NEVERMORE

Craggy rocks of nevermore,
beckon the stifling tang
noon day rising,
through narrow vapor slits
thick clot of filtered humidity.

Raw, crushed
plates of fragmenting haze
cut Ceylon shadows into starfish
perforating hallucinations.

These parched scroll exteriors -
gape their hungry mouths,
in prickly thistle spires,
tucked fruitlessly bare,
until the only distant mirage
- humpbacked mountains,
dot paradise's
blistering cloves.
The pungent dust fragrance
of petrified death…
is inhaled by yon weary,
asphyxiated traveler…
succumbing to that last wheeze
like an old concertina in his knapsack
– punctured,
struggling in low sustained booms
one upon hyphenated next.

Unseen,
a speck concentrated under noon day’s sun
pulverized against nature’s anvil
beckoning toward stifled tang
from craggy rocks
thick filtering humidity
…then,
nevermore.
@Nick Zegarac 2007 (all rights reserved).