| The spirit songs scream across wind-burned heaths
|
| Flensing the very rind of my soul
|
| Corrosive embrace comforts
|
| In an inexorable miasma of dissolution
|
| A threnody that scours with the paralyzing raptor claws
|
| Of a lifetime of unrealized purpose
|
| And it is as at this point that revelation strikes
|
| With the force of a thousand driven spear-points
|
| A face etched with the lexicon of destitution
|
| Stares back through pallid, jaundiced eyes
|
| That glitter with suppressed, shrieking desperation
|
| To rend
|
| To claw away the threads of cloying carnation
|
| To force this stooped sarcophagus
|
| Into the carcass-field beneath my feet
|
| Abnegation — silence — void
|
| The only triptych I seek
|
| Yet
|
| Extant not is thy solace
|
| Within this corrupted patina of deathsoil
|
| Still the Cathedral stands tall
|
| And in those febrile shadows
|
| Hopes of centuries shrivel and die
|
| I must move on
|
| I must haul this weary patchwork of cursive limbs
|
| Through a translucent mire
|
| Endless, oppressive wake
|
| Each tread summons the efforts of a thousand scouring exhalations
|
| Inch by inch, step by step, slowing, stooping
|
| Until — like a puppet with strings severed by the scythe of embitterment
|
| A figure collapses |