John-Crow: Vulture

By the barrage of flies, bald John can tell how Safe his meal is for feasting. The spotted fawn yet battered breathes. Clean blood is poison, he knows, So before he drinks, he waits for the devil To pee in the stream. Then he shovels tissue down to the marrow, As the odor barbers him balder. Bare-bodied ravens beguiled him To become a fiend thus famished. He Perches patiently over the repast, Pin-talons dull from scraping bone, Wings worn from hauling carrion upwind. He bates them at the first sign, And targets the fawn’s fattest artery. But he himself is sick on the verge: Of a wavering branch, of a mortal dusk, Of that decay which wove twig to build his nest, That which buoyed flight when he was weak. With twilight nigh, he trembles in withdrawal; Grey feathers fall as he Walks in falter to the tawny fawn; Toward Life, or Death, Or their bastard unclaimed. Each inch is priced a silver plume. He sheds, Till over swoons his avian frame, lonesome Lying nude and three-fourths-dead, Broken beak ajar, tongue longing For the opiate thrill of red Flowed from the hollows of that mirroring fawn; He drools for the non-anointed oil dripping thence. It renews his plumage, Though makes matte the luster of his eye. Resurrects him that he may wean on death, As prey to his vice—prey to his own heart, While nature begs his piety, but sin sustains his being.