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What happens to the self

When first penetrated

By the arrows

Of consciousness

How quickly can

The proximate light

Give way to distant

Plains of nausea

Aware

Of the impossibility

Of passage back

Through the cobbled and sealed

Walls of innocence

Murky pools of ontology

Beckon the self

Into darker

Darker immersions

Grottos of night

Delirious scents

Transmitted by flesh

That leeches the sweat of perdition

And then equivocation

Falls to its knees

As the fevers

As the fevers take hold

The self, then sees

For the first time

It's inevitable path

Beset on all sides

By fear, uncertainty, and regret

Chased by the phantoms of the past

Cancerous tendrils

Ravaging the body

Which pines for the womb

Of unfeeling

And silence

Silence