GLUTTONY

For those of us who understand at last what it means to say “enough is enough”–on so many levels.

Like a thing that we know but won’t understand,
we feel, one day, with the edge of our minds,
a cannibal softness
take over the spine; tendrilling out like syrupy
vines,

weaving, caressing, out of control, ravenous comforts
splurge through the bone, claiming the host the spine
calls home.
And we find, one day, that we won’t say no.

The parasite owns us, we do what it does: we indulge
luxurious “rights” and reflexes, growing immense,
inescapably soft, excreting a sweetness that covers
the globe.

And then to our horror we know: we’ve become our own host,
lured by our own verdant decay–we cannot resist even this–
and sink, agape, capsized, euphoric, the sole superfluous

link in the chain. And the earth absorbs all that we’ve been
till all that is left is an interesting stain.

(Artwork by Rini Price)