Here I lurk
Clutching my shadow
In my fists
It shivers, shrivels, sighs
A flame shushed to silence
On its ashen throne
Here I grasp
Grasp the oozing, burning night
That drips down my fingers
A palm beneath a palm I place
A palm beneath another
It the creamy tiles kisses
And will come to me no more

A rumble wobbles
around the room
Of laughs and talks
And talks
However do I mingle
In these faceless folks?
However do I fathom
All these massless worlds
Orbiting around ecstatic tongues
That birth them
Birth them on and on
Birth them meaningless, and birth them blind

I think,
Maybe when the flood dies out
I think,
Maybe then I will see
Pick up the shells this land could not drink
And read the tales preserved
In their wounds
Maybe the drunken ghosts
Serving all these brightly dressed drinks
Will approach me too—

Not yet though
Not yet

I pull little hymns out of my throat
Roll them around in my mouth
It is there they sway,
There they wilt

A gaze chained to my eyes
Wanders about
Like an injured fly
On one face it rests
On one chuckle stumbles,
A crack skipping down the wall
A high-pitched laugh blooming
In the corner
There is a bleakness, believe me
In this world

A bleakness so pitiless and rotten
Its stench covers all that is born
All that is not
All—
There is a bleakness
And I often mistake it for my own
But I do not now
It is there in every eye
In every corpse hanging between the ribs
It grows up like a sturdy ****
On arms and legs and
Bones
Up and down the aisle it flows
In this classroom twinkling
with childish mirth

Up and down
It pats heads and laughing cheeks
It is there
It is there
And will not still
Will not stir either

I think,
I must warn them
These energetic faces trying
to resurrect joy
From the flesh of stories all skinned alive
Warn them
I must, I must
But the words pile up
And floods pile up
One upon the other thousands
And I lose myself somewhere

The chatter blends in with the chortle
And I cannot tell
The shadows imagined
From cloaked figures swaying around
I would warn them, believe me
Warn them I would
If only
If only I could grasp hold
Of this darkness
That mimics me everywhere I go
Ghost of a black lamb
I once sacrificed for
A purity I loved to violence

And longing never became
A shackle so well

I think,
maybe when the flood dies down
I will breathe,
I will breathe maybe
Here we lurk
A slave upon a slave rests
A slave beneath still
Two ghosts I birthed,
Two lambs opened up,
One will not love me
And one will not not—