Man Is Full Of Venom And Vice Poem by Patti Masterman

man is full of venom and vice,
and each dead cut tree shall then,
when twain, out of all these falling limbs
(venom and vice)
be merely the frail, immeasurable culling
more silent, but less
than the sum of suns
here displayed by happiness or tears
(venom and vice)

if the tongue of shadows prays
to the snowflake of obsidian glass,
if dreams bottom out in the depths
of grief's infinite losses
where memories wag perpetual flames,
there where the time wells up
minus jagged sections of squalored living

man is full of venom and vice,
and if life be more
than every wanton, shuffling sun
(venom and vice)
more than past-future
declensions of wayward moon,
if not more than
the growing spectre of our terrible,
swift wings, day by day
(venom and vice)

then speaking mostly behind the eyes,
is the unwrit, unholy grave of man,
man still full of venom and vice
and whose errors are still very much with him-
in spite of knowledge in spite of civilization
in spite of science in spite of love

for all his aberrant dissimilitude
always digging him in again
(venom and vice)