Snakes
 
Tonight, vengeful poems hatch
as snakes inside my heart.
My hardness is their prison,
my bitterness their food --
they writhe as one
and form an angry clot.
 
I am too drained to fuel
their fangs with venom,
to give them strength
for life outside my heart.
I am weary with bloodlust,
tired from feasting on death
through a television screen.
 
One serpent, then another,
strikes through the feebly
throbbing calloused walls.
Each snake slides free,
tongue flicking,
through fresh holes
bleeding black.
 
They slither across
the red-smudged carpet,
through an open door,
and off into the night.
 
Scott Speck
10/17/2001