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 these 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 square patterns,
Dragonrise and even claw
Decoying from pandemonic symmetry

Let ring a dissonant note
In the music of the 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