Saints in the grass,
snakes in the red inked rice paper,
no stakes.

Paydirt to just dirt,
inertia,
stealing the first buds on your neighbor's rose bush
because you've earned them.

Worth is a burned bridge
glimpsed over a shoulder,
burgeoning burned already
lest we embed flesh in cold earth because to smoulder is a fate worse than rehearsing a death wish
in the cracked mirror of modernity.

Learned behavior.