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This road could have but one end,

Not in space but in

Time.

This is not a story of rebirth:

Neither rocks nor roots

Await my pallid bones,

And the river is far away—far behind

In a life past,

Before amelioration’s

Slowly bludgeoned carcass was left

Putrefying amongst these

Immolated minarets.

This is no longer despair,

Nor a hated pure;

Merely recognition of

This thing—this place—in itself,

And what I am within it.

How can one remain

Alive in this valley of decay,

Amongst these anemic cacti?

Only with retrospection can this

Conclusion enter focus:

The need to

Deconstruct

This final tower.

Because this is the dead land.

Cactus land.

Inhabitable not by men,

But only by the prepared faces

Of whimpering ghosts.