Badlands

Don't enter the badlands

in the badlands, (they tell you)
tenderness will crawl under your skin
and stay there
pricking from the inside
until you're just one
mass of aching flesh
and then, when it gets
so much, too much
that anything would be better
than this pain,
then (they tell you)

you'll take a knife
and attempt to pare
to the bone
and the blood,
there will be so much,
like a river
like an ocean
like the sky

and is that (they whisper)
what you want

is that
what you want

to let your lifeblood
soak a land
that will never bloom

is that
what you'll do

when you enter
the badlands.