little lights, flame flickers

pale skinned lip lickers

red blood, warm flood

gold crown, made of mud

heart rippers, teeth gritters

white knuckled blood givers

i am a fist clenching, teeth wrenching

ear splitting, muscle tensing

junkyard liver, death giver

pale skinned lip licker

how do i know
if this touch is even true?
we're all locked inside
an imaginary zoo
i try to break free
try to shatter these chains
but they send me far a way
claimed clinically insane
but you have to sleep to wake
i tell them of this fact
but all they do is stitch my wrists
and send me right on back

how do i know
if this touch is even true?
we're all locked inside
an imaginary zoo
i try to break free
try to shatter these chains
but they send me far a way
claimed clinically insane
but you have to sleep to wake
i tell them of this fact
but all they do is stitch my wrists
and send me right on back

on my knees
a scavenger
picking around
like a buzzard
like a ******* fiend
grabbing empty bottles
from the trash
nursing each drop
at the bottom of the bottle
like a child in my womb
but god, this is no child
no spawn but that of Satan
this is Lucifer's spit
the devil's brew
his saliva, his blood
oh, now it's in my blood
a few drops and i'm feeling okay
well on my way into tomorrow
and the tomorrows after that
each passes too quickly
friends slipping through my fingers
like water, not whisky
if i could learn to hold them
to nurse them as i do
each bottle, each needle
oh god, i'd find love
but instead i curl up
at the bottom of a bottle
and watch the days blur
all the same
it's all the same
i would say
god help me
but god
that ship has sailed
it's been too long
i'm too far gone for that

i dance, limbs bent like broken sticks
snapping this way and that in the wind
breaking off into the moon, so full
first goes the skull
last is the ribs to break
cracking open like gates
revealing my heart
cue the caged bird's part
but it does not sing
nobody sings anything
i hold it in my words
that awful caged bird
its pulse beating on my lips
i can feel it in my fingertips
as i dig them into the ventricles
ripping apart my life's chronicles
again
again
i feel the beatings
not like soft wings
but like a raging drunk's fit
and my mind is the pleading lips
of the bruised face which he hits
what bruised place is this?
another swig to die
whiskey rocks me like a lullaby
rocks me side to side to dead
as i balance on the ledge
made of razor blades
****** feet, ****** stains
til i topple over the side
you can seek, but it's time i hide
laughing reality away
as if there's anything left to say
that wouldn't be a lie
so rock me like a lullaby
goodnight, goodbye
my lullaby

oh dandelion,
my dandelion
the wind carried your seeds
though i never wished
for them to land upon me
how many then, has it been?
how many times have we thrown
our cares to the wind?
with arms wrapped 'round my waist
i look to the mirror
to the wonders i must face
how can you know
when the wind steals your seeds
if they ever did grow?

this fire burns
beneath my breastbone
like the burning leaves of autumn
the haunting smell of dying alone

try as i might
to follow a certain path
my clumsy feet
always lead me off track

crashing on some moonlit road
that i think is leading home
but i stumble and stumble again
tripping over imperfections, all my own

now i'm lost more than i was at the start
pandemonium, perennial chaos
each road intertwining into a mess
and i just can't seem to shake this

i hope there is a point
i can see an A and B
but i can't seem to figure how
i travel the roads in between

which makes me wonder what's the point?
they say life is so much more
and that there's some greater purpose
but is there really, what's it for?

when out of every face we pass
on our stumble home
we find our's is the only one
we've never truly known?