James?

Mm?

James?

Yes, I can hear you. What?

Do you, um… d’you think it’s… is it still ****** if they’re, you know… not all there? I mean, if their brain isn’t working and their eyes are listing, but they’re still breathing? Kind’ve dead, but there’s still life in them?

The soft trickling of rain.

What the **** kind 'f question is that to ask?

I just…

Listen, okay? It was a kindness we did him. You have to understand this-

I just don’t think that’s right. That kind 'f power. I mean, his head came apart like a ******* eggshell.

The soft haze of white noise. The sound of meat.

Jesus. Jesus Christ. The *******…

A giggle.

The ******* gall. You’re coming over religious. This isn’t like you.

I know, I know. It’s… hypocrisy. Phony. I hate myself for it, but somehow what happened…I mean, what we did… doesn’t feel right. It’s not alright. I mean, did you see his eyes? His head… came apart like a *******…

A choking sob.

This isn’t like you, you know. Going to pieces over the past. Can’t be changed, you know that.

Thought. White noise.

****.

I’d just like to bury him, at least. Give him some kind’ve…

White noise. A guttural sob.

******* it. ******* it.

God Almighty. It puts the fear in you.

Jesus Christ. Again?

Yes, again. Don’t be a ***.

Oh please.

Jesus.

A hanging silence.

You know William Paley?

No. Go on.

Oh. Paley’s Watch?

******* go, James.

Uh, Paley’s Watch is a theory that the universe is too complex to exist by chance, and therefore there must be a creator. I mean, just like the existence of a watch presupposes a watchmaker ‘cause it’s too complex to be there by chance.

And you eat that?

Yes, or something similar. What offends you so ******* much anyway? So I believe-

It’s defeatist. Jesus Christ, the only reason you and anyone else believes this dogshit is ‘cause you’re ******* terrified of dying, and the reason a ******* graveyard puts the fear into your thick skull is ‘cause you want to join them when you croak. That’s what it is, it’s ******* insurance.

Another silence.

Okay. Alright, fine, it’s insurance. But I am playing this insurance, see, into my benefit. I believe in the creator, and if it turns out he’s watching me he’ll put in the good word and I spend my afterlife in eternal sunshine, and if he’s a scam like you say it is I join you in blackness or hellfire. I win either way.

Oh, very faithful, doggy. Arf arf.

Oh, for the love-

What’s life worth if you’re so sure where you’re going? I reckon I’d rather drink and steal **** and burn in hellfire than **** away my life in the service of some shitbird in the sky who may or may not exist.
Jesus, mother-

Stop ******* blaspheming.

********, James.

I am feeling very ******* nervous at this moment
Cold sweat. Twisting gut.
It seems I’ve worked myself into a rut
And now I’m freaking out.
My face is tighter than it ought to be
A good lobotomy would calm me down.
A local anaesthetic would suffice;
I’d usher in the ice,
And let a needle perforate my cranium.
My nerves would lie prostrate.
I would be quite devoid of love or hate.
I’d cease to stab at mortal ties;
Cease to believe immoral lies
(And then the ice, the numbing ice
Would quicken my demise.)

An old man lives in a white house
Outside his house there is a bed of flowers
The old man’s life is in its twilight hours

I feel sad for the old man
Because he dawns on every day
And all his friends are dead or gone away

There’s a young woman who puts food upon his plate
And every time she turns her back his pupils visibly dilate
I’ve seen it - how the old man skins her with his eyes
She tells him soothing lies
About how long his heart has left
The old man craves a solitary death

The young woman wears a wooden cross around her neck
The old man cannot eat white bread
And all his friends are gone away or dead
And that’s no way to be
Wouldn’t you agree?

One old man in a white house with the desire to commit
One young woman in a chair on the front porch with her throat slit
That’s no way to go
That young woman is as white as snow
No glass coffin for her, though

Bun an old man’s wounds ache deep
He goes inside to drip and weep
And later that night sings with shining angels in his sleep

A little red bird
Drags a beaded yellow thread of blood
Across a sullen sky
And comes to sleep, a crumpled shape
Upon the murky water draped across the stone canal.
I feel the icy touch of guilt
Like spilt red wine inside the glass case of my mind
Because I feel it is banal
To watch the stain of ****** seep like nicotine across the flag;
Because I am serene
Upon my nails is drawn the verdant green of moss
And blood that goaded from beneath a cross;
And now it sinks below the water of the stone canal
And suddenly there is no guilt
Though one worm-ridden bird floats down to rest amongst the silt.

The beauty holds herself with grace.
Piano fingers weave a lace cocoon around a golden tress,
In full view of the populace.
An autumn exhalation
Breathes an epitaph for every secret limbless layer of her mind;
And all that she can do is laugh
A brutal laugh. Their smiles are so unkind.

My veins are sewers beneath my skin.
There is a cage where my skull should be
And inside this cage which stands like the skeleton of an October tree
There are worms that are knotted together in a way that allows them to think as one.
My stomach is full of writhing parasitoid wasps
That move in a way that makes them apparent to the eye that looks for them.
Only three months past they were injected into my bloodstream inside a miniscule submersible
Capsule.

My skin is nothing but maggots.
My tongue flails beneath the weight of hypodermic needles that are invisible even to the eye that looks for them.

The opinions of the worms are made apparent through my tongue even as it sprawls beneath the needles.
My lungs are full of dust and the dust is full of nacre and the nacre is wrapped around gypsum and graphite Which are dust to the eye that does not know these words.