A Ritual Burning

My thought is clouded, warped,
distorted, I can feel it
stretching, bending,
perceiving the unreal
through a gaze of unknown,
an eye of stupidity as
the familiar recedes and shifts,
is not really here.

I see it through a
pumping of poison a
self-inflicted daze of harm
clutching the air, empty
in my fist trying to grasp
something that is,
that is solid in this surround
of disquiet.

I face the dread
of the certain to come
as it must, sitting smug
stolid in the stomach of my time
indigestible, making
me gasp as the creeping slime
eats my spirit, digests my control
and burps with satisfaction
as it spews out what is left
of a human - the husk, the rind,
the remnant that is left
after the core is burned away.

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