DEVIL'S TOOTH
Blood-beaded marshmallow
On forest floor
Dewing our night-dreams with
Vampirish horror
Devil—you lost it—
Now salivate red;
You roam through the trees,
Seek what fell from your head.
DRYAD'S SADDLE
On you, thing of the earth, the wood nymphs rest—The Dryads, the Meliai, the Caryatids—
When flitting from whatever they flee.
Your kindly soft brown concave perch
Perhaps even once held Eurydice.
Her voice was lovelier than those of the sirens
For whom sailors swooned to their deaths
When taken in by their song.
But a viper unseen tangled with her flesh,
And Orpheus wept at the wrong.
CORDYCEPS
No harbingers cry out its name;
This seed tucks deep inside.
Grows quickly, never shows its game
Until the moment's ripe.
And then it chews you from within;
It gnaws convictions, bites your bones,
Replaces tendon, juice, and then
Explodes through skin—you aren't your own.
Such artistry in every spear;
With love and skill it carves your form.
Caresses lace the pain, my dear;
It pines to keep you ever warm.
ROSY VEINCAP
Horrors of the borderlands,
Hands of murderous redcaps pace,
Chase travelers, wanderers, men—
Then spikes and poles,
Roll the heads of every one,
Fun for the redcap, rosy
Posey, in the blood, the fools'
Pools, spreading about the veins.
Pains we take, we nasty things,
Brings us life, the death of more.