Words, words, worms! My mind is swarmed
With them. Ants file in through the sticky
Canals, chattering, stamping their little black feet.
They use me. I am their harboring medium,
A visitor in my own head.
Black, empty mouths flutter and dance and signal
Amongst themselves, crowding my skull,
A murmuration of phrases and guttural sounds.

I mustn't tell fully what they say.

They draw forth black and bubbling swamps,
Wicked crows, the yawping millions, pecking,
Pecking, gouging with yammering beaks
At every smooth, young innocent.

There is death in this tumult of words.

Let it not take me.

I do not know what the trouble was that caused this.
It was soft, supple, and bright.
It was whole, and I watched it all I could,
My mouth agape with love and joy.
I hugged it closely to my *****, like a babe,
And felt the fluttering thump of livingness.
I held it as it dried to dust.
What loss! What dissolution!
What betrayal of trust!
I am soiled with the ashes of what once was
And what could have been.
I wash these blackened hands again
And again, yet the smell,
The burning stench of rot
Has soaked into my very flesh.
I tote it now, like a badge, the black hands.
I am a murderous brute.

I am wary of these arachnoid beasts.
How foreign they seem!
They are resting now,
Curled delicately upon my lap at each folding joint,
Looming faithfully.
They cling to me, and naturally so.
Yet, we are not one entity.
They are far too elegant
To notice me, their blundering mother.
They suckle my blood dispassionately,
Yet it is painless,
A numb event.

I began to notice,
During my sixteenth year,
That my heart pulled to some other haunt.
I longed for a place to rest my eyes at night--
A place where I could escape the droning hum
Of man fixed to machine--
Where I could gaze, at midnight,
Upon the light shining through pinpricks
In the taught, dark sheet.
I began to feel deadened by routine,
By the icy glare of headlights
And blinding, bold storefronts.

Maiden fair livens at the blue-white gleam of moonlight
And stirs
Under the shadows of night.
With downy hairs perched upon the nape like writhing snakes,
Burning black as soot,
Her lips pucker and spit foul-speckled air,
And her head will spin and spin and spin
Until night turns to dawn
When the infernal sun will eat away at the soiled bits
Of the wild, dour mess.