languid touch oozes from small claws; they do not yet know the wonder of keratin
my body is no temple. it has been harrowed by years of disillusionment
racked by anticipation
oh, the notion of some epagomenal redeemer to lift my vessel from damnation!
tears stream heavy and hot
soul is devoured
what remains is a moon-sliver; a sylphlike cadaver, an effigy of a bone ****** dry of marrow
from the rib came life

i have been allergic to silver since the first grade.
should a lock fall to the floor i do not hesitate to seize obediently
she alone hears wind chimes; she alone construed the new york vigor as youth
but there is no youth to be had. not for an inamorata of a perfect stranger whose bountiful flora precedes memory
she has plucked his fruit
she has fed it to the children and the vapor is hot on their breath; they have chewed away the pulp
their smoke fills the chamber with syrup, a lachrymose miasma who ripens her essence so quickly as to expedite her decay
alack, she sees the hazy curtain in her drunken state yet it will not suffice!
forty years she has suffered the slow bleed
voices into lungs
lights into hearts as her alveoli freeze diligently
they welcome the intonations with resolve tantamount to her hands' abstinenence
so she repeats her mantra and the paint is preserved

another incarnation
freedom remains elusive

it was an anaphora. repeated with repent over and over again. my skin blistered when you thought that heating a metal rod was the way to smoke insomnia away. im stained with regrets, stained with your thoughts, stained with you. red wasn't my color and i wasn't yours. seeing you peel my skin away with a broken bottle set my matches volatile. you made me feel intolerable. looking at a compressed chest and empty lower half wasn't anyone's ideal. seeing you in the mirror was sickening but my throat was burned with the taste of mercury and my hands were covered in biocide. you chopped my head off and let me loose in the tennis courts and i ate braille for breakfast. i became malleable and slitting my throat was to the answer c as was my tongue growing a mouth to the dead bird in the drain. my room was stripped, skin diminished, a phase so to speak dispersed along with my security. forgotten like the gum on a shoe, i scraped my ears clean with barbed wire and drowned everyone's mind with a plate of malaise - i was gone but here at the same time.

from what I know, most space breathes the same soft tone

the same still sigh

Jupiter's air is different
loud, thick and wet as the deluge pours heavy from forever storms

Mercury's is hot, dries my mouth and lends itself barren
only lives to whistle wind through the cracks of my ship

but the further I get out of this system of satellites
and the smoke-like facicles that bleed around my distant homes

the more stars collapse wearily into themselves

the more I see the bright, violent birth of hungry black holes

the more I realise I might truly be alone

to bite the hand that feeds
flourishes the flowering
at the watering spring

the hand that wills away the cloud
and its cover of the sun

the hand that is sure that it will bring
and is more certain of this than anything
to bite until it bleeds,
runs dry of its demand

and is sure of its defeat,
and will not heal again

to gnaw on its sore tendons
til the bone is crippled, sanded dust
fragile, failing
fleeting and
feeding despite the wound
because it's sure it can
and if it can, it's sure it must

sleep hangs in the air over my head

until it bolts and breaks the steep drop
from the window down to the city below

where light swarms around the sprawl
brilliant enough to cut through the thick cover of night that settles over it at this time

argus eyes Newark as it refuses rest
turns up its nose at the inclination
struggles under the spread and smother of last phase
pearls its flare as a periapt

and loudens its whirs and sighs
from public transit and its smoking tires
as halogen headlights bleed well through highway treelines

so I'll stave off another tryst with sleep
whatever romance tossed to Jersey's smog-laden wind