Spring's Abysmal Guile

Spring’s Abysmal Guile By Sy Roth A vapor rises, rank as the charnel pit, a corruption of a miasma vast, as though some sepulcher, long sealed, split its stony jaws to breathe. Vile exhalation of a corrupted world. The reveler, unwitting wretch treads the decadent fields where verdure writhes, each blade a hostile tendril, squamous, cold, glistening with ichor No earthly fount its progenitor. He deems the shade of evil vanquished, trampled beneath his hobnailed boot. The soil heaves with malefic will, its roots, like veins of some primordial fiend, pulses with a rankness older than the stars, a stench that whispers of aeons lost. Spring cloaks itself in verdant pall, no bloom, but scales of a vast, unuttered thing, its thorns a raven’s beak, evermore to rend, to sow, to bespoil. He quaffs the tainted zephyr, proclaiming triumph over a gloaming moon, Swept in the season’s unseen talons, fathomless ennui creeps through his sinews, entombing his soul in an abysmal cleft unshriven.