
Doppelgangers, changelings,
Wearing human skin we
Slither through their nightmares.
Like witches
We seduce them in their sleep.
Hermaphroditus;
The female penis,
And the male vulva.
Snakes in Eden,
Neovagina dentata!
We infect them with a queer plague;
We turn their offspring into more of us.
We are the leper race;
They must put us back
Into our black boxes
Before our alien beauty
Compels them to defile us;
And then, in shame, to kill us.
VI
We are monsters to the despots,
The dead-eyed men,
The stranglers of the world.
We are uncontrolled;
Mutating and evolving.
We castrate their little soldiers,
And close up the wombs of mothers.
We must be outlawed, beaten,
Shipped away and killed.
We are the fall of Rome,
The fascist’s nightmare;
We are a shadowy plot
Of the old enemy.
And though limp wristed;
Our victory is practically assured…
Which is why we must be wiped
From the surface of the earth.
VII
Yes, we are the monsters!
Outsiders and exiles,
Romantic, untamed, defiant.
We are cyborgs, werewolves,
Superhumans.
Evil powers behold us in dread;
And bend their will against us.
Witchfinders and perverted priests,
Sadistic doctors and corrupt inspectors,
False philanthropists and awful artists,
Conman preachers, tyrants, rapists,
Executioners and landlords,
Klansmen cops and tabloid journalists.
Actual fucking Nazis,
In actual fucking jackboots,
And skulls on their fucking hats,
And all of them are doomed!
Because we are coming.
Because we are here.
Because we are the future…
Because we are horror!
Contribution by Sydney Cardew
(We fucking love this. Thank you.)