Wrap the thorns around my wrists like serpents slithering for a feast;
the ones who breed to bleed me dry unknowingly making me feel alive.

I'll bathe myself in light from a masochistic moon and listen to shadows on the walls moan in pleasure,
a deadly pleasure
that echos through my haunted veins;
wrapping their legs around my waist
and running their fangs across my lips.

They dig their claws and I pull them closer
hiding a smirk that even they cannot see, for I'm the boy you can't destroy
as I make love to
demons in the dark.

Along the cracking pavement, there hopped;
with slight and steady ravenous hunger,
a darkened crow,
not normal in size.
Picking at the seeds, between the cracks, while catching my eye and not knowing why.

He made not a sound, beside his beak.
Striking at the rock with hopeful sight,
pecking and hopping from here to there
as I stared with contempt,
a hatred
for birds such as these who darken doors
like clouds over graves and lonely moors.
I followed this bird with watchful eyes
thoughts of the macabre behind my lids
a hateful disdain for what I judged.

I couldn't be sure what caused this hate
This heat in my blood for such a beast.
Perhaps the black in ruffled feather,
or ominous signs they tend to bring?
Perhaps I'd seen in forgotten dreams
Shadows such as these, feasting away
with eyes full of hell and gleaming flame
on corpses of children, scattering the steeets.

Or battles of old, with dying men,
these morbid creatures flying above,
gasping in fright with last weary breaths.
I searched for reason but merely found questions, still watching the bird with aging beak.

I tell you this tale, because just then,
While pondering on this ghastly fiend,
he stopped at his task and gazed at me.
I assumed he'd simply turn his head
a curious glance to say the least,
but his eyes, they gazed, straight into mine
a curious staring in their darkness,
puzzling my thoughts with so strange a bird...

Suddenly, without breaking the stare,
he closed the distance between us both
and hopped on my leg, landing so soft.
while never ending his silent gaze.
I couldn't move a single muscle,
shock in behavior I'd never seen.
It seemed as though time had ran its  course,
in perhaps the lifetime while we stared.
What seemed a dark demeanor from afar
appeared calm and peaceful on my knee, as if he'd heard my chiding thoughts.

The hatred in my mind started to fade
a useless ticket for which I'd paid.
If birds could smile, I'd swear he would
and nod his head in understanding.
Instead he merely opened his beak and dropped in my hand a tiny seed
then opened his wings and flew away.
vanishing silently through the trees.

I could not move and I could not speak
The fleeting shadow had made me weak.
I lifted my palm, this lasting gift.
A single seed, from a darkened crow
that taught me a lesson I needed to know.

I was standing on a beach, behind my eyes. The water moved silently and in the distant horizon a setting sun forever loomed. An eternal dusk that glowed with violet and red, never ending. Behind me were stars and open blackness. Planets in the distance sparkled and beamed while in front of me, sand and an endless ocean. I sat and gazed around. Not a soul in sight and not a breath to be found by living creature. I breathed slowly and deeply. Counting the waves as they breached the shore.
I began to float. As if some invisible hand had gently picked me up from the sand and began to carry me away. Up and out from the waters and the violet into the arms of stars and light in the distance. My head began to swim and the mind began to speak. Soon the beach was out of sight and all to be seen were the endless eyes of stars, watching me drift through the eternal. Through their midst and into a world that seemed a dream. I looked in front of me to see an eye. Not the ones of stars, but an actual eye, gazing not into mine, but through them. Into the parts of me I couldn’t see.
The lights around me began to spin. Slowly at first, but faster and faster. Soon I found myself in a maelstrom of colors, a twister of sounds and images too fast to make sense of. While it turned left I turned right and I caught glimpses of people laughing through windows in my world, somehow in the swirling haze. They were smiling and greeting one another. Buying homes. Celebrating birthdays. Watching the trees through open windows. I felt my heart grip in sadness. A girl was dancing in a lit room. She turned her eyes towards me and smiled. She extended her hand. I reached out mine and try to grab her fingers. Her smiling face singing to me. Our fingers touched before I was lost in the swirl and I span faster and faster…. I closed my eyes and screamed in anger. Raising my fists in the fury and the horror while the twister held its sway and the eye was ever watching me.
I looked at it in rage and asked it why. Why must my world always touch the tip of theirs but never grasp. Never embrace. Never fit…  
Who am I? Why must I be this way? The eyes merely stared and slowly vanished.
I sunk through the haze and fell once more into darkness.
I felt my feet find solid surface and slowly light began to appear around me. I was standing in a desert. Surrounded by sand and a red sky above me. In the distance, I saw movement. Anxious for life. A soul to speak to, I ran towards it and found an interesting sight. A girl was dancing. She was facing away from me but from the back she seemed beautiful. Slowly moving to and fro in the sand. Beside her sat a serpent and a fire. The serpent was smoking a cigar and holding a drink, watching the girl dance and nodding his head. He looked at me and invited me over. I came and sat next to him. When I looked at the girl once more, I gasped.
From the back this woman seemed older and beautiful. From the front stood a ragged child, hungry and weary with her eyes closed, swaying to music I couldn’t hear. I looked at the snake and he grinned, raising his glass. I shook my head and backed away from him; disgust and the macabre across my face. He shrugged and turned back to the girl. I began to slowly sink into the sand until it swallowed me whole. I was now sitting in front of a tree. A white tree standing alone with nothing else in sight beyond the horizon. It was beautiful and lonely, aged and strong like the earth itself.
I watched as a girl ran up and stared in wonder at it. She picked a piece of fruit off and licked her lips in hunger. She went to take a bite; I tried to move and scream out no, but her teeth sank in and the tree turned to ash and fell away while the girl had her fill and disappeared. I hung my head and the white emanated from the tree blew out like a candle in a dark room and once more it was black. I walked about, through chaos. Through this world I do not understand.
I began to cry and I looked towards the heavens and found nothing but blackness. Through my tears, in the distance, a figure shimmered into existence and began to step towards me. I was in awe.
A woman was standing there before me. The universe in the form of a woman. Her skin was made of galaxies and I saw countless things being born and dying in her eyes. She walked up to me and stared. I, being just a boy and frail. Weakened by my own lack of understanding and brief seconds where I exist.
She reached out her hand and I look it, feeling every moment of time in her grasp. All of the pain we bear. All of the love we share. Every mothers touch and every lovers kiss. Every broken heart and every lonely sigh… I felt her light flow through my skin and her eyes kept gazing at me. She smiled softly and her lips made words I couldn’t hear but somehow I could understand. She pulled me closer and we embraced. The wonder in every second of existence flew through my nerves and out of my eyes like electricity and sunlight…
She pressed her cheek against mine and I closed my eyes and smiled against her skin.
She looked at me once more and kissed my cheek. A wind gust against my soul and a heartbeat within the darkness.
Then she was gone. And I was once again alone, but never alone. I closed my eyes and once more felt the cool air of the beach and the velvet waves against my feet.
I sat down and stared into the eternal dusk once more.


My eyes open and I am shaking and shivering.
The wonder of the universe speaking to me.