Pythius

Molten-copper spews across my chest,

Casting the beast inside.

His mane of fiery-twined tongues rope my blackened heart,

Crushing the pipes of its chambers’ bars.

An ancient plague burrowing through scar tissue,

Carving out an underworld with my bones.

A pit of wailing mornings screaming at the absent horizon,

Impaled upon the severing shard of self.

Weltering —

In the bowels of an endless necrotic flow,

Nothing left to hold,

But for the pustular obscenities,

Metastasizing into what I have come to be.