Bark

Paper spiders everywhere Crawling through pinholes in my brain Cutting the corners of my mouth Tartaric taste curls my tongue Forming words I would never say An inferno of verbs Flying through gutted roots It’s warm butter to a blade Until the right ones land and spread That's when they begin to ricochet You’re only hurting yourself. That’s what they tell me anyway I’m a dirt digging plant Living in the embers of memories That took decades to slowly fade Put out in tiny doses On a slow drip of acid rain It’s the smell of melting gospel Revealing monstrosities Awoken from pits of smothered rage It’s inhumane To mistreat animals like this Yet they do nothing As innocence is stripped away Some of us still live in cages Gnashing teeth Snapping necks at the end of chains Some of us still live in the embers Feeling a burn that never fades I’m recording scars in tree rings As bark covers wounds with age Building cages for the demons Nesting in my conjured rage