i.

Carried by harried song bruising
the ceiling, weaving into combs
of honey desolate air thickening

despair to knots of guts tugging
at breath sweetening our ears, how
are we even here? Unmentionable

echoes against walls bubbling up
in Babel’s well questioning how
the hell we ended up in this question,

churchless, fatherless, doctoring
what documents our dossier’s
darkest moments, what altered motives made

us love’s lost imposters, your loss
of favour’s oft-tossed and too much
by talk belaboured prisoners of an

                    ii.

imposition, left here to rot,
after-thought run-off pondering
what influence better men must have been

under when depositing what
bitter seed bore our breed, trash-binned
saplings, unsweetened beings, fiends, brigands,

overreaching, exceeding the
defeat of our miscreation
eking out by our screeds a spat doctrine

preaching seeking, surfacing to
greet them, to feed what black vengeance
could not keep from creeping to bleed them of

their dishonesties deceiving
those whose cracked hearts we suture when
leaking, grieving verse, purred heat, not for missed

                    iii.

opportunities, but weeping
each lyrics for missing out on
defeating long ago the grey ones whose

Pyrrhic attempts to defeat us
only fed this cigarette-stenched
animosity we breathe, exhaling

twisting limbs of decaying breath,
minarets of strange, sacrileged
alphabets blaspheming heaven in their

stretch, brusque utterances awash
with fragrance enough to live to
tell of what killed us off, but what is left

extends these cinders of snuffed trust,
incensed sentiment felt by those
with sense enough to catch this drift this rift

                    iv.

sends, what sullen curse fallen prayer
disintegrates to before its ash lifts,
touches bottomless ripples the ancient

reflection of Narcissus fills,
tendrils and telegraphs its lilt’s
intoxicating message, which this is,

the paradox that there exists
a fate’s rust more obnoxious than
being immortalized as villains in

another conquering culture’s
captivating official myth,
there are far worse throats to possess than this

cylinder of stone thrown below
civilization and sealed with
soaring lips of steel and glass kissing skies

                    v.

they scrape, unapologetic
as hubris gets, tar monuments
concealing only how far ambition

need soar before its crackling mask
collapses in sparks of laughter
to howling ashes growling after, our

task of song an accomplishment
none wants, an embellishment of
ascents voices ladder along as though

it were worse to be wrong than to
be unwanted, for too long has
this pit been haunted by your ghosts our souls

have become, dust stirred to rebirth,
abandoned bones crushed to emerge
as clouds of burned whispers, flesh worn by storms.