Over The Lethe

We crashed the raping, ruinous waves

Of Acheron and the tremulous Styx,

To stand defiled before the Lethe

Memorial souls dying in our midst.

The river spewed a gelatinous rime

And buried by the jagged frost,

Filed souls drank their fill

And fell in a spiritual holocaust.

Next came I the water gaped

To dissolve my lifelong sorrow;

I knelt and cupped black purulence

Drank, but rescinded my swallow.

For too much untold grief,

Lies dormant on the Lethe;

Death fades no treading pain

Of the soul that draws its breath.

Etched upon the cresting cry

Stands the scar of mortal kin;

My elder lying breathless

His son a trench of sin.

I surfaced from her womb,

Memories in tow;

Sunken eyes, wrought with tides

Of the agony below.

I wailed for those disheartened, lost;

And, harboring the vile Lethe,

I spat it on the affluent brow

Of the white deliverer’s face.