our path has been chosen
by extrinsic forces
of dubious nature
on dangling carrots

posture and pith
from prostrate pathologies
intended to mend
fallow marrow maligned

strike hard
with thy naked appendage
impetuously

rend the high heavens
to tend thy text of crimson

cringing
in sidelong assumption

asserting to assuage the rage
riling others

a scythe
guarding blighted complexions

inflections of fiction
and lucid diffusion

confused by fuel pilfered
resourcing fates fiery

blazoning skies with effusion askew
by shadows eschewing
a charlatan’s love song

of sins inquisitioned
petitions since signed
all by silent submission

a wish begets naught
fraught with wisdom so dismal
appointed of self

sitting high
upon thrones of a thornless affliction

depicted tribunals of perilous impugn
and ruinous lexicons
hewn e’er anew

in lieu of a logic
no worth would lament for

to bellow the testaments
wrists sworn to masters

whose mustered perceptions predate precedent
predation of prideful impasse
nigh persistent

en masse and en vogue

as vague as eroded engravings
bestowed upon visages
vaunting of stark raving fools
who once gave up reason

sought e’er to appease
the internalized treason
with a tepid trepidation

to rectify constructs
through statues erected

their muse left neglected
bereft of the conquest
left factious
to sift through the sands
of said infidels fallen
reign of silt
failure-tainted

by tales, none can tell
if by audience quelled
spelled out involuntarily
vomit omitted

spit self-evinced victors
cresting lecterns ghost-flecked
by cleft-tongues cloaked most wicked

a sickness of man’s
heedless witness to warring
swarms breeding unbridled
imbrued with the bloodshed

a branding on blemished hands

time had forgotten

winced seconds
with soul rot
whence witlessly wrought

by savages sowing the brood
of their breast
by the roost of its beast

and dawn’s spawned beset by the wresting
with excess
and behest projected
of a faceless god’s
faith lost in fluster and fostered

through dreams none have seen
reach the gates of fruition

chagrin nestles parchment
from bouts sprayed with sanguine
mouths dripped
dropped agape

spewing greatness insisted
insipid as crackled paint
curling to a crumble

yet no lesser humble
addressing the sun

this purposeful refuse
usurped a prone species
whose pieces now pepper

the crusts of the cosmos
and corners of orifices
set to greed’s sating

beheading the state
of our sanctity stolen

and sanctioned existence
exiled to expire
and expel

[image credit: Sergius Hruby]