Sunburnt whispers caress my skin,

As the cathedral opens its doors, its entry to damnation,

Across the street. And I am caught in the rapture of morning rites,

Abducting me to the church where no idol dies,

The crossing of clouds in sunlight hours –

Where ships cross their arcs, floundering in the sea of air,

Without striking timber matches,

Alighting a stairway carcass of oak skeletons,

Branches crestfallen into sundry heaps of

Snapping bodies, flagellations unto calloused skins

Unsheathed by the leering hands of fire.

But out the wrath, the raging screams of flames,

The quenching thirst of dry tongues and lips

With the soft caresses of water. Why not take the path

Of lesser thorns, the lighter breaths to heaven?

Why burden yourself with the torture of bracken roads,

Where grit sinks its teeth into the tender flesh of treading feet?