The Places I Have Been...

You would better be to leave untread the places I have been...

I have walked the roads wrought with death

on all sides dinged with fetid gloom

and gallows whereupon men still hang

though their flesh be as liquid pools,

all hollowed pockets where birds have fed

and where dried bones glisten through.

I have felt the shrill and stinging whip of wind

which snaps cold across the barren path,

and drowned have I within the mists,

been bloodied in its covered holes and traps,

squirming with the worms that lie

shaded by the darkness and its crafts.

I have listened far beyond my bloated share

to blithe chatterings and honey-tongued advices

to poisoned words from the adder’s lair

where snares and lies are kept as prizes,

a gloating of teeth and knives and splinters

where wits crack and spin to sound wizened.

I have tasted the foul and festering rot of sores

which drunk men degust and die of later

and opened my mouth to brackish spirits

for sake of captive festivals worthy of my hate

then begged the searing pain of chastised lips

embers as wash and stain yet brand me not a traitor.

I have smelt the putrid singe of burning weeds

what with oaths and lusts were dunged

and fits from the odored past I suffer in me still

its shadows to my heart have often clung

and trailed upon my skin with burrows

as sin to sinners, to me as known by none.

I have known all these and more

Serrated arrows in my soul,

extricated bloody, agonizing one by one

a suffering to make me whole.

And yet the eternal cost which I have racked

by grace already paid in full.

You would better be to leave untread the places I have been...

I pray you never walk them as I did,

but find light and love and hope and mercy

on safer roads to tread.