When I open my eyes, I see darkness.

I feel the shallow pool of the wet lands of my dreams.

They eat at me, biting each night and leaving a wound,

one that boils with the fear of the unknown.

–

I try and escape these premonitions of dank gore,

of the undulating belly that threatens to consume,

but I awake with the same aches

and the same breathless awareness.

–

Should I submit to the mystic and allow myself this pain?

Should I refrain from diving into the truth

that hides at the bottom of that blackened pond?

Should I allow no recourse for the disease at the center,

lurking within the wilting garden of my mind?

–

When the creatures of thought

slip through the drooping branches,

running from the black fire that burns its way

like ink across a page,

they run deeper into an inferno they cannot see.

It is a trap, an enigma in the form of a question,

an enigma that is barbed on the inside

and allows no one out once they have climbed

into its thorny nest.

These poor beasts run directly into the death well,

the throat of the world that eats,

the belly that ends in darkness.

–

I have eyes that see,

yet my blindness encompasses all things of sight.

I am beyond them, unable to inquire on their true nature

for my nature precludes their existence.

–

The belly of darkness.

The throat of the world.

–

I dream in a place where the basic nature of the universe

does not provide,

but consumes,

Yet I am not consumed.

–

In the face of such a monster

I live happily knowing that one day my life will end,

all the while not fully sure if I am awake or asleep.