encroaching

that taste
will not always
haunt the lips

or will it?

it is certain that
other hungers
will swarm the palate
and strangle
the familiar flavor

or is it?

the trail is littered
with the swollen corpses
of fabled monsters
and brittle heroes

the valley is cursed
and the sky is burnt

hedgerows of thorn bushes
quietly weep blood
in the shadows

they sing mournful songs
of blistered eyes,
salted fields full of silk roses,
wolfsbane and hellebore,
the broken teeth of clockwork dolls,
and a thousand crushed hearts
of little bluebirds
overflowing from the
mortar and pestle

beckoning mirage,
a courtyard fountain
that sprays only gossip,
a wishing well
of screaming sad sirens,
hungry to drown
all careless passersby

my history’s pages
are all made of dust

the cap is of old tile,
the gown is a shroud,
and the tassels are all
desiccated worms

guts of tapioca
and bones of papier-mâché

any junior scout
with a compass and a crayon
could’ve easily mapped out
my imminent demise

it would have
saved a great deal
of yet more useless time
had I set my fool’s course
directly for the rocks,
instead taking such
a circuitous route

surely, this was
how I stumbled;
once, at least

craving the honorifics
of a conqueror,
a king

chasing wispy legends,
a haunted city of gold
that lay in the heart
of an untamed jungle
on a remote little island
only rumored to exist

a gnarled patch of land
that only surged up
from deep ocean trenches
in the craven imaginings
of a syphilitic madman

a derelict scoundrel
who scrawled dark heresies
onto pages of black dust
in an ink made from octopus,
the dried blood of
slaughtered griffins,
slain wyverns,
and fallen angels

an El Dorado of oblivion,
always just over the horizon
swelling in the overheated
cranium of a lunatic
drunk on malaria
and a dry, bitter wine
made from red poison berries

any wobbly toddler
could have rightfully discerned
that it was only a cruel game of
peek-a-boo and goodbye

the face keeps disappearing,
disappointing, disapproving,
and daily disavowing

and never allowing
deeper mysteries
to be known

any toy soldier could have
made short work
of my defenses

the walls of my fortress
were destined to fail
and crumble
and be swallowed up
by the ruthless, ever-empty,
ceaseless cravings
of jaws that lust
for everything
and nothing

any busted clock
could have
told the tale
of how I was
out of time
before I ever
began

of how I would,
without doubt,
be swept from the decks
of the good ship of memory,
into the raging sea

it has always been a given,
that I would be erased
from the blackboard of thought,
and cast out of
the picture

it was always
understood,
a given,
a known

or was it?

---

©2025 Kevin Trent Boswell