[Suzerain of Sheol]

Aaaaaaand, one year later, Suze has produced... all of 1 poem! Huzzah!

Ultimus [M?]

I am to walk the country of dead men
with a ration of splintered glass
and a canteen ruined by bullet-holes.
Already, the air abhors me.
I have made a crutch of sick and wearied bones,
thigh and pelvis set with stains of life,
and I find I lack the strength to gasp.
They have hung a terrible stone from my neck.
This journey is lit by only the suggestion of a sun.

I take the first step.
I tremble with mortality
and falter.
No genius mind compels a corpse to walk.
This is what I have become
a locus for suffering.

Now sutured to the earth
a mesmerized visionary
feeling the thoughts of my own blood
as the hammers of God beat me down
and all that I have lost becomes my muse

I see... so much.

The propulsion of stardust.
The internecine romance of gravity.
I watch the seed of the world
blossom with ephemera.
Microbes in unfathomable armies,
the arc of the universe bent on their death,
the singularity of life
and on.

I see the first smile.
The first magical tea party.
The first awkward kiss at the bus stop on a rainy Monday.
The first fireworks.

But there's more. There is far more,
and I should be so privileged.

I see the first time a man laces up his own noose.
The first little girl to drown in the swimming pool.
The first best friend to die in a car crash.
The first backyard abortion.

And this is where I am,
this nation of carrion with its unknowable sky.
Nothing here is not naked.

The blasted-out skulls of child-soldiers.
The beggars and the brain-dead, every cannibal of sympathy,
miniature kings with uranium crowns.
All the churches reeking of napalm and salvation.
Recreational murder.
A soccer riot. A chemically-castrated priest. A death-insurance salesman.
A pair of slit wrists holding hands.


I would ask the sky, but this stone shall suffice.

How... how is this for me?