Side by side fighting in rounds,
etching drawings in our skin cut by cut.
Hoping and praying that the vitriol
of the infection’s symptoms are sporadic;
that the wave of pain comes only in bursts.
Infection acting as a hallucinogen creating visions.

Yet it is in these sought after visions
we see battles as if they’re in rounds.
And in these battles the bullets fly in bursts,
where we see lives all cut
short. The lives taken are random and sporadic,
despite the takers lack of vitriol.

Like the poison of hatred and vitriol,
seeping through the mind like mirages and visions,
after drought and famine and natural sporadic
disasters wrought on different rounds
of dystopia — some of the battles we fight are cut
short and experienced like explosions, in bursts.

Sometimes our fights are drowned in shots and bursts,
with alcohol or drugs or other vitriol.
Maybe the vitriol is the blood we drink from the cut
on our wrists bringing us to the brink, with a vision
of our lives flashing before our eyes in rounds
like candid imagery. They seem sporadic.

However, although the images seem sporadic,
whether it be soldiers fighting firing guns in bursts,
or two kids fighting trading rounds,
like a man finding his wife’s lover with vitriol
in his heart, they all connect with a vision
of something where hatred is simply cut.

Where we can find personal and general wars cut
from textbooks and any person’s sporadic
memory. Where men have “a vision”
to “improve” a utopia. When men questioned men’s bubbles bursts.
Then they seethe and fester and ferment their vitriol,
like alcohol until ultimately feeding into the cycle. Then they fire their rounds.

Either at people or their own heads, their rounds
are found on the floor next to the sporadic, fallen gore. Their vitriol
lying next to the deceased vision of perfect around lives cut short, taken in bursts.