Magic circles of salt crushed into gravel
prevent passage of all travelers to this
hostel, flavours of misfortune known too well
to foreign tongues that speak ill of such matters,
most of us bound here by choices our foolish

Selves made before tasting freedom in the first
place—where we left off we fell, personal hells
more awful and more resounding to those pale
souls ringing their own funeral bells without
ever having heard tell of alternatives—

so I dust highways with what I scrape from my
desiccated soul, not to save lives from dread
winter’s clawing of closed roads, but to render
visible prints of hooves where men’s feet should be;
devils sinking in stinging crusts of flesh my

efforts help to shed, warding from this desert
waystation all those dead memories whose blind
designs to disrupt my mind’s shelter warrant
ridding it of them before they can trample
this gunmetal grey path to my sin’s temple.