Tastes like death
Tongue to the gallows
Winter in her veins

All flesh fails
Maggots run empty
Gorged headless
Enfolding
Imprinting

Limbs twined to the bone
Reap nothing
Limbs twined to the bone
Reap nothing
Limbs twined to the bone
Reap nothing

All that lead in their bones
Smoke lingering blood

They placed masks on their graves
Unmarked in kitchens
And fields of grain
Washed out and bitterly red
Against a blue white skin

Liberty fell with her rifle
Pointed at her own knees
Crown set a gutter for soldiers to cower and puke in their false beliefs

The only absolute in this ******* war is death
You freedom ******* hypocrites

I mailed you a letter because you said
the art of writing is dead but I know
how to twist words into sculptures still small
enough to fit in the post box. I hope
you read what I wrote. I opened my heart
and sent you a poem. Someday when you’re old
you will show your grand kids the written art
some hopeless romantic girl undersold,
prefaced with ‘it isn't anything great but
maybe it will lead you to understand.’
I never claimed to be the best but my
head is full of cosmos and volcanoes
begging to explode black holes on paper as
relics pressed between pages like a dried rose.

To the writer that I read out of pity

I have your name etched in my browser bookmark
In my head still there's pieces of I Couldn't Help It
how I don't quite get it on the first glance from the windows of a ******'s life
now, in hindsight, still
my favourite of all
I creep almost constantly on your writings
clinging to the lights you reflected onto my life.
You were my very first visit to this site
You are the path of how I'm here.

I thank you
I thank you, Santa Moon Humor Leah Rost.

What is it about this drunken town where the snow falls like cement
that made it so easy to fall in love with the delirious nightlife that never sleeps?
It seems like when I’m with you at night I never sleep.

We’re dancing around the cemetery like we threw a ball for souls.
No one believes you when you say you see something from the corner of your eye
but we all feel the chill and agree that tonight we will never sleep.

Do you remember the night you told me to never hold back? ******* I wanted
to cry but I forced a smile through my lips and eyes. I laid next to you with a blank mind
for hours knowing that you think I‘m a mystery. I learned that the train yard never sleeps.

The ******* microwave is broken again when you come home drunk.
You called me a **** and punched another hole in the wall and
I’m scared enough to know that tonight I’ll never sleep.

That bag of ice clutched tight won’t leave his hand jammed in his pocket. When
he gets home he feeds the crystals into the glass and heats it up. Tweaked out
and wandering the streets at three. A woman mutters, “**** addicts never sleep.”

Have you ever dozed off in warm grass while watching
clouds passing lazily by? My god I swear there’s nothing better than
a nap in the sun for someone who never sleeps.

Glass rips my forehead clean open and exposes my frontal skull bone while
strange men hold me down and taunt me with knives and chain saws.
Reoccurring nightmares are why many insomniacs never sleep.

A sensual shower at midnight, that fat hit at two did nothing. Lavender and candles
aren’t working. I’m staring at the ceiling. You roll over and pull me close.
“Leah, please, go to bed. It kills me that you never sleep.”

The bad die young too

there's just no one
to miss them

First glance, I’m a good Christian girl. But dark purple flecks decorate my neck.
In leather and lace I forget to pray and let you do what you want with me
because pain is complex and melded with pleasure.

Do you know what they say about girls that enjoy ***?
They never dare to say it to my face but I can feel them staring from the pew
at the dark purple flecks that decorate my neck.

Your hands, more powerful than God, make the earth of my body quake
while I draw fault lines down your back with my nails under the broken
crucifix above your bed. The pain is complex and melded with pleasure.

Deep, growling voice shakes the dusty rosary on your nightstand when we ****.
Your handprints are left on my flesh and the hand around my throat
leaves the dark purple flecks decorating my neck.

Coffee in the narthex and I’m labeled a harlot. Sinner. Sacrilegious. Branded as freaks…
Brush it off. I know what you like and how you like me. God will have mercy.
Sensations blend because pain is complex and melded with pleasure

and I can’t have one without the other. To reach our peak
you leave me red, marked and breathless, gasping, “Oh my God.”
Questioning my beliefs with dark purple flecks to decorate my neck,
I know pain will always be complex and melded with pleasure.