Tongues

Tongues, lost in me
Yours be the sharp and the vile
Glide 'neath my skin
Storm through my nerves.

I bury the nomad years
Hours in the earth
Couldn't exorcise those searing, pecking tongues
Immune, you say
Yet venom strikes in strangest guises
As the viper in our eyes
Tongue, throat, tongue
Slayer of the word and stealer of vision.

A monumental reign of terrors
Throats slit up to stain the target
We're food for the hounds of trauma
Prey to the crows of stress.

No power left to retrieve my stolen language
Filtered through the illiterate fingers of death.

Flies
Let sickness be poured
From the cupped hands of bedlam.

On account of their brightness
I made friends with the word and the moon
Went with the tide and left for the sound
Of dead instruments thrown out of tune.

The red-squared patterns
Dragonrise and evenclaw
Decoying from pandemonic symmetry.

Let ring
A dissonant note in the music of spheres
The streak of promise in the nuclear sky
These whipping black tongues
Aching to lick me back to life
To inject their truths within me.