the butcher's block

nails

once,
I came to the uplands of a rock pinnacle where death hung like a shroud
these shades of stone peninsulad out into the open air like a finger of death
like a mighty phallus set to cut a crescendo in the sky by the thrust of a weird god
and in this state of being that is so close to harmony with nature
that my very skin froze and began to fall from my body to be replaced by the bark
the bark of theocracy!
I was ruled by the spirit of immaculate misperception
and this I knew
nature was the cold heart of morning that burned itself with cigarettes
I had never seen something so self destructive
abusive of its claim to rebirth that it murdered its flesh over and over again
this was the absence of love of life
this was merely life unkind

now I see why that funeral of eyelids called the night was so important
it hid us from the tabard of light that exposed all of this disgusting masochism

I dig my heels into the dirt
I spit an incantation
mangle the roots and burn the forests of imagination
there is no home here but a coffin
one made of straw and fruit
horns of plenty
horns of death

no more shall a mouth go hungry

s. sparling