Swamp Thing: The Chonburi Mire

I cannot remember exactly, for —

It has been an age.

But, once,

Before I became what I have become known to be,

I know —

Just as I know my bones are waning beyond return,

I was once a place of tranquil beauty and wonder.

Cradled in the roots of otters and kings,

Of the ancient ones,

Of giants.

Groves of man long before man ever existed,

Stilted in a seemingly endless labyrinth of solstice crimson and velvet dark.

A cathedral of sun-bleached spires spread out across my expanse,

Piercing my sable silks,

As they sip away at the morning mists.

But —

As everything beautiful does,

Defenseless against the destructive nature of being human,

I have been reduced to a grisly pit —

A wastelandic graveyard for gangsters.

People came,

People kept coming,

Bringing even more —

People.

They come with machines,

To take.

They come with shovels,

To leave.

Delivering matter I am forced to ingest,

To swallow,

To be anchored in my wake.

People —

Are more often than not,

The matter in hand.

Hands —

So many hands.

My hands —

Made to hold onto more than one should ever be expected to grasp:

Some in pieces —

Some rigid and whole —

Some cemented in black barrel tombs —

Some weighted down with stone.

All —

Haunting my depths.

Their metal tools bite,

Their machines rip,

So many pieces of myself —

Gone.

Backfilled with stolen breaths, evicted souls, and affixed murky orbs,

Never to shine again.

Left behind like trash in my ill perceived filth.

The filth —

Is that of the butchers,

Desecrating my ancestral majesty.

Why must I be the one to hide their indiscretions?

An unwilling accomplice.

Criminalized as their guilty convictions are shoveled down my throat,

Choking on cadavers and objects of offense.

I possess not even a modicum of care,

For man’s affairs,

While man holds in remissness of me.

Intelligent sentient lifeforms,

They call themselves.

Hiding their life sentences in a place of preservation —

My anaerobic indifference.