III (Fear)

The spirit songs scream across wind-burned heaths

Flensing the rind of my very 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 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