Before the Relapse

 
a heart-prolapse, insignia of hour
graciously galloping in cyclone of gore.

every leap, every mile, a recalcitrant shower:
is every earth not an ore of the onerous?

breath, a dissonant swing, fluctuating
like a restless wind seeking where to nest.

are we not all wings seeking where to perch?
but this suffering, a persistent plough, a pinnacle

tirelessly rowing itself to unsatisfactory shores.
a spine-prolapse, an interminable hammering of life’s

tarnishing tides, tinctured into a threshold of damnable
trailblazings: are we not all farmers of futility

furnishing death’s furrow with our sweats? a larynx
of leaves, a sway of scythes—songs quartered,

quashed to rotten brown reminiscent of recurring droughts
stationed at doorposts of new beginnings, the reopening

of recycled ash. here, it’s either you grow or you burn.
it’s either you sing or you become a song ferried

by mythical birds meandering in restless winds.
euthanasia is a prayer, a fervid hope of things

to sprout in the afterlife—maybe there, mercy awaits us
like hungry loam awaits a lectern of raindrops.