The earth was broken on the day
when death first claimed her as his place,
and all the beauty of earth’s face
could never hide her heart’s decay–
for we have known the cold embrace
of death in graves that we call life.
He leans in close to thrust his knife,
reminding us that we are prey.
Each day, his teeth tear through our skin,
and where he feasts, the marks remain–
the long and bloody stripes of pain
that tell us where man’s heart has been
and how a paradise is slain:
the grandest worlds of virtue stripped
are merely venom to be sipped,
the promised offspring born to sin.
–