Like gnats to husks.
After Echoes of Decimation (2005) and War of the Worlds (2019).
breath across glinting islands, innumerable
as far as imaginable sight, and beyond;
where there’s life, there’s graveness, sickness,
illness clinging to hosts, like gnats to husks.
and so it spreads, and falls, worlds, maimed,
dimensions weighted with tragedy and loss,
babes born still, shrivel in tainted wombs:
the echoes of decimation; perilous, portent.
ineffable equations and technologies, futile,
travelling relentlessly, yet fatally eroding,
time slowing, quickening by ageing prophets:
sacrifices to gods, long dead, buried, astrally.