SCORTCHED BY THE ABYSS

 

ANOTHER SCORCHED BY THE ABYSS

Another one bites the dust,

tumbling headlong into

the rapid-cycling inferno,

a churning vortex of gnashing teeth,

and black holes of addiction—

ravenous maws

tearing flesh from spirit,

their sucking void

a banshee’s wail

shredding the marrow

of her quaking bones.

Having exhausted every vein

of internalizing,

she grips, with bloodied fists,

secrets festering

like maggots in a wound,

and intensity shackled,

a rabid wolf

snarling behind

the rusted cage

of her splintered skull.  

This time, she chooses

to inhale lines,

razor-edged rivers

of crystalline venom,

snorted from twenty-dollar bills

crumpled and sweat-soaked,

their green veins pulsing

with the stench of desperation.

She hacks pounds

from her frame,

a butcher flaying

her own sinew,

vitality oozing

as crimson rivers

down a gaunt scaffold

of ribs and despair,

her skin a shriveled shroud

blistered by

the furnace of her will,

a pyre blazing

without mercy.  

Not even the fiercest armies,

legions forged

in the crucible of empires,

their war-drums thundering

like collapsing skies,

could storm the bastion

of her stubbornness—

a jagged monolith

hewn from obsidian rage,

its ramparts slick

with the blood of reason,

unshaken by

the battering ram

of sanity’s pleas.

Her insanity stands,

a gnarled oak

twisted by lightning,

roots clawing

through the bedrock

of her defiance,

unbowed

before love’s frail banner.  

Fighting the fear

that reigns in her throat,

a guillotine’s blade

slicing her breath,

she conjures a smirk—

a jagged scar

etched across her face,

a dare to shatter

all attempts to pierce

her iron hide

with the frail whisper

of love’s gospel,

now ash

in the gale of her scorn.

She spurns

the withering drought

of wasted intelligence,

a cracked wasteland

where thoughts rot

like sun-bleached carcasses,

their echoes

a death-rattle

in the caverns

of her hollowed mind.  

The dust chokes,

a suffocating veil

over the slaughterhouse

of her choices,

and she looms,

a scorched effigy

in the cinders,

clutching the reins

of her plummeting soul—

another devoured,

not by fate,

but by the abyss

she’s clawed open,

its roar

a requiem