Lilac

Every fall I think
the green is insurmountable,
but see how the cold
gangrenes the hardy lilac;
It makes me
curiously excited
the way a torturer is,
who had believed
the victim would not break,
and finds himself
pleasantly disappointed.

Treeman

Lichen-dandruffed roots, his hands
are tree tangles, fingers gone
into gnarled brushwood;
he can still move them.
His scarecrow feet chafe in the dust.

So, Daphne would have been a horror.
Innervated bark,
the long, hard coil of nails discernible
in growths feathered with mould.

Biopsies of myth reveal
it is apt to turn cancerous;
orgy of deformed cells crusting the innocent skin.
Thus the gods
punish our centuries of fancifying.

The doctors are intrigued, but tactful.
His children slip their eyes away
and sit in shadow.
The educated world tiptoes around the septic pit of fear.
Nobody brings an axe
to chop the sickening encrustations at the wrist
and free the first clean spurt of human blood.

Ksenija Spasic

Email: Ksenija Spasic

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