The Slough

I wrote this in 1994, at the age of 15, as pure nonsense driven more by sound than by sense. In the part of the US where I lived at the time, slough rhymes with through (not with bough as in some other dialects) and refers to a backwater swamp.

The Slough

As shades of shadow shroud the slough,

I stumble, sink in stinking goo,

Retrieve my foot and tie my shoe,

Then stumble onward through the slime.

A booming sound, resounding boom,

To smithereens breaks silent gloom.

I fight off time's impending doom,

But scalene flashes shatter time.

As Aster casts her silver sheet

In memory of time's defeat,

The slough is slain by sudden sleet.

Three-cornered demons mar the scene.

Ellipsis eyes patrol the plain.

They see with glee the slough is slain.

The freezing sleet melts into rain.

Insane's the reign of King Scalene.

But wait: A wristwatch starts to chime.

All hark! It marks returning time.

The sleet, now rain, melts snow to slime

And resurrects the slaughtered slough.

Tea-colored ice cubes turn to glop,

And sphagnum moss floats to the top.

The slough renews its former slop:

A stinking, black, organic stew.

The plot, if such there be, seems to be that a swamp is attacked by demonic beings in the form of scalene triangles who, despite the narrator's resistance, successfully "shatter time." Whatever this means, it does not mean that time itself ceases to elapse, since actions continue to happen which require the passage of time. The swamp is "killed," apparently by being frozen, though it is not clear how this relates to the shattering of time. Then a thaw occurs, time returns to normal, and the swamp is once again a swamp.

I'm posting this now because it seems to relate to several recent sync themes: a swamp or marsh, a reference to a single foot and shoe, and a place being destroyed by ice.