The Living Island

A narrative poem telling a horrific tale of returning to an abandoned place of the past, and exhuming the darkness buried with it.

Beyond a bridge and a bubbling black morass  A town untouched by the twist of time  Like a fly to flame you're led by the fractured flicker of fluorescent light  Brought by the nose beneath a rayless film, black as pitch and come to blot out the bright eyes of Heaven's night  You venture through the vex of fetid fog and brave the risk of rain  Not stifled by the stale air laced with the stench of sulfur, spawned from the sullen sea that swirls past the colorless beaches of stamped ash  In spite of the wafting wind wrought with fear, something subconscious draws you further in  Into the shadowy gleam of these shattered streets- showing you the reflection of your sins  A former face once dawned by this now lurid place,  One that served to make you  For the punishment you deserve- this town has newly shaped to break you  In this revelation, your faults have come to light  In this moment fell the rain like ink, come to smear your shame from sight  Sanctified in your suffering, for a dormant darkness now yours to keep  In this atonement, blessed agony  Perhaps you can finally sleep