By Fabian Wadsworth
Despair lives in the belly
like too much salt
rusting our machinery to a stiffness
until we can no longer move
non-essential systems power down
diverted
to the stomach.
It is the same rising dread
like a thread of desperation
from one knotted navel
to all the despondent hopeless.
The swelling dark has been let in
I see it creeping
from the edge of our vision.
I fear the dusk.
Dance in the quiet,
serpentine convictions
that we’d never share
because there is no safe space
for these forebodings
(if that’s what they are),
fold them in the midriff layers
tell no one that anguish lives there.
For my spirit
there’s nothing for it
but whisky
like scorch-sealing the wound(s) in flame
an encasement of amber and the blunt-drunk rounding
of edges. Dawn eases
taking our stars as she rises
and I know I’m done for.
War-plans fray in new light like old mist
as we see how far the rot has spread.