Beneath Rotting Canopies Poem by oio ZIGA

The ecosystem bleeds shadows
a cancer of compromise,
cell by cell, the marrow of morals
eaten by silent moths.

They call it adaptation:
swallowing lies like communion wine,
numbing their spines with the opium
of this is just how it grows.

Compliance, a contagion
their rust infects the roots.
Watch them bloom in the muck,
petals slick with the oil of surrender.

But a few stand as splinters in the wound,
thorns grafted to the diseased trunk.
They wear their scars as lanterns,
each fracture a fissure where light leaks in.

Let the cynics crown themselves kings of decay
true temples are built by the ones
who plant embers in the rot,
who let their defiance take root

as a slow, stubborn genesis:
not survivors, but kindling.
For even the darkest forest remembers
how fire breathes a world back to life. —OIO