devour

they devour what bleeds and
become swollen with its lingering poison
of some magical need struggling to recall
a warm home, some brilliant, impossible away
and when we wake, it's only dirt
only a peace that's more captive
than free
ghosts and angels haunt alike in the
surrounding cloud of our absent minds
a broken, fat-eyed decay shunning
the naked morning to a singularity
of stagnant remorse
with wet voice and sacred heart
a prisoner of god
this child of celebration that is numb to
the joy it provokes in the crowds
of the dead that follow
living to die and
rising to fall.