Second Sunday and the church bell is tolling.
A million black ghosts hover around you,
Perhaps finding the choke of white flowers consoling.
But I know their time of wilting will come soon enough.

How dare they
Bring me here.
A silent scream into the swirls of smoky incense,
Filling the hall with scents of ash and our youth together
For me, pouring just one glass would never make sense.
So they tell me, this will fade.
Don’t force it.
Wait your turn.
But I’d rather stay in your reality than their lies.
So I beg them:
“Please, let me burn.”

Disillusionment is the price for having your head in the clouds,
For youthful idealism,
When dreams aren't concise.

I used to feel so enticed,
Seeing how a pigmented nail polish,
Could give a pallid hand a sophisticated finish.
But these days there is no novelty.
My cuticles are sliced,
In the places where the paint wasn't precise.
Teeth monstrously disregard the life of the flesh, making a mess,
Now that my nerves have every reason to take out their stress.

Aunts and grandfathers go out of their way for us when we are little enough,
Just to remind us our faces are beautiful enough to rule the world.
Of course we believe them, with faces like blank canvases,
When they say that blossoming will only make things better.

Before long, boys have painted us with scarlet letters.
Their only warrant is our existence.
By eleven, we disassociate and find our old face distant.
Old before our time. Tired and haggard.
You don’t need to point it out when our flaws come out to play.
We know already- but hey, you can still remind us of lumps on our noses, stomachs, and chests.
As if it's gruelling enough just to get through the day.

Didn’t we all see our futures in silver screen angels?
Or a centre-stage princess?
Blind to her hidden talents, so baneful.
Did it ever occur to you,
That our idol queens,
Were more enthralled by lines of coke in their dressing rooms,
Than the magic of living our dreams?

Follow their footsteps, I dare you.
Flip a coin between thriving and doom.
And let us wonder why our aspirations have lead us to death’s doorstep.

Open the city gate,
Keep count of each martyr’s tomb.
Keep your head level between the clouds and gutter,
And try not to choke on censorship’s fumes.

Here lies the distinction between bleak reality and twisted fantasy.
Did that thing expire millennia ago?
Or was it us who dug its grave?
In an age of earned disillusionment, surely no one will live to know.

Hand over your eyes and tongue,
As you wander deeper into deceit and ****.
And don’t bother to ponder the point of a market,
Where we pay with our colours, lovers, and shapes.

But for those of us who live later,
Too late to pay lip service to crumbling creations,
Catch a glimpse of something primal.
Take comfort in a void,
And when you shatter the panes in your temples,
Please, forget how to feel like a droid.

Why not give yourself over to compost?
Free to grow with roses and thorns.
However tight you cling to your hubris,
Gasoline and lilies will conquer all.

You’re as limp as a wet stocking
yet as frigid as a dry latex glove.
Deflated,
with the sculpted face of Dionysus.
I could frame that face
and hang you from my garden wall.
I will bring the rope,
but have you tie the knot.
I will admire you from beneath every archway.
I will sign my name below,
like I sign my own face
after the lipstick goes on.