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