herpetarium

I inhale the damp shadows in your house.
Scents of strange flowers settle on my skin.
I am disembodied by your vast rooms
with Persian rugs, antiques, and old longing.
The dark ecstasy seething in your eyes
strips bare my vulgar trivialities.
My chest tightens; I whimper if I speak;
and I cling like a moth on the ceiling,
nervously hoping to be forgotten.
But, beguiled by your eerie canticle,
my body uncoils at your fiery touch.
I slither on my stomach to your feet,
to swallow the grim hallucinogen
of surrender to your molten power.
You impale me on the horns of madness,
and I am convulsed, broken, made unclean.
You flay my flesh with clever savagery,
and etch my cowardice with bloody stripes
until my writhing gratifies your needs.
I crawl inside the redemptive ache and
salve the scars with humiliation's yolk.
Incubated in my own corruption,
I am reborn in annihilation.
Alchemized into your pliant creature,
I have no past, I abjure all future.
I am a snake in your brutal garden.
My infinity is the here and now.