Reality rooted in nerves,
walls of sensation, innate jail
where the clew-woven warden serves
punitive sentences; a hell.
Body horror without escape
as spooled flesh and blood both betray
the existentialist great ape
whose pained intricacies relay
agonies visceral, instant,
and terrors stemming from thought,
imaginings you cannot shunt
like blood to one side, but a clot
that causes fever in the brain
and a stroke at the narrowed strait
of the much-overloaded vein,
thoughts and blood at a rapid rate.
The pain hums like cicadas, each
vying for attention, the swarm
overwhelming, all with a reach
deep within the somatic storm,
and while we recall the beliefs
of our ancestors before us,
the pain drags us along its reefs
while we hear that siren chorus.
No escape and no compromise
for the flesh that begets mankind,
shackled as we are by the ties
never to be peeled, fruit from rind.
