THE CONSTANT ABSOLUTE
- Feb 14
- 1 min read
By J.D. Scève
He is at my door to collect a debt owed,
My obol where patina trespassed over diseased metal.
I’d polish it, but the glint from my eyes ceased yesterday,
and succumbed to the pupillary void.
Ragged birds poise on the weathervane,
My feathered witnesses,
Oh, how I wish thunder would dethrone them,
And tear out that curiosity.
He hunches under his smothering cloak,
Stench wrings from the folds of the mottled cloth,
As he steps over the threshold to my rooms.
Flayed bits of tissue peel off his feeble arms,
Strewing a trail of desiccation on my carpets,
The blotched vanitas—like discarded moth wings.
His eyes are apertures pulsing with damnation,
The glare bayonetting my chest.
The bogged-countenance, the horrid clicking of vertebrae,
And he appears a pitiful figure.
He opens his palm,
I must abide.
Perhaps it is sweeter in oblivion,
Is there such a happiness in the charity of Death?