I never used to feel haunted.
Until I lost what made me whole.
On my arm, she I flaunted.
Now she's gone, where is my soul?

Where is it? Where is the music?
My foot lies flat, no way to use it.
Now she haunts me day and night,
in the hollow where I hear the blues.

There's no music, like a funeral,
still, she plays the blues.
I'd held out hope still knowing all,
until I heard the news.

She's dead, not the way I am inside,
because I can still kick buckets
and there are no more dreams for her.

It makes the haunting deadly
what if we were wed? hic!
why aren't I dead, too? hic!
We'll never be together now...

Who is she, you ask?
She's my muse, who sang the blues.
She kept my feet and hands in tune.
My muse knew of all the birds in June,
their calls cataloged in stacks like dunes.

I don't know where she went,
but the haunting is severe.
She speaks in the hollow of my soul,
but, if I'm alive, why can't I hear?

Solemn hands, led by somber mind, raise the instrument of silence, putting it to sober lips, and softly the silence reigns, but soon abates.

Poor hands lower the instrument as gentry waits.

Rich feet tread upon buoyant ground, an island out in a storm, awaiting judgment.

Forces fail to ****** the veil from feeble foes between the toes of giants tall and giants small that fall from forty-five hundred miles above, fists rattling, jaws chattering, buried in the collision.

Perhaps nails are this way when they affix me.

However, I quickly pry myself away from the cruel, cruel day. Singing lost languages, listening languidly, plying myself candidly through clear and cloudy skies, alike.

Journeys over just lands, burning in my dust-hands are strands and strands of whiskers, plucked from lions’ maws to build an antenna.
My hands shape a needle weaving itself into the sky.

Yet, the collision of derision upon my mind will affix me to my madness, and there is no escape from a box that I have been told to call humanity.

I don't want you.

I don't want your love born sweat to conquer my onyx tower,
It crumbles still, because I shake from a withdrawal,
Caused not by intimacy, but by the mere fantasy of you.

I don't want you.

I don't want your sickly sweet hive juice, oh Queen of sweet nothings,
But a pestiferous hunger felt by I and every other before me,
Allows us to follow you just by scent, twenty eight days after hearing you.
And we shuffle still to the tune of your voice, collecting the pollen,
We find ourselves selling our bodies to you without hindrance,
And we commune in the afterlife singing your praises,
For only heaven compares, but we still linger in your presence.

I don't want you.

I don't want these tears I shed to convince you that I'm weak,
But my heart is already broken and in the healing that you administer,
It breaks again, because your touch is so gentle,
The ecstasy hits like a hammer, and I writhe in silent ******,
Only knowing that this will end, but holding onto the feeling still,
As if it is the only thing keeping me afloat in the monsoon of life.

I might want you.

I've written eight thousand sonnets and every one is about you,
But every one is different, because I appreciate how complex you are,
And I'm driven mad by the love you claim to be capable of,
The shadow of it tames me and I lose my will to fight you.

I don't want you.

Fear grips my heart in the dissonance of your desire and my worry,
And the drumming of ancient rituals berates my consternation,
A ritual I see as forbidden is nonetheless more alluring,
And I claw at my cage, wondering when I can let,
This hunger be sated, let the rabbit run free.

I don't want you.

So close to breaking the hermetically sealed barrier,
So close to losing all recognition of moral oversight,
So close to breaking down the walls that coddle,
So close, so close, so close, to ultimate sin.

I want you.

Suddenly a weight shifts and the fall is too fast to feel.

I want you.

Like light banishing darkness my pearl is let loose,
And the line that was drawn cannot be real.

I want you.

And I'm proud of that, even though God will strike me down,
But someone told me that rules are meant to be broken,
I understand now that you are the candy,
That my mother told me would cause cavities,
But if I don't eat the candy,
If I don't have the cavities,
Someone after me will never hear my story.
They will do the same.
If I don't break this rule,
Someone else will pay the price.

I am your cautionary tale.
This night of passion will make that certain.