i. Winter Incarnate

Take the soul but
leave the body for
those who weep, to
grieve, that men might
whisper in evening of
what they deny having
seen during day, just
around the corner, through
the zigs and zags
of the deconstruction maze,
zipping like a courier
with uninterested grace at
a definitive pace, ravenous
rumour without wings moving
at the speed of
wind, eager to taste,
racing without sinking on
deep snow beneath which
every survivor will be
thinking secrets wait buried,
though none linger since
heat escaped this plot
whose patch of earth
no pulse longer walks,
wandering behind those blind
to the scheme, oblivious
that this myth exists,
disparate tales entwined as
they run together into
one amorphous phantom tongue
dripping pellets of frozen
breath as it trails
what flesh its famished
emaciation challenges, take heed
what this beast seeks
is those who refuse
to believe, psychosis of
ecstatic silence behind which
hides cannibalistic desires, this
greed feeds what fiend
these unkind skeptics in
private grieve, their innocence
shed to welcome the
fat of this land
no one wants but
ones prone to gluttony
in seasons of starving,

                    ii. Hunger Embodied

eating out of their
homes their own families,
leaving bones only, that
everybody might know the
truth to their many
stories, that these words
bring evil to communities,
this urge is never
to be satisfied, to
lurk and go on
looking for more where
scarcity abounds, to hunger
after the memory of
what it was to
have once been something
resembling a man, all
but ignorant of life’s
fact, that it ends,
drum of skin pulled
taut over distressed, fissured,
skeletal combs which poke,
spine a rope of
stones hanging down this
whispering stack of mourning,
sackful of dissonance death
itself dreads, soundless and
loose at each seam,
it seems only in
a stranger’s head, in
the cavern of his
mind, can this feared
thing even persist, so
long as denied, for
if anyone tried to
rationalize it, the famine
of sense would render
more senseless the violences
of its teeth against
life’s tenderness, mimicry of
voices echoing ashen skin
deflecting prayers to subdue
them, how rumours accumulate
into this accretion ethnography
and anthropology attempt desperately
and fail miserably to
dissect, spirit of lonely
places, isolation is the

                    iii. Selfishness Personified

only sentiment never lost
in translation, excess in
darkness toward destruction of
self still progresses, ignobled
by its hubris, ignoring
all warning as if
possessed, so in the
winter of every night,
for envious of the
light dusk damages no
matter the season, beneath
veiled moons returns to
smother in its chill
whatever it wills to
devour, honour with your
heart what eludes your
sight, deceive them before
each lie, each rumour,
each thing denied, the
repetitions of which combine
together in a belt
of knots to comprise
this defiant spirit it
cannot bind, rises to
consume then define you,
exorcise, then, that which,
within, of cityscapes and
countrysides divides by tangles
of wildernesses long since
erased by time, what,
without your doubt, fails
to survive, when faced
with the wendigo of
your plight, inhabit its
habitat of a fiasco
as though its eyes
of storms were broken
windows, and its coldness
of heart the draft
passing through a hallowed
basilica hollowed out, stain
with your art the
glass of this mirage
which mirrors your Self’s
other part, for in
the shadows to their
martyrdom saints must walk.