Fire Soul

A cross-sectioned bone glows lightly, a tumor amidst the night sky

Hung low behind cracked fingers grasping tightly at the horizon

Where spirits hover, silver specks scattered chaotically, adorning the neck of the world

Where gods lie, indifferent to their blindness, before the mass graves of heaven

Where saints come to die, bathed in the neon acoutrements of an ailing city

Should the cataclysm come, she says, it will come as no surprise

These paved gardens, painted in lines and simple orders, will take us home for the night

Guide us away from our mother's madness, from the unknown, who bare their teeth

And ravage soft pink flesh.

I will not tread softly, through this forest of ungainly buildings

I will not watch my step, across these mass graves

Where the weak slave unceremoniously

To sleep through the weight of existing

Let the sirens trumpet my arrival

Let no shoulders slump at my departure

I will not bed with their heavy-handed attempts at seduction

I will not close my eyes, to the atrocities in production

Where silver tongues and screens manufacture dreams

To experience vicarously.

A fault-lined hope grows quietly, a whisper between deities

Exposed behind glass eyes drifting, dilating, seeking

Where villainous creatures gather, and smile kindly while dismembering unnecessary freedoms

Where clocks tick faster, indiscriminately slighting the hour, where rapture might come to save them

Where the faint and fading lather, in their lust for anesthetized disaster

Who may come slow, barely breaching the silence, if she says anything at all

These brazen monuments, idols stacked high to imprison the flesh, will keep the cattle quiet

Lie us to sleep on the silicon breast, of fearful acceptance, who spares the weak

Of ever having the misfortune of having truly lived.

I will not rest a moment, in this morass of hopeless breath

I will not wash my skin, of the dust of my afflictions

While the weak may crave the continued starvation of the spirit

I am whole only when the soul and flesh are both well-fed

Let the naked moon expose all that I am

Let the blistering sun undress the world before me

I will not settle quiet into the sty with the pigs

I will not sate my hunger on the scraps that they're given

Even as the meek resign to ember, I will burn bright in honor of the light

I have been given.