Flies

Diaphnanous singing in the sizzling heat The white maggots turn black with wings Dead flesh melts through a solvent treat Festering on wounds of paupers and of kings Something more here than this pesty buzzing song Some deep possession ladles joy In an office so darkly wrong The gift to heal, mostly maligned will destroy Even the parting prayer of a poet Waiting for her Charon to come Becomes their carrion before the last breath: Pale page closed on that plagued kingdom For every one a thousand more eyes lens us Wing throated monsters full of crave Sees us and everything as sweet detritus And mark our channel to the grave From their choir superior triumph rings Over man, these our flitting foes They live a lunar cycle, yet conquer kings Time's brevity no meekness shows I study flies to tell the epitaph's gall We measured out on spooning tongues We, locked in vanity on the spining ball Hear their wet buzzing in our lungs