I descend
I descend again
I closed my eyes and still these vistas rend
The waning sun... it's light so thin
Sickly, these pale shafts press
At a gruesome fog, an entangling torpor
Stripping the fenland air of pellucidity
Writhing chains of spiritual desolation reach
And beckons a shattered soul back into darkness
As the soils part in welcome
A riven aperture to embrace a sundered spirit
Closing like a withered fist
Around a frond of pale tissue
Weak - so very weak
Cold - frozen to the marrow
Encased by the frost of loathing
I have nothing left to give
Even my flesh presents naught
A cross-stitched tapestry of past failings
Pallid vessel of spiritual exsanguination
Home to the dread-stare of these listless eyes
Each sordid limb a tendril of pain
A beacon of suffering, a spite of torment
Aflame with gangrenous agony
This hemisphere of decrepitude demands extinction
Extinguish me
Yearning for ending
I beg for the embrace of the fens
A final resting place - marked only by a henge of dead trees
The cathedral stands, omniscient
A memorial to all those who walked within these shadows
Unmoved by the toil of the lost
Who sink without markings into the fathomless murk
Fen released IV (Interment) on Fri Mar 10 2017.