by Siddiq Islam

To lie in the dirt and to slowly decay!
A prospect more noble than all other things.
The righteous career of corroding away,
A subject of earthworms, the Underground Kings.

I see your grand temples, with such great potential
To topple and crumble to dust when they fall,
But hanker for something more experiential –
I too should diffuse into nothing at all.

I’d finally be free from the chore of emotions,
The burden of feelings, the labour of thoughts.
Dismissing you all and your tiresome commotions,
I’d lie in the peace of my low, earthen courts.

I suffer the same as the last sorry poet
Whose words washed you over like wet seaside stones
But damp disrepute, he and I need not know it,
Once sweet, soft erosion has rescued our bones.

So, invisible bodily seams, let me breech thee.
Why stop me indulging the world’s natural way?
Afford me to sate the starved fungi beneath me,
To lie in the dirt and to slowly decay.