The city streets

Are a tangle

of pheromones.

Reptiles

Huddled in the

greasy sand

Sleep

Amid tired

Butterflies

Flitting lazily

Towards

Annihilation.

Strange figures

Walk slowly through

The alleyways.

Devotees of rot

Draped in yards of

Fine woven

Fabric,

Dyed the colors

Of mold

And the city

At night,

Make a solemn

Procession

To nowhere.

Their robes swirl

Violently

Behind them.

The fabric dances

In the fetid

Breeze

That gusts

Perpetually

Through the

Concrete valleys,

Like storm clouds

Raging

Too close to the

Ground.

Infants wail as they pass,

And shadows

Cower.

They scatter their

Mildewed seed

Amid the waste

As they chant

In empty

Melodies,

With words long

Forgotten,

A spell to wake

The end.

They invoke,

As they scatter,

Something hollow.

Another,

They say,

Who will arise

From their garbled

Invocations;

One nourished by

Apathy,

Who will take root

And grow

In the barren soil

Built up

In the cracks

Of a crumbling

Infrastructure.

The equator

Of the dark of the moon

Is reflected here.

Here,

Hidden from the

Lifeless shops,

Where monks chant

And worms

Slither,

The mirror

Is held high–

Showing

The mosquitoes

Their faces,

While they suck

On the life

Of their

Artificial

Host.

9/19/25