---

Drive

A flailing tongue down the throat

Can you scrape the soot from lung

The ash wedged between teeth

A worming contortion

Dredge up another cry

To mix in broiling air

Burning alone

Chorus screams

Ascend in columns of smoke

In roaring pillars of fire

The metallic taste or earthen ore

A gut swimming in boiling gore

Quartered in

Phelegethon’s current

Again and again

Flesh slough off

Every nerve torn

Throb from incendiary air

From skin to bone

to ribboned flame clings

Cough

clear the chest

Swallow

Boiling viscera

Cauterized

Amidst the flows

A volcanic dread

of endless gray

Whistling stones

The sulfuric hiss

From boiling blood

To cries unheard

Bursts forth

The mercy of arrows

A crucible

never to refine

Vastation

Void-catharsis

Just slag

Just dross

Just slag

Just dross

No

sanctifying fire

No

purifying flame

Just marbled glow in coal

among ash and smoke

Just a slow burning

just a raging loss

The endless

Infernal flame

Consuming

Unsatisfied

Ever spilling

unto itself