The Core

Deeper and deeper, the machine burrows,
my life-support, my sub-consciousness.
Breathless, life evades my lips, and twists
the sinews, and learns the truths that we
and our brethren yearn to acquire, as desire
accrues, as the fire crackles down go the others.

I’ll find you later, in my wild dreams stunted
by light that exfoliates, by a universe smashed
on its side by the shock of your absence.
And yet you are not here, and never will be.
And I shake off my irritations, swallow
unfiltered air, and here we are now,
heat licks and spits, ignites the senses, explodes
those sections of a body that rots on its own in time.

Prematurely I burn, before my day is truly done,
I wonder what I might have done differently,
though the coolness of the senses grasp the facts,
and held in my burning compartment, I grit my teeth,
and hang on.