Sometimes(when you're bound and hanging over the viperpit),
there's nothing left to do but jump IN.

sink your feet firmly, take on the nasty, coiling death,
endure the striking fangs, the boiling venom injection,
burning corrosive reality into obdurate flesh.

When life defies love defies truth,
when there's no possibility left untried,
when everything that you are is insufficient,
it's madness to continue.

Drop your pants,
your pretenses,
your churning desires,
your fervent dreams,
your only weapon,
your stupid faith,
your fondest wish,
your booty rising,
your unfulfilled promises,
your cowardice, bitterness, blame, shame and most of all,
drop your last surviving hope.

Jump,
stand bitten,
burn.

Stop your thrashing protestations.
There is no cure for this.
Burn her out.
The howling will cease in time,
smoke and echoes diminish,
leaving bare, dry charnal ground.

Nothing less will suffice.
There's no answer to this test,
nothing brilliant, or even merely witty, to say in the end,
to engage,
to hold,
no mercy given, no raw appeals to justice,
nothing to fulfill or withold,
Nothing to fix.

Nothing binds us here,
Nothing ruptured, bleeding, uncauterized.
nothing unconquered, no clumsy mortal aspirations to shoot down.

We came this far for nothing.
This far,
for striking snakes and burnt ashes.

We came this far, for battlefield carrion,
a charred corpse, beyond recognition.

We came for what?
Fireworks, madness, death, love, friendship?

Nothing less will suffice.