Under carbon monoxide’s pall, the body yields—
terrestrial flesh undone in poison’s creed.
Yet the engine’s hunger, mechanical, cold,
devours its fuel, completes its greed.
But the mind’s fire—who tends its spark?
What hand directs? What dark womb feeds
this pyre of thought, this restless arc
between the ash and the hungering seeds?
If breath and soul in pact are bound,
how does the gas’s kiss, unseen, unfelt,
steal through the veins without a sound,
while spirit sleeps in fumes that melt
the waking world to grandeur’s lie?
Who craves the fall, the fractured light,
the plunge through haze where senses die—
drowned not in dark, but borrowed night?
Is this the rift—the stark divide—
man’s weight of will, or chains imposed?
The choice to burn, or be denied
by hands unseen, the sky disposed?