Gnarled Lust
is a blackened tree

tenacles feasting on a murdered landscape;

having been watered by poisoned fertilizers
sprouting gray leaves
displaying a history of
of voracious greed, death, blood and atrocities,
its spread now reaches the dead vampire desire for immortality
by sucking red blood from prone victims
who crave
love, sex and death in swain's sucklings
fired of the desire to cheat death and live forever,

even at the cost of dead hand affections
dark broodings
outside the light-
ultimate self-regarding
confections
consumed
of poisoned drops;
failed promises
illusioned drinkings
and bloody hands.

All there in history:
power mongers
mind killers
word demons
culture jailers
dead limp drug healers
all seeking to bury Faith alive
strangle Hope in its baby crib
all watered
under Lust's tree
and producing
millions of dead gray leaves
all embraced
reeking of the still warm blood
sucked from others.

All these in human history
seen marching
lashing the backs of slaves
of women, hapless men
of children;
an obsessed march
toward Lust's Dark Horizons
contorting history 
while True Virtue
miraculously at History's Turning Point
ultimately showed its face
and started it's own march toward justice, mercy
and democracy 
progress slow to be sure
but relentless
with these transfusions
now turning gray to green in some places,
and that battle
while not yet won
has been joined.
The lesson here my friend
then
is that there is a difference
between Good
and Evil.

So in the end it is the rage for Immortality
which drives all things human
the desire to cheat death

indeed nature herself

or is it Humility

who there sighs

saying

some things

are too much

not worth the cost
being Gnarled most.