Sunk in the turgid muck   I keel and squat in foot long thrusts   Toward the only place I feel no shame,   Or bidden by the buzzing stare   That cuts across the surface of the stagnant swamp.      Here three days no sun or rain   Breaks the mists that cling to my face.   No will to speed up or despair to drown,   Just constant ghosts in seas of brown.   My pace is tugged with desperate will   And a scream pukes from my lungs.      I wrench apart the vine and root   That keeps me from the comfort sounds   Of falling rain and leaves and the warmth of steely sun.      I find, dismayed, the tortured land,   Of burning bone and sea of flesh,   Echoing my former home.   Obliteration of stubborn hope forgotten   Nothing saved of savaged love,   Of life depraved.      I close my eyes, fall away.   Fall back into the swamp,   To sleep, to dream and forget   To float back to the start where I woke   In the turgid muck again.      To start my trudge again.      Keep me from peeling,    stop me revealing   Keep me relieving,    only deceiving.      Keep me from peeling,    only revealing   Filthy relieving,    don't be deceiving.      Lie still...