This is what happens when I read the classics…Sine Virtus, Sine Laus.

The Forest of the Suicides
-Dantesque-

The trailing blood
From ill-slashed wrists,
The improvised rope,
The poisonous hair,
The body, dangling,
Grows down to ravaged earth,
Taking root in soil
That is the corpus of Dante.

I walk down this avenue,
Of -in this- successful,
The faithful boughs, murmuring,
Their words in dark sap,
Beading. Congealing. Dead
Words coagulate in harpy dung;
Bird call and the heat from hanging
Dugs radiating against my scalp. Filth perched,
Reminiscent of Damocles,
These angelic reflections, over my head.

It is not so bad. Here.
The voices of my brethren
Begging me, sit. In space
Between the feet, the roots, that were
Legs of women fleeting from rape,
Deer swift and sure.
I find my rest, and it is merciful.
I am allowed, here, to let myself go.

Becoming a voice which rises,
Unaware of Your judgment-
You Giver of Life, take payment in words-
Out of the sap. The talons raise
Weals, but scratch the cover off
New sounds among the freshets;

Paper is only so much metamorph wood,
This is only a story;
This flesh and wine could stand
Transformation.
My feet, no longer cold,
Take root in this transubstantiate earth,
Sending up flowers, bearing their fruit
From the Plenty Horn of rot;
There is requisite peace.