18 (I Am a Garden)

I am the harvest,
anathema to humanity,
yet all it strives to poison its
gardens with,
dreaming, I create you,
in nightmare, destroy,
waking, I sustain
the force that eats the
parts you no longer have
need of;

the leftovers,
the tasty bits

left over to the fields, left
over to some future serving of
you to someone else,
left to rot, maggot-dripping
for all it matters now,
to you, to Him,
seeds sown for the next
reaping, bounty for the
coming equinox,
the time of
threshing

when you see through your
portions of deli-sliced soul,
you-not-you-not-me,
you are a garden, a
source of fresh
promise, a new breed
of danger,
relentless, you,
the unseen thread of doubt out
beyond the darkness

Poem by Shane Douglas Keene

READ THE SERIAL NOVEL BY JOSH MALERMAN