SHANNON L. PUGH
Personal Apocalypse

When the greedy eyed, society- the resistance held so dear
Made its way into the soft sound of innocent hearts- the still waters of chambers keep,
There came the fractures- the ripping of the ventricles- an aorta carved out deep.
Emerged a creature- anxiety 
A being without being- making its way out
Spun in a cocoon of blood and grit,
With gnashing of teeth- to splinter bones,
And scar the marrow sprayed sky.

A sign of a personal apocalypse-
Written in the flat tone of hollow sockets
And heard and viewed until bloody sore
The gossip echoing off every pulsing nerve  
And sketched onto the lives of everyday people- with ugly faces and runny noses
The genius of epiphanies and enlightenment in a world turned to ignorance.

Yet, ignored are the truths.
Cries that awake one from rest,
Pound hard upon a wheezing chest-
The rancid truth of existence- an eye of God pressed firm against broken ribs
Causing realizations of pain and sorrow
In the incessant laps between the day and night
Dark and light

Oh, how emptiness fills the greatest of divides,
With unanswerable voices and inaudible words-
Mystery- not misery hung upon a T-shaped pillar of the Earth
Relief- not guilt and shame.

Do you hear the trumpets blasting at your soul
Calling you to end?
The idea that you too were born to die,
Just like those who habituated a sorry existence to the generation before.
Do you feel the physical world bending to your feet
And pushing a seven-headed beast up from the ground- to devour the wrong
To erase all that stains- holding humanity down
The plastering of a selfless anti-ego to the human condition
A man that has no name- Society