effortless
I fall into my
empty trap

bait set
widowed wills
I release the catch
and lock myself
in

mucky plucky hardy souls
perfect puckered people without goals
mothers giving birth to gangling foals
daring doleful dancers with no roles
i am walking damnedly on hot coals.

lyrics from half-cherished poems
a pet who owns you half the time
a half-boy half-thing who ignores his omens
a life, a lie, a reach, a rhyme.

morbidly
i let my teeth fall out
and my hair frizz
and my life disintegrate
because
we all need a muse
and if you're not tortured
you're not creative

I've heard these words sung
in every life
I've ever touched
and this
quarrelsome
touch
of the love we need
of the warmth we crave
shunned
shivered
pruned, and carved, and withered
a skull made in my own name
staring to
this pearl of dreams
this orb of truth
I see my face
and I,
happy-shrunk
hung from
tethers
I'd never name
to long for the touch of
a hungry man's wish
and I curl my fists
the words etched in stone
plaqued on my wall
dirges of a future haul
and my mind flicks back
and screams in blood
because there is
numbers written
on my grave
and I fear
the day
that I forget
my name

So fresh the pain
The words clog my fingertips
So new the wound
I can barely stomach anything
A challenge, fine reader
For a knight like you
To find the words, to express
Your deepest pool of loneliness
I can't, but feel, the words that flow
So brutish in their relentless fury
Today is not the day to speak them
All I feel is untapped power

My suspicious brain is counting faults again
Like time, that ticks, so thick and true
I can count on my silly brain, and you
The twisted truth that haunts my glow
I am the oldest antidote
That lingers in my own flesh and blood
Litter lips, frittered love