This is no world where victory applies
These are no times when wars truly end
Yet I smile as I put out my cigarette
On iridescent wings and broken mandibles
I smile as I still stand
Inedible and whole.
I knew then, when my days were happy
That the child would be slain
The flesh would be poisoned
The sight would be tainted
I knew then, before the insects came
That to wake is to lose
That to rise is to break.
The omnivore night has eaten through herself.
And now I stand right where it began
No more a promise to carrion
No more a billion bites to nothingness
Under my heels lies an army
Under my wounds rages new blood
On my shoulder rides immunity
And my blunted years are stained
With my tutor's ichor.
The omnivore river did eat to the bone
But there's a small piece of darkness in there
Deep in the heart of my marrow
A darkness with a taste of its own
A blind, relentless anti-will to persevere
A symbiont that drains me in order to survive
And the buzzing river tasted much like my blood.
-
This is no world where victory applies
Nor are these times where wars may end
But I'm back on a road with a horizon
I am back on my way, away.
And though sometimes I wonder
When will this skin belong to me no longer
I cannot wait, not anymore:
I serve a darkness given hunger
And I have rivers to eat.
