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Plains of deprivation, grime-enraptured, the cunning blade

Concealed and sheathed behind the snarling, languid gaze

Such ploys, decoys, stiletto-leering grins

As she bewitches once, benighted

Excoriate the supplicant

Hapless, hallowed reel

Decaying shades of civil mores etched and oaken-scribed

Cloying braids, ensconced and bound in human wax

Crimson fugue of vice and virtues lent and spent in sum

Proximal reckoning, tallow-soaked, the bloodied run

Denizens of the mire and muck and filthy sullen dens

Eking out another broken life, ‘twixt razor and vile sin

Riven aortic pirouettes of pulp-wrought ossuaries

Exanimate, moribund, the stain-clad city lingers on

Bereft of hope, desolation must suffice

Wretched sentience bow-legged, a noose of fettered tithes

Shale-slick, portentous fractal shard, obfuscating

Inclination and intention, wayward morals lain askew

Insalubriously incandescent

Pyre-lanterns blossom thus

Morass of night shroud

Clinging in graven temperance

Where now does one seek sanctuary?

Where in miserly ruin lay succourment against the void?

Mildewed timber and weathered stone mark the paths

Concentric, the dilapidated hovels of goodness wrought of ashen bone

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