Unerrant

His lilting tongue had been
split by fickle women and by liquor, forked by fear
and horror of the Other,
(each path a blanket of ash
he chooses neither
sits silent at the marshy moldy
impasse)
all the blooded love spilt over
and down his thistled chin
like sour suckled milk from a drunken mother
spit up by a silkspun trapped son,
wilting on the vine
sour numb grin
spun with wonder his eyes hidden
within thin blue vesseled tin shields
lids to preserved hurts
puckering tart smirks and hisses
and besmirching tarnishing kisses
borne of envy in the sad frantic frenzy
of love’s lustreful discovery
then, branded, scalded, fallen,
the angel’s skin stones over,
grown molden and molten and
maudlin he walks to brothels now and
talks of hospitals,
twitching in one lovestarved eye
the empty ward of his heart
echoes
having cannibalized himself, he
whines with dull hunger
in the sleepless slumber of
lonesome grumbling and
wondering upon his hapless past
of crimson misery:
a skinned, wasted thing
a carcass perched and festering
feasted upon by the bested
self-cannibal vulture he has become

But as he drinks another vial
and the tears frost his vision
the two paths shimmer and waver
crossing themselves like mourners in fever
and like spindly spectres merge into one
misty infinite expanse

But: he has forgotten how to speak
and the dark cloaks the road and
his brain films over
he lies in the vortex
and falls forever asleep