Why must you insist upon
Setting me alight?
You spit flames
And complain of how it burns your throat

How dare you lay so languidly
Sprawling across white sheets
And feign the sorrow of a faded silver statue
You spill across me
By virtue of a withered scarlet rose
Tearing scratch marks
They drip your inky blood

And what right have you
To turn your head
And insist
You love me after all?

So if you love me
Let me dry my eyes

I.
You walk through these streets
like you think you know what you want.
But tell me honestly,
inside the pockets of your coat
your fingers never uncross,
do they?

II.
I drown you in photographic film
and sometimes I wonder how time
stands still in a painting.
In the middle of the bazaar, you stood
like a painting
while people moved around you
like an overexposed reel of film
and time still stands still to this day

III.
You're coughing it all out; winter
on your lips and spring in your lungs.
Drink me.
I am a tincture of a daydream.
The sun is always brighter, my dear.

IV.
Our hands interlace in the darkness
and melt away with the consequences of time.
You are a bottle of something precious.
Put me to sleep, sing
me to sleep.

V.
Undo the buttons of your dress
and wear away with the night.
Shed this old layer of skin
and something about rebirth
we can tell beautiful lies
but how long before the bread soaks up the milk
and the blood on the carpet
seeps into
the wood.

VI.
The ice on the lake
can't hold up this dream anymore.
You're a hallucination
and all I needed.

Limp effigies of childhood memories,
             still holding so many secrets.
   Woven within tattered tears,
                        now long since evaporated.


Now vacant, an amnesia of fallen promises
           that are retained.
                     But uninhabited threads,
          decompose beneath every dewdrop.
becoming  undone.

I have a
Cheshire Cat Grin.
Just as mad
Just as eerie.

I have a Cheshire Cat Smile,
I'll coo to you in the wisps of your rage,
"Oh, but didn't you know?"
But you never knew
You never knew,
Did you?

I have a
Cheshire Cat Grin,
Because I am just as mad,
Just as eerie,
Just as innocent,
And just as deadly,
Within the words, the stories I spin,
The webs I weave.

I have a
Cheshire Cat Smile,
And, Darling Dear,
I'm Mad as a Hatter.

Did you hear?
Did you hear?
The crash and the clatter?

Did you see?
Were you there?
When all that red splattered?

I am the
Voice of the Trees at Night,
I am the
Whisper in Your Bones when Panic Takes Flight.

I am the
Cheshire Cat
And honey, look at my smile.
I am the
C
  H
     E
        S
           H
               I
                 R
                    E
(They're burning in the fire!)
                      C
                   A
                T
(What was that?)

Feel the shiver down your spine,
As the air of this toothy feline
Makes you wonder
Where does madness draw the line?

Do you want the answer?
Will you chance her?

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?"