Influenza

It's only anger in my veins
An influenza of the spirit
That swells like a river
That rips apart a rural town
After a prolonged torrential rain.

How I fear the power it brings.
I watch as my capillaries
Ripple 'neath my cyanized skin
So thin, throbbing with each terrible pulse
And seeping rivulets of brine.

My vision goes colorless
And is blinded to all nuance.
My jaw clamps tight,
Allowing only terse, seething utterances
To escape my lips.

My notions become absolutes,
Determined like a rogue virus,
Tearing through body and brain
Displacing the pure oxygen of reason
With the putrid mucous of hate.

But nature has her way
Of debilitating my wrath,
Forcing me back to the mean,
Tethering the rampant germ
From its untenable extreme.

Though this strain my re-assort
And lurk in the mire of my pity,
The sequela it leaves behind
Are the lost friends, family, and lovers
Who did well to avoid my plague.