The desert

See then, the hard
Misshapen land, worn
Away to sand, It is
Dead and rots, it

Shrinks and shrivels.
Pick, pick, pick away, a vulture
Feeds its children, you
Their ready grub, no keep,
Keep, keeping them at bay
(Despite the stutter, some might say)
Your fresh flesh slips down their open gullets.
They swallow. Their eyes
Dark, hollow like your bones
Flailing in the wind,
Like algae in the angered, crashing ocean,
No moisture in the starved silence.

You have never been your own. Arid skin

Around your fingernail rots. You said,

‘A woman

Stands with deeply wrinkled skin’,
Speak,
Speak now,
Creature.

Silent shouting, silence cracking.
‘Watch them eat, watch then
As vultures feed their own and 
Overhead cast their darkness on your pallid, wilting skin.’

The silence haunts you still.
The still, dry desert, the water-less swill.
Eyes like five pence shopping bags
Filled with too much greed.
The night comes and goes, she says 'sleep does not'.

One dark day,
Dark, dry, soundless…DONE
‘I’m done, I’m done’
Finally heard, only by you.
Pounding the dust. Making the dust.
The birds plummet closer and they plummet closer and
They plummet, closer still, silhouetted against the sun.
Sobbing, deep, dry tears, throat grating.

A forsaken child, a muted scream.
Take him upon your knee; lay him over your knee.

Picking at a scab
To feel the fresh cool blood, but out seeps nothing,
Shrinking to a floating, hollow, skeleton,
Soundless in the sea of air,
The vultures feed.