Carrion

I didn't know from the moment when
carrion birds appeared, I'd endure
as their shadows circled 'round me,

always there among the entrails.
Nothing officially confirmed,
no out-of-body messages,

even for those nonbelievers,
till after the embrace of warm blood
slipped away into slumber, and later,

daylight terrors, with their unblinking
glare of disenchanted nerve endings,
like matchsticks that never burn out.