Sunday, January 7, 2024

Anticipation

My organs are a gyre of twisted barbed wire


Rusted fences that bow under the wrath of 
coastal storms


Rotting floorboards dotted with a microscopic
metropolis of mold, dust, and isopods


Dread


Seeking inner asylum comes at the cost of 
being reduced to sleepwalking flesh


My eye sockets little more than dollar store 
shot glasses for the dross I consume


Do not interpret this as self-reproval


I vaunt a skull suffuse with necrotic tissue 
and ruptured blood vessels


Brimming-to-excess with a delicious pudding 
of deformed awareness


And yet the pit in my stomach pluments deeper
with every ragged breath taken


The lies this body feeds me taste of gelid 
soup seasoned with ash and shed
tapeworm segments


My lungs devour the nurishment with a 
malicious delight most gods would
condemn as covetous


Dread


This fog smells of putrescence and the 
untimely predestination of living


I don't belong here


(2024)