Fingertips
I begin this journey through hell,
clench my jaw, gnaw on the intangible.
Lucid fires lick my lips
burn the words from my mouth
and I, I must reconstitute them
from my ashen tongue, with blood
and wishful thinking.
I scribe them then in scrawled lines
from the jagged tips of my
battered teeth -- forged, as steel,
with desolate flame and
frigid liquid realization.
It is my daily death and resurrection,
immortalized in ink, indelible,
unforgotten in the scars upon my palms.
Fingertips
