Unreal City

Unreal City
Under the brown fog
City born of hate and fear
Hidden from view
From the sun
Transient gutter-like sludge
And torment washed ashore
Bitter
Brown brick walls
Moldering, blackening, wind-torn, haggard

Unreal City
Under the brown fog
Crushing, smothering brown fog
Air forced into weary lungs
Biting, scratching, ripping, tearing
Anger boils up, out
A torrent of acid rain
The billowing of angry fire
All consuming, scarring, malignant, bulbous

Unreal city
Under the brown fog
Drifting lazily through a sea of trees
Caught on the wind
Emerald Earth below
Sapphire sky above
Pressing in, sandwiching down
Crushing in, closing down
Smooth-round-flat

Unreal city
Under the brown fog
Changing city
Androgenous-metamorphic-metastisizing
Clear city
Pearl city
Blackened-mottled-grotesque city
Taciturn
Vibrant
Roiling-spinning-melting-molten city

Unreal city
Under the brown fog
Horns and voices, engines and footsteps
All blending, melting, forming into a
scream
Cry-weep-stamp
The heartbeat
The blood
Thick, slow, brownish-red
Steady. Thunderous. Lost.

 

The Unreal City sat cradled in the nest of jagged blue-gray peaks which opened above and around it like an enormous maw. Fog billowed down from the summit of those jagged teeth, down over the city, congealing as it met with the turgid smoke billowing up from mottled houses. Under the brown fog, the city sprawled, swept up in death throes. Buildings stretched and twisted upward, trying a half-hazard escape of their fate. Trees, bent and bulbous, malignant, sat hunched in fear.

Today’s writing prompt is called writing off the page. Grab a book from the shelf, flip to a random page and choose a line to begin your writing. Play with the words. My line is (as you may have guessed): “Unreal city/Under the brown fog” From T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.