Inflammation

who will claim riverless soil?
dry skin cracks
open, wounds follow
ashen earth
tilled with jagged nails
to reap crimson fruit
damp, grotesque,

inedible

everything is red
but loveless

inflammatory

truth spreads like
wildfire, no passion
only ruin
with pitiful consolation
from its very waterlessness,
there is no reflection
to witness it all
only lonesome unraveling

what wicked joy
to dig into sullied earth
to hold the reins of
self-destruction
to sooner reach hell
than love
and that is the
truth: red, sore,
insatiable

and even so
pestilence craves
deathly fruit, swarms to it
eats away at
what’s left of nothing
and poison poisons itself
not its intended prey

to be served death
would be too kind
for this dry land
always lives
another day, barren
but still bearing ugly fruit
forever a state of
decay

but never sweet

release